I got this book from the company where I am currently working. The manager read the book then and since then it has lay in the company. At some point the company wanted the old stuff, such as the books cleared out and I then packed all the books and took them home. Now I have also found the time to take this in my hands and read.
Yesterday I finished reading the book and I’m really impressed with the knowledge what psychologists already knew at that time (1989). Actually, all I wanted to do was understand the psychology behind the medium we deal with most every day. Of the advertisement.
What is it about?
In this book, everything that has to do with advertising is enumerated and explained. The author writes from the beginnings of advertising, through the target groups, the types of advertising to the moral to the effect of sex appeal. Everything is accompanied by studies and scientific texts. Everything the author writes is very plausible and very easy to understand.
What i’ve liked
As already mentioned, I was really surprised by the knowledge about which the advertising psychologists already possessed at that time. He already described things at that time, which for us these days are the norm. What struck me most was how he described the issue of opinion leaders and minorities. Nowadays we call that Influencer Marketing.
I’ll give you some examples of the contents of the book so you can see why I think the knowledge given in this book is very forward-looking.
Influencer marketing in 1989
The opinion leader concept was not only attempted to address the issue of disseminating political ideas, but also the diffusion of new products. For example, opinion leaders among women are more fashionable or buying new home appliances, opinion leaders are reading more journals or accepting opinion leaders as the first new agricultural techniques among farmers.
Attempts to use the opinion leader concept include, among other things, giving first-time buyers of agricultural innovations greater discounts if they are willing to show their innovations to other interested parties. Car sales are expected to have the same effect as actively encouraging first-time buyers of a product to disseminate knowledge about new products without this being their first intention …
Klaus Moser – Advertising Psychology: An Introduction (p.133)
If you read these sentences, you know exactly what is behind the whole wave of influencers. I think it is amazing that this technology was already known then and has become so big today.
The MAYA maxim
The MAYA maxim is the principle in advertising psychology, which provides how far you can go to get the attention of the audience. This system is about how far you should go in the audacity of your advertising. MAYA stands for:
- Most
- Advanced
- Yet
- Acceptable
This means that you should go to the most acceptable limit, which is accepted by society… Is this familiar to you?
If you look at the promotional videos on the TV, or drive 10 km downtown, and look at the billboards… Would this advertising have been possible by your grandparents at the time? Of course not!
The advertising industry is always pushing the limits of what society is currently accepting, and since humans are “habit animals”, they are taking these to new frontiers, and next year they may be even more brazen. Thus, we have made it as the German population that 100 meters from my front door hangs a giant billboard for a sauna club, so that all the children play in their vicinity and the children who drive past with the bus see this and what they there see, burns itself in their memory.
What I did not like
There really was nothing that I did not like about this book. It was about the impact and impact maximization of advertising and the author has explained everything incredibly well. Already the above example sections have made it clear to me how much the author was ahead of his time, so that he has recognized the now so obvious advertising methods, which were not so open at that time, and immortalized in his book.
Conclusion
I think the book is very good and I also learned a lot about advertising techniques. The author has opened my eyes not only to the effect of advertising, but also to the stitches that are operated to get people to buy.
On the one hand, you can see these techniques as immoral, but on the other hand, it’s also amazing to see what kind of tricks the advertisers use to get us to buy. The book is highly recommended for advertisers as well as designers to get an opinion of professors, as well as studies of the old school on every topic.
