This document discusses 18 common advertising strategies used to convince consumers to purchase products. It begins with an overview and defines each strategy with examples. Strategies include using idealized children, promoting family fun, emotional appeals, excitement, exaggerated product capabilities, celebrity endorsements, scale manipulation, competitor put-downs, repetition, sounds, cartoon characters, implied promises, selective facts, appeals to popularity, sexual imagery, selective editing of outcomes, and gift offers. Students are assigned to analyze ads in teams to identify strategies and discuss their effectiveness.

1. Advertising
Strategies
Discussion and overview of strategies
Small group Activity
Share findings with the class

2. Thoughts on advertising…
« Advertising is the art of
convincing people to
spend money they don’t
have for something they
don’t need. »
Will Rogers

3. Common Advertising
Strategies
Advertisers want to sell you stuff and they
will stop at nothing to reach their goal!
They manipulate us, convince us that we
need their products and even lure us into
believing the unbelievable.
To do this, they use the following
strategies…

4. Strategy #1

5. Strategy #1: Ideal Kids
The kids in commercials are often a little
older and a little more perfect than the
target audience of the ad. They are, in
other words, role models for what the
advertiser wants children in the target
audience to think they want to be like. A
commercial that is targeting eight year-
olds, for instance, will show 11 or 12 year-
old models playing with an eight year-
old's toy.

6. Strategy #2

7. Strategy #2: Family Fun
"This is something the whole
family can do together!" or "This
is something Mom will be glad
to buy for you." Many
commercials show parents
enjoying their children's fun as if
the toy or eating at McDonald’s
will bring more family
togetherness.

8. Strategy #3

9. Strategy #3: Heart Strings
Commercials often create an emotional
ambience that draws you into the
advertisement and makes you feel
good. The McDonald's commercials
featuring father and daughter eating
out together, or the AT&T Reach Out
and Touch Someone ads are good
examples. We are more attracted by
products that make us feel good.

10. Strategy #4

11. Strategy #4: Excitement
Watch the expressions on
children's faces. Never a dull
moment, never boring. "This
toy is the most fun since fried
bananas!" they seem to say.
How can your child help
thinking the toy's great?

12. Strategy #5

13. Strategy #5: Amazing Toys
Many toy commercials show their
toys in life-like fashion, doing
incredible things. Airplanes do
loop-the-loops and cars do
wheelies, dolls cry and spring-
loaded missiles hit gorillas dead in
the chest. This would be fine if the
toys really did these things.

14. Strategy #6

15. Strategy #6: Star Power
Sports heroes, movie stars, and
teenage heart throbs tell our
children what to eat and what to
wear. Children listen, not realizing
that the star is paid a lot of money
for the endorsement.

16. Strategy #7

17. Strategy #7: Scale
Making a product bigger
or smaller by juxtaposing it
to another image and
thus, changing the scale.

18. Strategy #8

19. Strategy #8: Put downs
Put downs are when you put down your
competition's product to make your
own product seem better. Great
examples of that are in the Pepsi or
Coca Cola ads

20. Strategy #8: Put downs

21. Strategy #9

22. Strategy #9: Facts and
Figures
Using facts, testimonies and statistics to
enhance your product's credibility.

23. Strategy #10

24. Strategy #10: Repetition
Saying the price, a phone
number, an address or a key
item of information again and
again so that consumers will
remember it when the time
comes.

25. Strategy #11

26. Strategy #11: Sounds Good
Music and other sound effects add to
the excitement of commercials. Sound
can make toys seem more life-like or less
life-like, as in a music video. Either way,
they help set the mood advertisers
want.

27. Strategy #12

28. Strategy #12: Cartoon
Characters
Tony the Tiger sells cereal and
the Nestlé Quick Bunny sells
chocolate milk. Cartoons like
these make kids identify with
products. All of these are ways
of helping children identify
with products either now or for
the future.

29. Strategy #13

30. Strategy #13: Weasel
Words
A promise is implied by using
words like "usually“, "chances
are“, “contains
some”, “partly”, etc.

31. Strategy #14

32. Strategy #14: Omission
Facts about the product or
about the contents of the
ad are not told.

33. Strategy #15

34. Strategy #15: Are you cool
enough?
This is when advertisers try to
convince you that if you don't use
their products, you are a nerd, you
are not cool. Advertisers can do this
by showing people that look uncool
before buying their product and then
suddenly becoming hip-looking and
doing cool things after buying their
product.

35. Can you think of more
strategies?

36. Strategy #16: Sex Sells
Think of all the beer
commercials,
perfume ads,
cigarette ads, etc.
Advertisers use
sexual inuendos or
sexual situations to
sell a product which
often has nothing to
do with sex.

37. Strategy #17: Selective
Editing
Selective editing is used
in all commercials, but
especially in
commercials for athletic
toys like frisbees or
footballs. Commercials
show only brilliant
catches and perfect
throws. Unfortunately,
that's not the way most
children experience
these toys.

38. Strategy #18: Gift with
Purchase
Companies try to
convince you to
buy your product
by offering free
extras, a discount or
gifts with purchase.

39. Ad Analysis in Teams
O In teams of 3 or 4, find an ad using
YoutTube.
O Identify all of the advertising strategies
used in the ad. There is often more
than one.
O Do you think that the advertising
strategies used are effective? Explain.
O Be prepared to share your findings
with the class 

40. Ad Analysis in Teams
*This activity will serve as a
preparation for an individual
ad analysis that you will
have to complete so be sure
to be thorough and
thoughtful in your findings!