Successful advertising uses a variety of tricks and techniques to influence the consumer.

They evoke positive memories and emotions that affect our behavior over time,

and prompt us to buy something at a later date.

Marketing needs to reach the subconscious levels of the brain

in order for it to work.

People don't like to think that they 're easily influenced.

Humans instinctively look at something that someone else

is looking at, so ads often include a model looking right at the

main target or message.

It's best to use happy faces in ads because we have

mirror neurons that prompt us to mimic the expression

of the person we 're looking at.

People find faces with dilated pupils more attractive.

Most major advertisers increase the pupil size of their models in Photoshop.

If you position a product toward a viewer 's dominant hand in an ad,

it heightens the imagined product use.

Researchers experimenting with images of cups, bowls, and sandwiches,

encountered the greatest success when appealing to the right hand side.

Colors have powerful associations in ads.

Brands choose the colors of their logos based on what they 're trying to convey.

Red connotes action, excitement, and youth.

Green implies freshness, growth, and health.

Blue shows trust, confidence, and security.

Ads often prime the consumer by naming a higher price beforehand,

so their price is not so bad in comparison.

To persuade the consumer that their product is superior,

advertisers use techniques like " the weasel claim ".

It's vague and ambiguous, but sounds true enough that

consumers believe the claim.

The unfinished claim, which argues that the product is better

or has more of something, but does not finish the comparison.

The endorsement or testimonial where a celebrity or authority claims

to use the product when they often don't.

In the '70s, Miller Light commercials featured sports legends and

celebrities and their beer sales increased from seven million barrels

to 31 million.

And the rhetorical question which demands a response in such a way

that validates the product 's merits.

After the launch of " Got Milk ", sales of milk in California rose seven percent

in just one year.

So what do you think?

Got brainwash?