Manipulation through advertisements uses many persuasion techniques and it is best for us to know, in order not to be fooled into buying certain services and products we don’t really need or even want. It’s good to understand such techniques no matter on which side you are - whether you're a buyer or a seller, whether you are attempting to persuade someone to accept your ideas or buy your own things, or you are someone who wants to purchase the right product/service, without being unwillingly manipulated and making incorrect choices. The success of applying certain strategy depends about the situation. Thus, some work better than the others on the certain scenario, but it all largely depends on their education of discretion one uses in the act of attempting to manipulate others.
One of the simplest techniques of adjustment through advertisement is that of temporal distortion. Sometimes the easiest method to influence the target person is to act as the thing you need to get from that person has already taken place. Therefore, you can refer to a decision that person is attempting to make as if it was already made. Should you speak to that person as if he/she had already accepted your proposal as well as enjoyed it. Also, associating pleasant images with the utilization of Past Tense makes the proposal seem actually irresistible.
It is known that people want to reward the favors they have been made. A favor can cause feelings of gratefulness and thus, the subject feels the need to free himself/herself in the psychological burden of owing something to someone else. To have this, people become more willing to return the prefer, even with a greater one than the one they've received. The principle of reciprocity is made of the requirement to repay a favor, whether it is asked for or even not, immediately after accepting it. This typically human function transcends any cultural or racial differences, regardless of the character of the favor. This favor can refer to the majority of anything, from a simple smile to physical labor or even little gifts. This principle is very easy to make use of. You offer something to someone and then just wait to become rewarded, or you can give an idea about how you can be rewarded.
Yet there is another very efficient approach to using this principle. It is more powerful than the easy offering of a gift and then expecting for an incentive in exchange. At the same time, it is a little more subtle. Thus, in order to increase the chances to receive a favor is to ask for another kind of favor, which has a higher value and meaning than the one you want to ask for. The request will most certainly be declined, because the favor is too big. After this refusal nevertheless, the request will be decreased to the smaller as well as real one, the one the asker has initially considered. Statistically speaking, this last mentioned favor has almost 100% probabilities. This may happen because of the fact that cultural norms dictate that as a swap for a concession, you must make another concession.
Since the first request is made slower, and thus reduced, you really make a concession, and the target-subject will be forced to create a concession himself/herself and will do that by accepting the 2nd request, the smaller one. This method works very well because cultural norms possess the tendency to overcome even logic.
Although all these may seem as ways you can use by teenagers to manipulate their parents for instance, and acquire things from them, the grievous thing is they are in fact largely employed by the mass media and especially through the advertising industry, without most people’s awareness of what is really going on and how they are fooled and wronged. Be careful!