How Advertising Actually Works

BY SOFO ARCHON

Each and every day, we’re bombarded with hundreds—if not thousands—of images trying to convince us that we’re not good enough as we are.

I’m talking about advertisements.

The advertising industry has one mission: to persuade us to buy things with the promise that they’ll bring us happiness. But how exactly does it do that?

By first making us feel like crap.

“Look, this shiny, attractive, and popular actress is sporting this swimsuit, and by purchasing it, you’ll feel sexy and successful like her.”

“Look, this handsome, confident businessman is driving this luxurious car, and all the babes are begging to sleep with him. Get it, and within moments, you’ll be with more beautiful women than you could have ever imagined.”

The message implied in advertisements is simple: As you are, you suck, and you need to be different to not suck. Here—get this product, and you won’t suck anymore.

Once they convince us that we suck, we follow their instructions, because who in the world wants to be a sucker?

No one.

You might be thinking: “That’s bullshit! I’m not affected by those stupid ads.”

Well, almost everyone I know says the same. I admit—I used to think that way too. But the truth is, we’re all affected, even if most of the time we aren’t aware of it.

If you don’t believe me, consider this: why would companies invest so much in advertising if it weren’t effective?

Advertising is all about persuasion, and those who excel at it reap tremendous financial rewards. But for persuasion to work at its peak, it must operate subconsciously—bypassing conscious reasoning and appealing directly to our emotions. That’s precisely why we often don’t even realize it’s influencing us.

Let me offer an example. When you’re exposed to a Coca-Cola ad repeatedly, you eventually become so accustomed to it that you unconsciously associate it with positive feelings—like love or joy. The next time you go out to buy a drink, you reach for a Coke without questioning why. You purchase it simply because you were persuaded, all while believing it was entirely your own conscious choice.

‘Yes Girl’ – 1946 Cardboard Coca Cola Poster by Haddon Sundblom

I could go off on a tangent about all the different tactics the advertising industry uses to manipulate us, but the point is this: as every top marketer knows, great advertising is sneaky, and its basic goal is to lower your self-esteem—its ultimate objective, of course, being to sell you some crap in the name of happiness.

Starving for Connection

If you feel like crap, there’s a good reason to blame it on advertising. Yet the advertising industry is really just a natural outgrowth of our profoundly sick society, where deception and competition are everyday realities. Indeed, advertising would barely work in a society where people were honest and collaborated for the common good. In fact, in such a society, advertising as we know it wouldn’t exist at all.

Because of the competitive world we live in, most of us feel disconnected from our fellow humans. When others are constantly trying to maximize their personal gain at your expense, how can you feel a loving connection to them? You can’t. Instead, you feel threatened by their presence. To protect yourself, you build big walls around you. For a while, you might feel safe and secure—but eventually, the painful consequences arrive: loneliness, anxiety, and depression.

Humans are highly social beings—that is, we all have an inherent need to connect and share with others. Connection is crucial to our emotional health, and when we don’t find it, we suffer. It’s no wonder that in our disconnected society, what we crave more than anything else is the chance to open our hearts and truly connect with others. We want to feel a sense of belonging to a community. We want to feel loved and accepted. We want to feel heard and understood.

Human disconnection is profoundly impacting our psyche

But it’s not just that we’re disconnected from people. We’re disconnected from nature. We’re disconnected from creativity. We’re disconnected from play. We’re disconnected from purpose. We’re disconnected from a multitude of things vital to our well-being.

Now, this might sound terribly bad—but from the market’s perspective, it’s not bad at all. In fact, to the market, it’s the best thing that could ever happen. Here’s why: the more problems you have, the easier it is to manipulate you emotionally and exploit you financially.

“Do you feel lonely? Don’t worry. Just pay $2,000 for this escort, and you’ll be in the company of an affectionate being.”

“Do you feel that your life is lacking adventure? This can easily be fixed. Buy these Jordan sneakers for just $199, and you’ll feel like a basketball superstar.”

“Do you feel worried about the meaninglessness of your life? Let me help. Take this little pill, and your mind will be free of distressing thoughts in no time.”

We may not be aware of it, but the main reason we keep buying things is to find a connection to what we’ve lost and starve for. The cunning players in the marketing world know this all too well and exploit our insecurities through deceitful advertising, emptying our pockets while filling their own. By purchasing this or that product, we’re led to believe we’ll feel happy and content. Yet no matter how many things we acquire, we always end up feeling sad and unfulfilled.

Substitutes Won’t Help

Shopping can never truly satisfy us emotionally because it offers only substitutes for what we are truly longing for. And although it can occasionally bring a fleeting sense of completeness and euphoria, that feeling is quickly replaced by disappointment and a lingering sense of inner emptiness.

Acquiring a fancy car may attract a lot of attention, and for a while, you might feel like the most important person in the world. You could start thinking that people appreciate you. Yet this will never satisfy your psychological need to intimately bond with people who life you for who you are—not merely for what you have.

Booking a 14-day trip to some exotic location and staying in a 5-star hotel that provides every luxury you desire might temporarily help you forget the painful reality of everyday life. Yet before long, you’ll have to return from your “happy holidays” and confront the harsh truth that’s been waiting for you all along.

Buying clothes from expensive fashion brands to feel beautiful or special might work as long as you’re in the company of people who praise you solely for your appearance. But when you’re alone—or around people who don’t care about your looks, status, or wealth—you can’t help but hear that familiar voice creeping back into your mind, whispering that you’re ugly and inadequate.

What some call “retail therapy” is, in fact, a symptom of psychological dis-ease

Substitutes offer nothing more than a quick fix—they work for a short while, but eventually, they always let us down. To fill our emotional void and find true, lasting contentment, we need to stop foolishly chasing things that bring only fleeting gratification and instead pursue what can provide genuine, enduring fulfillment.

We need to stop collecting things and start collecting memories from experiences that touch our minds and hearts. We need to stop showing off our stuff and instead share our true thoughts and feelings. We need to stop chasing money and instead connect with our inner, long-forgotten riches. We need to stop searching for distractions and instead create a life we love waking up to.

Changing the System

For all of the above to happen, it’s crucial that we recognize what truly matters to our well-being and act accordingly. However, personal behavioral change alone isn’t enough. No matter how strong our individual efforts to live meaningfully, purposefully, and peacefully are, the external pressures of our competitive, materialistic, and consumption-driven society will likely undermine them.

Therefore, if we want lasting change—for the benefit of ourselves and future generations—we need to radically transform our socioeconomic system, which lies at the root of the biggest problems our civilization currently faces.

I will try to clarify what I mean with an example. A few paragraphs above, I wrote: “The cunning players in the marketing world […] exploit our insecurities through deceitful advertising, emptying our pockets while filling their own.” This might make it sound as if marketers are evil people who don’t care about others and are motivated solely by financial gain. The truth, however, is very different.

Marketers are people just like you and me—people who somehow need to earn a living or else risk starvation and homelessness. They might actually be quite loving and compassionate, yet they still need a job. And because of the market’s fierce competition, it’s often very difficult—if not impossible—to find one that aligns with their values. They do what they must to increase their competitive advantage and survive in a harsh, unforgiving system.

Our economic system is based on scarcity, since money isn’t enough to go around. (For a deeper understanding of how the monetary system works, read this article.) As a result, we feel compelled to compete with one another to maintain or increase our financial security, which feeds the selfish and acquisitive side of our nature. Yet in reality, we live on a planet of abundance, where everyone’s needs could easily be met—if only we recognized that our monetary system is inhumane and worked together, using our technical know-how to distribute resources equitably, instead of toiling day in and day out just to outsmart others.

Once we stop competing with each other and join forces to make the world a more beautiful place for everyone, we’ll begin to feel connected again and engage in work that is actually meaningful. Then we’ll experience a depth of emotional satisfaction that frees us from the fleeting lure of shopping, allowing us to focus on what truly matters for our happiness and build our lives around it.