People are confronted with advertising everywhere. Advertising works, otherwise it wouldn’t exist. Advertising makes frequent use of compartmentalized thinking: the seductive mistress, the diligent housewife, the successful businessman, the happy family… People compare themselves with an ideal image. Advertising often appeals to deeper feelings, wishes and desires, often without the viewers being aware of it. This can make people very insecure.
What is homo reclamicus?
The advertising person is spontaneous, always participates and says ,yes, with conviction. Advertising people are always cheerful, happy and optimistic. The most important thing about the advertising person is that he likes to consume a lot. He wants something. The advertising person meets many specific, unrealistic requirements, and yet all consumers compare themselves to this Homo Reclamicus.
The advertising world
A model is a simplification of reality. Advertising also creates a simplified version of reality. This simplified version aims to be more beautiful than reality, so that consumers are happy to follow the actions in the advertisements. Then we immediately come to man’s weak point: comparison with others.
Advertising trend: normal people
Nowadays, advertisers like to use ‘real’ people, very ordinary people. They then search the entire country, looking for normal people. By the way, this person has to sell a product to people and must therefore really want to have that product or really want to use it.
As soon as you make demands on ‘the human being’, this human being is no longer normal. What advertisers are really looking for are people who come across as normal, people with whom the target group likes to compare themselves. And people like to compare themselves to reflections of themselves that are slightly happier, more cheerful, more optimistic and more perfect.
Advertising thinks in boxes
Advertising reflects different types of people. The most common are listed below.
The seductive mistress
You can only be a good mistress if you are very slim: not an gram of fat too much. You also have at least a full cup B and you dress this up with sexy lingerie and high heels. You have long hair that extends far past your shoulders. Your eyes should be well made up, lipstick should not be missing and pimples are an absolute mood-killer. All younger women should look like this, otherwise they are simply not worthy of men according to the advertising world.
The happy and successful businessman
The man with a good job, a slim and muscular build, a smooth haircut with a morning beard, a loving slim woman with long hair and a child. Good condition, likes to earn money and especially likes to spend it.
The specialist
The specialist is clearly very committed to making your life better. He has found the solution to all your problems. He wants to come across as a very smart and reliable person. The specialist is usually male, wearing glasses and a lab coat. A meaningless graph is projected in the background. That graph has no function at all, but it is intelligent.
The diligent housewife
This woman gets up every morning to clean all day. She is very concerned about the quality of the detergent: it must keep the clothes soft and beautiful. White sheets or t-shirts are never stained unless it is necessary to demonstrate how well the detergent works. Since she knows exactly which detergent is of good quality, this stain, no matter how stubborn, always disappears in no time. Everything in the house is spotless, the beds are neatly made and the dishes are never left standing for more than an hour.
The nurturing mother
This mother usually has two very sweet, well-behaved children. She is very concerned about the educational performance and health of her children. She will be interested in the most expensive mixed fruit drinks to ensure her children get enough vitamins. If a remedy suggests that it will suddenly make children super smart, it is standard in the kitchen cupboard.
Suitable or unsuitable?
No one fits completely into a box. You can be a good housewife without starting the dishes bright and cheerful every morning. You can also have a relationship if your ribs don’t tear out of your skin and an apple is just as healthy as fruit drinks ,with extra resistance and concentration,.
Practical examples
Advertising is unpleasant for depressed people. Advertising creates an ideal image and since most people do not meet this image, this creates uncertainty. Uncertainty allows advertising to influence purchasing behavior. This is positive for the economy, but negative for the psychological situations of consumers. Below are the most problems that people have, partly due to advertising.
Old must be and remain young
In advertisements, mothers are always depicted as young, cheerful and current. The skin has no wrinkles and the hair on the head does not yet show any gray variants. Young people are the future of society. Young people are still full of energy, still look good, still want to make a lot of their lives and are still fertile. So people have to make sure they are young, because then they belong to a better class than the rest of the population. You are past the date when you show that you are getting older.
Eternally alone because of a belly
Top slim women always have a good relationship. They meet the ideal of beauty. We capitalize on the fact that appearance is your calling card. When you meet people for the first time, you see their appearance first, no one can ignore that. However, it is not a fact that you have to look according to the beauty ideal in order to get into a relationship. The beauty ideal determines what people consider ,beautiful, or ,attractive, and if you meet this it increases the chance of being considered beautiful. This way, the market can once again sell products that help people meet this beauty ideal. In the marketing world, the beauty ideal is therefore often regarded as the only option. Nowadays, however, there is increasing resistance to this beauty ideal. It is becoming increasingly clear on forums that an overdose of makeup is not considered desirable. There is a lot of commentary on the appearance of models because most models are unhealthily thin. Younger girls in particular are at risk of anorexia due to this beauty ideal.
Not happy because of the lack of the ideal family
Advertising often portrays a house-tree-little situation. This family is perfectly happy. The family consists of a happily married father and mother with two children, a beautiful house and often a pet. However, it is increasingly the case that parents are separated from children. It also happens that a married couple cannot have children or that the married couple does not consist of two people of different genders. This confrontation through advertising is especially annoying for couples who cannot have children, but want to have children.
Advertising makes you materialistic
The latest gadgets are offered in advertisements. These gadgets have so many functions that you will probably never need them, but you will only be up to date once you have them in your possession. The gadget is cool, versatile, supposedly innovative and you can multitask with it. Even though research has shown that multitasking is bad for the quality of the results delivered, it is still a symbol of pure efficiency. You depend on your gadgets if you want to become a successful businessman. You are left out of group conversations if you don’t own a smartphone, you are left out if you take a paper book with you on a trip instead of an iPad. If you want to fit in, you simply need expensive gadgets.
Imagination or insult to reality?
Is this imagination of reality an insult to reality? Is reality not perfect enough, do we really have to make everything perfect? Are ladies not allowed to have a healthy BMI, are pimples, pubic and leg hair faults of nature? Does sweating have no function for your body? Does having an iPad really have that much added value compared to a laptop or PC? Is a smartphone really that much better for your social contacts? Can you no longer make calls with a refrigerator model cell phone? That illusion is sometimes created. Are new models always better than the old version? If you look closely at the product specifications, you will often see that the battery lasts less long (because it is possible to run many more programs on the device at the same time). Is it useful for your phone to be on the charger longer than it is in your pocket? It won’t be long before we go back to the corded telephone!
Do not let them get to you.