Most Americans have excessive desire to gain wealth and marketers thrive on this. People dream of making lots of money quickly and without working very hard to get it. Another scenario of people wanting to gain wealth is getting something free. Marketers know that when they advertise getting something for free or getting money quickly, they will gain the consumers attention.When marketers advertise that there is an amount such as $85 million up for grabs people will easily invest their money no matter what the odds are. People love thinking about becoming a millionaire by spending as little as a dollar. An example of an advertisement that helps feed on the consumer willingness to spend money just for the chance to become a millionaire is the Power Ball commercial.
The Power Ball advertisement ran on TV saying, βAdd a buck power up,β is reinforcing the idea that playing the lottery gives back. How often does one hear the chances of winning the lottery in the advertisements for the lottery? The fact is that many Americans are brainwashed into believing that risking a dollar does usually give back in huge amounts.The odds of winning the Power Ball jackpot are 1 in 80,089,128 or .0000012% according to the Pennsylvania Lottery Web Site. Quite a few people spend hundreds of dollars on lottery tickets each year, not realizing how much money they are losing. They just keep spending their annual dollar a day and do not even think about the amount of money they have lost over the long period of time.
People seem to especially get addicted with scratch off lottery tickets when they when win five, ten or twenty dollars.From my experience when the prize money is under twenty dollars involving scratch off lottery tickets they often spend it on buying more lottery tickets. Gambling with money is an addiction that is not acknowledged in America like smoking or drinking addictions.There is more money obsession in America besides the lottery, take people getting their tax money back quicker. A new advertisement of H&R Block that has come out recently is aimed toward tax-payers getting their tax refund back more quickly. The commercial shows a man pulling up to an H&R Block office in a minivan with a pregnant woman in labor. Screaming, the woman in labor ask furiously why he stopped at the H&R Block office, his response was that he needed to get some quick cash. The man ran into the H&R Block, picked up his tax refund cash and then came back to the car with the woman, with a smile on the his face, saying how great it was to get his tax refund back that quickly.
This commercial fails to tell the consumer that in order to get the tax refund back a large amount of the refund has to be taken out, by H&R Block. Are people so desperate in need of money that they will give up a large sum of money for the convenience of getting money immediately?The Internet is another advertising market that stresses getting something for free or that people can get money quickly.money. Every time a person gets on the Internet these days they get plenty of pop up advertisements. Frequently the most advertisement pop up that display on computerβs are advertising message popping up saying I won $50 dollars or some sort of dollar amount. Organizations do not usually give money away that easily unless there is some sort of gimmick. Usually people have to sign up on a mailing list to get more junk mail or buy this to get that. A pop up advertisement that frequently popping up in March2004 was βHigh definition basketball, get so close you can almost tip it in yourself.Learn how you can get 6 free months of Comcast Digital with HD when you purchase any qualifying Samsung HDTV.β This advertisement also displayed a picture of a guy tipping a basketball into a basket. The advertisement was displayed right before the start of March Madness, which is the basketball tournament in college. This advertisement is pitched towards people interested in having any basketball game they want to watch at their finger tips, and it is the key words of βsix free monthsβ, that gets the potential consumer attention. In small print at the bottom of the pop up it says that a person has to buy a Samsung HDTV before they qualify for 6 months of free Comcast Digital.Advertisements like these are advertised quite frequently using the word free, but there is usually always a condition.
The condition usually consist of buying something or giving an address out that will probably lead to an excess of junk mail. Companies use other advertising schemes to get people to buy their products such as rebates.Rebates is another money promise that sounds good to the consumer initially, but the money from the rebate is usually difficult or not worth the time to get. In order to get the rebate this a consumer has to send a receipt, and fill out a card. If the consumer is lucky, they will get some money back, but usually the advertiser says the consumer didnβt fill out the paper work correctly. Companies will withhold the purchaser money any way they can. After all, the consumer already bought their product so it is not hurting the company. Rebates are also sometimes not worth the time investing in to get a small amount of money back. In Samβs Club some times the store employees are handing out rebate coupons. Some of the rebate coupons, such as Gatorade, offered $0.85 back to consumers if they mailed in the rebate. So the consumer would have to pay $0.35 for a stamp and the cost of the envelope, roughly $0.25, just to get back $0.25. Even if the rebate offered three dollars back, its not worth the time and effort.Another advertisement that often looks very promising is getting a college diploma at home. Earning a college diploma at home sounds like an affordable way to get a college degree and earn more in the job market with the degree.
A person does not have to pay the usual large amount of money to take courses and they can take the classes online at their leisure. After a person gets the degree the person is usually hard pressed to find a job because typically no employer recognizes getting a college degree just by the internet. These marketing advertisements feed on peopleβs dreams of becoming rich, and successful. The American people are told constantly by the media how important a person is by measuring there material wealth.Marketers realize that most people dream of making large amount of money and people love the word free, even if they have to buy something to get it. To a marketer feeding on the desired dreams of fortune people have is a great way to make a profit. What consumers donβt realize is that words such as free or winning something that the consumer needs to buy before they can win are used to get the consumer to buy their products
Facebook
Twitter