Our world’s population is increasing, and so are the resources that we use to produce goods we buy every day. Rory Sutherland in “Life Lessons from an ad man” talks about the power of using advertising to add value to a product by changing consumer’s perception, rather than the product itself. However, with this type of advertising and emphasis on consumer’s perception, consumers pay what you think the product is worth. This is happening everyday with our overall consumption; people may think it’s unfair to charge prices that are way above their costs. However, most of the time people buy “apple products” because it’s the trend and they perceive them to be of higher quality than other brands just because everyone else thinks so.
I find it really interesting how many successful businesses may depend highly on the psychological aspects and people’s perception of their products than on the actual product itself. McDonald’s is not selling us their hamburgers because they are the best thing we’ve ever tasted, but the experience of not having to cook for ourselves and getting tasty food at a really low price. That is something its consumers value, and that value McDonald’s and many other brands have created for themselves is worth a lot more than the physical aspects of their companies. Rory Sutherland talks about how changing the perceived value of a product can be just as satisfying to a consumer as what we consider “real” value. This means that brands have the power of changing their whole image by providing the right message through a new advertising campaign.
Advertising creates intangible value to solve problems of consumer’s perception. “Placebo education, education doesn’t actually work by teaching you things, but it works by giving you the impression that you had a very good education, which gives you an insane sense of unwarranted self-confidence, which then makes you successful in later life.” However, I wonder if we don’t focus on changing reality, but only changing on what we think about reality then are we actually improving our world or only the way we see the world? And which would be more important?