Advertising and Decision-Making

You’re reading a blog from an advertising agency website but for a moment, can we set that aside and reflect a bit on how everything’s changed? By now, we can confirm that there is no singular path in life, there’s no method to the madness, and there’s no one way of doing things because sometimes – all it takes is one move, even by a stranger, and the world is changed forever. E.g. global pandemics or the discovery of electricity.

Now, may I ask you? What do you base your decisions on? Is it status? Is it fame? Money? Is it a goal? A dream? Is it because of your culture? Is it for survival?

Advertising has gained negative connotations for decades because of false promises and its old, unsolicited nature. However, wouldn’t you agree that advertising has evolved and continuously evolves especially when a person’s decision making processes are changed by the environment they’re in?

Our decisions are always influenced by something. During the lockdown, many companies resorted to communicating through online platforms which wouldn’t even be an option centuries back when the internet didn’t exist during a pandemic (e.g. The Black Death from 1346 to 1353).

Many launched DIY advertising campaigns – filming employees instead of actors, in their own backyards, using nothing but a smartphone. Advertising was primarily done online and digitally because the risk of holding advertising material such as a magazine was too risky. However, did you, the consumer, make this decision? Or was it made for you? Was it made to benefit you? Or was it made so you don’t forget that the companies advertising to you still exist?

There’s a very fine line that’s drawn here which revolves back to the question; what do you base your decisions out of?

As a consumer, do you decide based on a budget? Making ends meet while the uncertainties of the pandemic still loom over your shoulders?

As a business, do you decide based on your passion for what you do? Or has that changed because like everyone else in this economy, we’re forced to make decisions based on survival?

Advertising and marketing will always be there to influence our decisions. It’s there to inform and empower – it’s a powerful tool if you let it serve its purpose.

Advertising is complex. It is an artform. It’s persuasion. It evolves. It’s convenience. It’s permission.

Advertising is a lot of things.

What advertising is not: irrelevant.

Advertising is the ever-present concept of ‘drawing attention’, and on a base-level – we, human beings, can find advertising within us all the time. We want to be liked and we want to matter. And whether you’re a consumer or a business, there’s not a single doubt in my mind that you need advertising.

You need advertising to inform and be informed. We can mask it in different words but whatever your defining motivations are in making decisions, advertising has and always will be present in it.

This industry sustains the world whether we realise it or not. Besides, can you imagine a world without advertising? No branded anything – just generic stuff. No options, no colour, no consistency, no art? Advertising has made the world a colourful place. A place of choice and a place with options. If you pay enough attention – if you care enough, you’ll realise this.