As consumers we are subjected to images, provided by advertisers that are inescapable from our everyday lives. We see billboards of advertisements on our morning commute, we watch the 15 second ads that play before every YouTube video and we see sponsored ads as we scroll through our Instagram and Facebook feed.

These advertisements are mostly harmless and seemingly will not affect the consumers that these ads reach. But after a while the advertisements relentlessness begins to work. This is what advertisers aim for because they know one ad isn’t going to make a customer for life, they must slowly seep into the lives of the consumer. This strategy is how more harmful products such as alcohol or tobacco, get into the minds of consumers every day.

Because everyone already knows the danger of tobacco and alcohol, advertiser for these companies have to try harder than the average product to gain attention and to gain customers for life. These ads invade consumer’s everyday lives on a psychological level on purpose because they know this is a for-sure trick to reach people and get them to buy their products. This shows that advertisers learn about the minds of the consumers and what will appeal to consumers most to make them buy a product.

When advertisers really want to ensure their product is planted in consumers’ minds they aim their advertisements to prey on insecurities that the consumer has. Advertisers have learned how to manipulate consumers by creating advertisements that aim to make money off of consumers buying the products they’re selling to fill a void for something that was created by the ad itself.

Advertisers give consumers a false sense of basic needs in their lives to make a profit and gain a recurring customer. Advertisers have learned how to understand the minds of potential customers by numerous amounts of research, and if they find research that works but is harmful to the psyche of consumers, advertisers aren’t afraid to use it if it means they will make a profit.

Alcohol advertisers know far too well how to plant themselves in the minds of consumers. Customers will first try the addictive product to fill the void of a missing relationship, then the customer will try it again because the addictive product helped temporarily and the customer will keep going back to it because by then the addiction has set in. Knowing they are creating addicts and the effects their product has on consumer’s everyday lives, these advertisers are still okay will selling an alternate reality to what their product actually does.

Advertisers only want consumers to see the positive promotion on their products as well as their company. On the surface a company will seem like they genuinely care about their consumers, like when at the end of a Bud Light commercial they’ll add at the end of it the phrase “please drink responsibly.” However advertisers don’t care if consumers drink responsibly as long as they are still alive to repurchase from the company.

Companies will try their hardest to cover up any and all bad publicity towards them.

Companies do this because if consumers see the company in a negative light consumers might think twice about buying their product and maybe even refuse to buy products related to that company. This is why companies will try and sell consumers on the best possible outcome of their product rather than show them what the average result of using their product entails.

When advertisers show consumers an ad they depict people in a carefree environment that everyone is having a good time, and no one has any internal or external issues going on. Even though we as consumers will never be as happy or as carefree as those in the advertisement.

When consumers buy products they’re only happy for the time that their product works correctly or however the ad said the product would function. After using the product and it no longer living up to the standard we created for it we will only be disappointed and out of money, but companies don’t care about that, they only care that we bought their product in the first place.

Advertisements seem like they’re only designed appeal to an audience, but saying that the ad “appeals” doesn’t quite cover the effect it has on consumers. It triggers a need that we didn’t know we had before. It takes our predetermined assumptions and uses them to create a connection to the advertisement we face. Companies care about human psychology and how they can use it to make us buy products. Without being able to identify the mind games being played on them, consumers will buy into a life they will never achieve.