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A Way Out From Our Hyper-Stimulated Advertising Age?

The modern consumer is bombarded by advertising that exploits our "addiction" to visual stimuli. But after the holiday rush, can we still become discerning buyers?

Cerebral images
Cerebral images
Carlos Escaffi*

-Essay-

LIMA – I imagine I was not alone in noticing how the veritable avalanche of advertising over the Christmas holidays tends to transform this holy time in the calendar of Christian worship into frenzied homage paid at the altar of compulsive consumerism.

The fact is that our society has seen itself influenced by a range of factors that have helped form — and deform — the collective personality of less-discerning consumers.

I remember once asking a demure audience of academics how much stimulation they needed. The immediate response was a stony silence, followed by timid smiles on blushing faces here and there. Clearly an inappropriate question given the welcome it received, I was left with no choice but to adopt the “magisterial” style of asking, pointing my finger at members of the audience.

While I managed to extract some answers, I was first asked to “define what type of stimulus you are referring to, and in which context?” I said I was referring, strictly, to the context of consumer habits. I was asking how much stimulation we consumers habitually receive, almost imperceptibly by touching, smelling, tasting and through our skin and eyes, as every emotional advertisement is processed in a different ways by our brains.

Are consumers influenced? Some data first: We are on average exposed to about two million commercials during a lifetime, yet 30% of consumers say they don’t buy what is being promoted because they don’t understand the advertising message.

How much do we really retain?

Today we talk about neuromarketing and cerebral images used to monitor brain activity through waves. Such monitoring seeks to measure how much of a commercial a viewer actually remembers, and it has found that there is in fact a “black hole” in which unprocessed information is lost. But we can’t forget that we are subject to constant stimulation and seduction by a range of products offered, ceasing at times to be rational consumers and moving toward a clearly emotional state when we make decisions driven by impulses and passions.

Research has demonstrated that the non-conventional or irreverent is not retained any longer than other information, nor are controversies (think Benetton) that might be generated using religious imagery. It is not for nothing that an increasing number of companies and institutions resort to below the line (BTL) strategies that tailor their messages to specific audiences. I’m thinking of an advertisment from the Spanish shopping chain El Corte Inglés in which an executive wearing an impeccable dark suit and shirt combination breaks the mould — with bright red socks.

The fact is we want to be stimulated all the time — we’re addicted to it — which explains our limited attention span. We want to be entertained and have even become addicted to our mobile phones. It seems we cannot concentrate without some visual stimulus. Indeed, we even take the mobile with us into the bath to avoid boredom, and who can claim they have never suffered from Phantom Vibration Syndrome, when we think we have received a message?

It may well be time to stop thinking in conventional terms and try and think differently. But I would also ask, what is really new when everything seems to have been invented? Finally, we can also be punitive consumers thanks to social networking websites, where disgruntled consumers can destroy a brand in seconds.

*Carlos Escaffi is a professor of international marketing at the University of Lima’s School of Business.

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Economy

Lithium Mines In Europe? A New World Of Supply-Chain Sovereignty

The European Union has a new plan that challenges the long-established dogmas of globalization, with its just-in-time supply chains and outsourcing the "dirty" work to the developing world.

Photo of an open cast mine in Kalgoorlie, Australia.

Open cast mine in Kalgoorlie, Australia.

Pierre Haski

-Analysis-

PARIS — It is one of the great paradoxes of our time: in order to overcome some of our dependencies and vulnerabilities — revealed in crises like COVID and the war in Ukraine — we risk falling into other dependencies that are no less toxic. The ecological transition, the digitalization of our economy, or increased defense needs, all pose risks to our supply of strategic minerals.

The European Commission published a plan this week to escape this fate by setting realistic objectives within a relatively short time frame, by the end of this decade.

This plan goes against the dogmas of globalization of the past 30 or 40 years, which relied on just-in-time supply chains from one end of the planet to the other — and, if we're being honest, outsourced the least "clean" tasks, such as mining or refining minerals, to countries in the developing world.

But the pendulum is now swinging in the other direction, if possible under better environmental and social conditions. Will Europe be able to achieve these objectives while remaining within the bounds of both the ecological and digital transitions? That is the challenge.

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