The idea that advertising needs to be strongly persuasive to work is a deeply embedded myth based on a misunderstanding of consumer dynamics. It instead works as a kind of ‘nudge’ for consumers in a particular direction.
In practice, most consumers are not 100% loyal to a particular brand so they don’t need to be strongly persuaded to move to a different brand. They typically have a repertoire of safe products that they’re cycling through based on which price promotions are available that week etc.. the goal is to ‘nudge’ them to buy your product somewhat more often within that repertoire, reinforce your products place in the repertoire and potentially get customers to trial it in their repertoire.
See the paper here and the relevant quote which puts it much more eloquently than I can:
There is instead scope for advertising to
(1) reinforce your brand’s customers’ existing propensities to buy it as one of several,
(2) ‘nudge’ them to perhaps buy it somewhat more often, and
(3) get other consumers perhaps to add your brand as an extra or substitute brand to their existing brand repertoire (first usually on a ‘trial’ basis - ‘I might try that’ - rather than already strongly convinced or converted)
The idea that advertising needs to be strongly persuasive to work is a deeply embedded myth based on a misunderstanding of consumer dynamics. It instead works as a kind of ‘nudge’ for consumers in a particular direction.
In practice, most consumers are not 100% loyal to a particular brand so they don’t need to be strongly persuaded to move to a different brand. They typically have a repertoire of safe products that they’re cycling through based on which price promotions are available that week etc.. the goal is to ‘nudge’ them to buy your product somewhat more often within that repertoire, reinforce your products place in the repertoire and potentially get customers to trial it in their repertoire.
See the paper here and the relevant quote which puts it much more eloquently than I can: