Advertising Research from 'The Advertising Handbook'

For many years, creatives have worked to a behavioural model known as AIDA: Awareness, Interest, Desire and Action. The purpose of advertising in this model is to raise awareness, then stimulate interest which would lead to desire and eventually action. 

Raising Awareness

Advertisements have to compete with other advertisers in the media, often with editorial, and with the resistance of consumers. Because of this, creatives see the most important job as grabbing the consumers attention. Some creatives assume that because interests and social life are so heavily gendered you can most easily raise the attention of women through using animals, royalty, weddings, babies fashion and astrology; to get through to a man you use sport, sex, politics, wars and disasters. This is often done by involving readers in the ad, or shocking them to take notice. To do this advertisers use similar communications values to news journalists. News is an extremely powerful discourse in advertising. 

Fear, Guilt and Insecurities

Some ads play on anxieties - problems with spots, keeping your boyfriend or girlfriend, fears about career failure, not fitting in, loss of respect, esteem and status, loss of faith, loss of material wealth - and then come in to rescue them through the brand. At the turn of the nineteenth century, advertisers increasingly began to focus on guilt and fear of low social esteem. Magazines and periodicals increasingly acted as coping mechanisms providing advice and information for people who no longer had the social networks to give them help.