For nearly a century, companies have created ads with the intention to persuade audiences to buy their products and use their services. In more recent decades, ads have become more focused on making consumers "feel the brand" whether it be through heartfelt, humorous, or even lustful messages.
Psychographics is the study of an individual's attitudes and interests, typically considered along with demographic data in order to better understand a brand's target audience. Psychographics is incredibly valuable to marketers because it adds a deeper component to audience profiles. Rather than simply collecting data such as age, gender, and race, brands can now learn more about their consumer's beliefs, attitudes, aspirations, and values.
While this practice now has a name, it is not new. For years, ads and ad campaigns have focused on triggering emotional responses through an objective known as affective association. While this approach can create a favorable attitude towards a brand, studies have shown that people often remember the ad but cannot recall the brand in the ad. This is especially apparent in sex-appeal and fear-appeal ads, where the images are attention-grabbing but have poor memorability and may drive certain audiences away from the product. One of the most common methods of affective association is the appeal to anxiety. When brands are positioned as a solution or a necessity to everyday life, audiences are more likely to be motivated to take action and build a long-term commitment to a product.
Psychographics allows advertisers to essentially predict readers' or viewers' moods in real-time and align their ads accordingly. Many argue this practice is unethical and harmful, especially following the Facebook scandal of 2018. While the company insists they are committed to protecting users' privacy, they collected the personal data of nearly 50 million users through a British political data firm called Cambridge Analytica. The leaked data on American voters were sold and distributed, leading to an investigation in which Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook chief executive, had to testify to the Senate and House Committees.
In the age of public social media, it is entirely plausible that people can build a psychological profile of you based on your online activity and targeted ads can be justified for increasing user engagement. However, there is nearly no evidence to support that these ads have a dramatic impact on changing preferences, behavior, or political positions. The long-term impact of psychographics is still widely questioned and many are concerned the practice will continue to be exploited by advertisers.
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