In this essay I will be describing a range of covert advertising techniques and looking at why advertisers use these methods to sell of promote their products. I will try to link my work with examples.
Covert advertising techniques are the opposite of overt advertising techniques. Overt advertising is the typical blatant advertising found in magazines and newspapers, on television, on billboards, on leaflets, and in film trailers. Covert advertising is sneakier and it is cheaper. Covert advertising has been around for years but today it is the hottest trend in promoting products and services. If you are the average American, about $900 per year is paid by the business community just to get your attention, whether you are 3 years old, 30 or 80. That's a lot of money to get your attention and attention is what it's all about. Your brain can't pay attention to all of these advertising messages if it doesn't know which ones to pay attention to. For this reason advertisers teach your brain what to pay attention to and some of the strategies they use are brilliantly clever.
Some typical covert advertising techniques that are widely used these days are: .
Product placement within films and on television programmes. .
If a film or television programme contains many visual references to a certain product then you can be pretty certain that product is buying covert advertising on the show or in the film. Nokia phones were used extensively in "The Matrix" and "James Bond" has a lot of product placement, for example the Aston Martins he drives, the drink bottles hanging up in the bar he drinks at, the Rolex watches. It is all covertly advertising, telling you "James Bond uses these products, if you use them you will be like James Bond".
Some advantages of advertisers using product placement are:.
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• They have a captive audience. The views have chosen to watch the film, or have chosen to view the television programme.
