Advertising's Fifteen Basic Appeals
             In this essay, Jib Fowles explains that advertisers have two ideas in their ads: the product information and the emotional appeal in the minds of consumers. He elaborates on psychologist Henry A. Murray's research on fifteen particular appeals that are most common in advertisements. Murray's research concludes that consumers have needs that they react to in ads. For example, the need for sex is common but used very rarely because it's very controversial and diminishes the product information. It appeals more to men than woman; the need for affiliation is used because Americans are very concerned about social life and friends; McDonald's tell people that they "deserve a break today" to take advantage of people's need to escape; Budweiser uses people's need to dominate by telling consumers that it's the King of Beers; the need to achieve sells because Americans want to be the best and as successful as they can get. Other needs are the need to nurture, for guidance, to aggress, prominence, attention, autonomy, to feel safe, aesthetic sensations, to satisfy curiosity, and physiological needs such as food, drink, and sleep. Additional ways that advertisers get consumer's attentions are by the use of humor, celebrities and time imagery. Fowles also describes how to analyze advertisements. He asserts that the best way is to learn to "ignore the product information and one's own feelings about the product" (75). Knowing who the targeted consumers are and the viewing angle the audience has is also important in analyzing advertisements. Fowles concludes that emotional appeals in advertisements work because they grab the audience's attention and convince them that they need to buy the product being sold.
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