Assignment 3: Occam's Razor and Advertising (Revised)

As I was preparing for our first exam this past week, I began to think about how the course material related to my life.  While watching television it hit me: Advertisements.  It is very intriguing to me how creative firms create advertisements and the ways in which consumers are engaged.  I have personally noticed that the more successful advertisements are those that work off the principle of Occam's razor.  "The simplest explanation is usually the correct one."  This line of reasoning is best known as Occam's razor and is one of the six principles of scientific thinking.

In the article Occam's Razor Solves Marketing Misinformation, the author Jerry Bader explains how Occam's razor can and should be applied to advertising today.  He describes ways in which companies overdue their advertisements, when really they should be simplifying them.

"To paraphrase Ockham, features or options must not be multiplied beyond what it takes to get an order."

Bader goes in-depth talking about how companies should focus on the emotional benefits of their product instead of new features and options offered.  Using emotional benefits as the primary focus for advertising is such a simple approach to selling a product because everyone can relate to emotions, as we are all human beings. 

In the article, Bader specifically mentions how Old Spice used this ideology to their advantage with their successful advertisements featuring Isaiah Mustafa.  "... the one thing that actually drove its success was the emotional value proposition - Old Spice will make you more attractive to women, and sex is one of Maslow's basic needs."  Connecting to people on the emotional level maybe simply overlooked a majority of the time, but in this case, it worked extremely well without adding any flashy new features or options.

The next time you have the impulse to buy a new product after seeing an advertisement, ask yourself if the advertisement tried to engage you at an emotional level to increase your interest (and in turn, possibly increasing their profit).

Article Source: http://www.sitepronews.com/2010/09/16/occams-razor-solves-marketing-misinformation/