You are more beautiful than you think!

Hello beautiful!

How do we perceive ourselves? Do we judge ourselves too harshly? Ever heard of the phrase "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder"?

Everyday, when we look in the mirror, we remind ourselves of who we are. Each and every one of us so unique in its own distinctive measure. I'd like to ask you readers, that when you walk out of the house, look at the people around you. Think about how each person is living a different life, undergoing different circumstances in pursuit to survive the real world.

Today, I walked out and decided to ask a couple of people if they were free to answer just a few questions.
1. Where are you from?
2. If you were to describe yourself, what would it be and why?
3. What is the most important thing to you?

I pulled out my iPhone and asked them:
4. What do you think of this product?

Each person gave a different answer and had a different perspective of looking at things. It made me think about how people of different cultures approach things in a certain way. It is understood from the Consumer Behaviour book by Solomon, White and Dahl in the Sixth edition, that Western cultures focus on the unique self while Eastern cultures focus on the collective self. I find this to be true because even though I am from Kenya, I was raised from a culture followed from the east because of my Indian ethnicity and we were brought up in a manner that required us to perform actions collectively. Upon coming to Canada, I have learned the Western way by doing things individually without having to form an approval from my social circle. So when I spoke to people with different opinions, it suddenly struck me. Organisations set objectives and implement strategies to deliver their product to a diverse group of people and this can be quite difficult. The research and development department look into the target market's personality and see how they identify their self. What people desire from a product, I believe, is what identifies who the person is and hence the name of the blog, You Are What You Consume. It primarily explains that the decisions we make and the things we choose to purchase identify who we are as consumers and the image we project to others.

Piercings, tattoos, the kind of products we buy, the colour of the product, the price, the way we dress, the sports team we follow, all these are attributes that determine our personality and the way we look at ourself. But how do people perceive you as? We tend to judge people with the things that are associated with them rather than looking at their inner self.

One of the people I interviewed had a tattoo on his neck and dressed in a manner that would otherwise be inappropriate to the society. But when he told me his story, I would have never thought that this was the same person as the outer person (his appearance). The fact that the man was struggling to finance his daughter's education and how his family abandoned him because of the choices he made to express who he is through body art was quite saddening. Having to listen to someone portraying himself of who he really is and society rejecting this personality by judging his appearance really opened my eyes. That's when the phrase "don't judge a book by its cover" really applied to me.



Dove specialise in cosmetics and deliver beauty care products to their customers. They executed a campaign earlier to emphasise how we tend to misinterpret who we are. The successful campaign lead to one of the highest views on youtube ever and when I saw this video, it made me realise how harsh we can be to judge ourselves let alone others judging us. It makes me question, is beauty really in the eyes of the beholder? The campaign was about a forensic artist who asked women (the target group) to describe themselves and the contrast of what they thought they looked like and what they actually looked like was unbelievable. "Dove began the first Campaign for Real Beauty in 2004, after conducting a survey that showed only two percent of women worldwide would describe themselves as beautiful.

In the two drawings are shown side-by-side, the contrast is stark - and the women seem stunned. 

'She looks closed off and fatter. Sadder too,' said one woman when asked to describe the two sketches. 'The other one looks more open, friendly and happy.'"

Take a look.

This campaign impacted my significantly because when I tried the experiment by describing myself, and instead of having my roommate to draw mw, I told him to describe my features and the descriptions were quite different. I didn't recognise the features I had until it was pointed out to me. It made me question myself as a consumer. I had purchased a lotion that would make my skin softer because I thought my palms were rough. But when I was told I had soft hands already I was brought to surprise! My ideal self was actually my actual self to a certain extent. I also realised that I gave a different impression to others than I thought I did. Because of the fact that I stutter, I though I came across as nervous and slow speaker but then again it was brought to me that I don't seem nervous and only stutter rarely. Because I was aware of my stutter problem, I was not confident about the way I speak. It's funny to learn something about yourself that you didn't know even after living so many years and understanding who I really was.
Look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself who you are. Now ask a friend to describe you and see how close the two descriptions are. How well do you know yourself? Look around your room and see the kinds of things you have purchased. Do they relate to your personality and who you think you are?

All I'm saying is, don't judge yourself too harshly and learn about yourself. You'll always notice something new about yourself. Identify your identity!!

Sources:
1. Solomon, White, Dahl. Consumer Behaviour. 2014 Pearson Canada
2. Townsend, C. (2013, April 18). You ARE more beautiful than you think: Dove hires FBI-trained forensic artist to prove women judge their appearance more harshly than strangers. Retrieved from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2309984/You-ARE-beautiful-think--Dove-uses-FBI-trained-forensic-artist-prove-women-judge-appearance-harshly-strangers.html

State of mind

Missed me? Good, because today we are going to discuss how advertising strategies affect our memory and state of mind.

So I wake up today and the first thing I do is reach out for my glasses, put them on and grab my phone from under the pillow which I place out of habit because I tend to sleep through my alarms. As I scroll through the BBC news app, I realise that today I'm free as a bird! No class to worry about, no work to do and no grocery shopping to think about. I then wash up and head straight for the TV remote.

As I watch a series of shows, I come across various commercials some of which are inexplicable! I mean why would businesses spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on advertising without getting the message across well. I begin playing on my phone and no sooner do I hear a catchy song playing on TV. Who would have thought it was a bread commercial? If you don't believe me, watch it for yourself in the video below.

In the book Consumer Behaviour by Solomon, White and Dahl, the author explains how consumers respond to brand names, scents and jingles on the basis of learned associations over time.
Believe it or not, the song was engraved in the back of my head! Every time I'm out getting groceries, the song is playing in my head when I reach the bread section "1,2,3,4,5 and 6 and 7...". Because this song is associated with the Dempsters brand and the lyrics contain diction that relate to my needs, I feel motivated to choose it over the varieties of other bread available. The repetition in the tune and lyrics create a sort of learning activity to the memory thus giving more exposure to the brand. No one even had to come and push me to choose Dempsters specifically but the psychological effect communicates to the conscious mind about the product and before you know it, I was convinced enough that Dempsters will satisfy my needs. I believe the implementation of this jingle was a form of classical conditioning as every time I sang the jingle, it would make me feel hungry for the foods I like with this brand of bread. Singing about food like making quinoa would trigger my belly to start making obnoxious grumbling sounds and that's when I noticed how this advertising strategy affected my mind and memory.

There are other techniques used in triggering the memory to remember a brand's identity. The book of Consumer Behaviour defines Instrumental conditioning by explaining that individuals will learn to perform behaviours that produce positive outcomes and will avoid those that produce negative outcomes. This is a form of operant conditioning where our psychological thought processing adapts to performing actions that would result in a positive outcome and this is one method in which our memory is influenced. We, as consumers, react when something results in a positive outcome as we consider our happiness and satisfaction over anything. Take a look at Penny in the show Big Bang Theory and see how she is unconsciously being manipulated by Sheldon by being awarded with a treat every time she does something right. Something that you will not notice is that the stimuli is paired with time. The clip doesn't show how long it took Penny to be conditioned to operate with chocolate but rationally speaking, it would take time for one to be influenced using instruments.

Similarly, businesses condition us to react in a certain manner by introducing rewards because incentives enable us to do what will result in a positive outcome. Shoppers have their reward program, Scotiabank have free movies that you earn as you make purchases with their card and Subway offer free cookies if you complete their survey. So not only do they encourage you to spend more but they also use incentives to generate feedback from their customers. 


Sometimes when I have time on my hand, I would actually complete the survey cause I get a cookie to add to my meal. The fact that I am aware of the rewards available to me, it means that these incentives serve to store in my long term memory. Sometimes we are unaware of how we are conditioned and I believe it is vital for us as consumers to be conscious about these strategies and behave accordingly.


Analogy cues are used widely in advertising to help consumers understand the product's concept. Many at times the analogy remains in the memory and depending on the degree of accuracy of the two items, it will be stored in the short-term memory or long-term memory. A commercial was released in Kenya regarding the durability of a condom brand and the technique in which it is advertised helps the consumer believe in the product. I discussed this commercial with a few other people and the response I got was that they use that specific brand because of the way the company gives the consumer the confidence in the functionality. Take a look at the video below. Excuse the quality of the video, it was released quite a while ago.

The strength of the umbrella cover is compared to the condom itself thus giving the consumer the idea that they can trust the product's strength. It's amazing how creative companies can be to create a brand awareness and create brand loyalty in just 1minute. The humour in this commercial and the analogy would definitely create an impact on one's memory response as it did to the friends I spoke to earlier and through frequency marketing, the brand sticks within your memory to enable future purchases. Oh the wonders of advertising!

Watch out for another blog soon!

Sources:
Consumer Behaviour, Solomon,White,Dahl. Sixth Canadian Edition. 2014 Pearson Canada.