Response: "The festive psychology behind Christmas TV advertising"

Christmas. It's a time of joy, laughter, celebration, and of course, Christmas TV adverts. As Christmas looms forward and people are scrambling to finish purchasing their Christmas gifts, retail stores around the world take advantage of this time of "giving" by releasing advertisements that "pulls on our heart strings and empties our pockets."

The Conversation released a psychology- based view on Christmas TV advertising and how they persuade us to purchase their products.

The article breaks its argument into four main topics, with subsequent examples using real 2016 TV adverts. These advertisements are from John Lewis (and its sister company Waitrose) Marks and Spencer, Sainsbury and Morrisons and Asda.

The author of the article points out that there is an obvious common theme among all Christmas advertisements, and that they "are usually full of signs and symbols playing on our subconscious", as well as "wholesome values" with strong messages of togetherness. Although these might seem like obvious themes, I particularly liked how the article mentioned that both the John Lewis and Waitrose commercials included political themes regarding Brexit. This is a very clever way to show that their brands can uphold strong British values regardless of the political uncertainty that they were facing.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading and responding to this article as it is very relevant to the Christmas holidays now, and I like learning about how simple television advertisements can slightly sway us in favour of purchasing their products. This article also reminds me of our SCLoA unit when we learnt about compliance techniques as this is a real- life application of that topic.

The full article can be read here: http://theconversation.com/the-festive-psychology-behind-christmas-tv-advertising-70011