The Persuaders: PBS Frontline

The Persuaders, a special on PBS Frontline, focuses on consumer behavior, marketing, and methods of persuasion in modern markets. Business professionals in the film noted the oversaturation of advertisements in our daily lives; they theorized that without clear, standout messaging consumers will be lost within the clutter of advertisements. The film explored the use of psychographic polling, focus groups, surveys, and other qualitative and quantitative statistics which help marketers reach their target market in the most effective way. When marketing in the business world firms, in order to be differentiated from other brands, have begun implementing psychographic analysis of consumer behavior. With word associations, small groups, individual focus groups, and other forms of psychographic research, companies can pinpoint the type of advertisement, vernacular, and best platform to advertise on to reach consumers in the most effect fashion. The purpose of this segment research is to find the phrases, slogans, words, and vernacular to use that will withstand a clutter advertisement platform and reach the target market. In order to avoid the cluttered advertising market, large, well-established marketing firms rejected the “what does this product or service …show more content…
Using the lingual research created by advertising experts, political campaign advertisers and managers can follow the same process to decide what messaging a campaign, utility, party, etc. should use to instill public approval. The goal of these studies is to find the “words that work,” or the words that can best sell an issue. For example, Republicans, for years, have had issue with the estate tax. Political advertisers could rebrand the tax, naming it the “death tax,” in order to establish a different meaning behind the policy. With this change in language followed a change in perception of the estate