Psychology of Advertising: The Might of Memes

Monday, October 13, 2014

The Might of Memes

Before we all began talking about memes there was Grant Wood's painting American Gothic. Along with the Mona Lisa by da Vinci, it is one of the most well known and parodied paintings of all time.

This recent print ad by Nescafe repurposes Grant Wood's painting to demonstrate a product benefit. Indeed, one might see this ad as an exemplification of Rosser Reeve's seminal concept known as the Unique Selling Proposition. The self-replicating power of Grant Wood's imagery is seen anew.

This painting has found many applications in advertising. Perhaps the best is this 1963 commercial for Country Corn Flakes.

There is a fine line in parody where homage can become ridicule. The secret of this commercial is the creators knew the difference between celebration and cynicism.

Memes have magical powers, if you know what you are doing.

Copyright © 2014 by John Eighmey. All Rights Reserved.

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Important Readings For You

Eighmey's journal articles on Internet advertising place him among the 10 most widely cited on the subject. His path-making article "Profiling User Responses to Commercial Websites" (see Journal of Advertising Research, March 1997) has been cited in more than 783 scholarly articles and books.

For a conceptual and data-driven analysis of youth values and the propensity to act on values, read Eighmey's article "Why Do Youth Enlist? Identification of Underlying Themes" in Armed Forces & Society, Vol. 32, No. 2, (January, 2006).

Read "Harlow Gale and the Origins of the Psychology of Advertising" in the Journal of Advertising, December 2007 for historical perspective.

For the big picture read "The Psychology of Persuasion: Perspectives for Theory, Research and Application in a Diverse World." A book co-authored with Osei Appiah and published by Cognella, 2011.

For 450 print ads that bring to life Advertising and American History, scroll down to the link featuring the original ad for Oreo cookies. Why not check out all the other links, too.