The 6 most used tricks by food advertisers

Food advertisements use a whole series of psychological resources to tempt us.

Advertising is essentially an attempt to convince a number of people to buy a product or service using relatively little information about it. a number of people to buy a product or service using relatively little information about it.

Giving all the technical specifications of what is being offered would not only be very costly in terms of the type of advertising space that would need to be contracted, but it would not persuade anyone; in any case, it would be boring.

What advertising tries to do is to express sensations and ideas by means of mental shortcuts that make it possible to awaken interest in what is being offered and make it gain a memorable halo of seduction, so that its effects remain during the period between seeing the advertising piece and being willing to pay for the product.

And, if there is one area in which these psychological tricks used in marketing to sell things stand out, it is food advertising.

The resources and tricks of food advertising

There are many types of advertising, and of course there are certain resources that are possible in some cases and not in others. However, many of them are not exclusive to any one type and, in practice, they are very common.

Here you can see a review of some of the tricks used in advertising to sell food products.

1. Strategically placed water droplets

How do you make a food look much fresher than it really is? Simply by making the food that appears on screen have strategically placed water droplets, especially in the case of fruits and vegetables.

If it is such an effective measure, it is precisely because we don't stop to think why there is so much water in the food .. Our brain simply associates the image of the drops with the concept of "freshness", a very intuitive relationship between the two ideas that makes us not question this mental shortcut.

2. The induction of synaesthesia

Synesthesia is a psychological phenomenon that occurs when information that enters through one sense (for example, sight) is experienced at the same time as if it had entered through another (for example, touch).

Advertising uses these resources so that seeing an advertisement is as close as possible to being about to taste what is being sold.. For example, amplifying the sound of a cracker or potato chip crunch subtly evokes a tactile sensation. Seeing a slice of fried bacon bounce as it lands on a hamburger also provides texture information.

3. Close-ups

Close-ups show us all the most appetizing details of the food. This strategy of food advertising works, first of all, because seeing a food so enlarged makes us think that we have it very close to our eyes and, consequently, close to our mouth. us to think that we have it very close to our eyes and, therefore, close to our mouths..

Thus, we already anticipate how what we are seeing must taste and, in a way, the neuroendocrine cycle that has to do with chewing and salivating is initiated. To reduce the feeling of frustration frustration that would be produced by interrupting this cycle of physiological activation, we begin to think about what we are seeing.In other words, hunger is shifted to a goal in the near future instead of eliminating it.

But, in addition, close-ups are the perfect excuse to resort to the following advertising strategy.

4. Slow motion

Slow motion is not something that in itself makes us want to buy a product when used in food advertising, but it allows advertisers to make sure that the audience of a TV spot sees what they should see. that the audience of a TV spot sees what they should see and does not miss and do not lose detail.

In addition, there are images, such as what happens when two jets of fruit juice collide in mid-air, that only make sense if they are shown in slow motion.

5. All kinds of image trickery

The function of the beer mug in an ad is to look like a beer mug, not to be one. Therefore, everything possible is done to create things that look like food without necessarily being food: the layer of bubbles that crowns the beer mugs is often soap suds.In addition, painted and cosmetically coated foam rubber is used to create something resembling meat, and many foodstuffs are filled with substances injected with syringes to make them appear more voluminous and rounded.

And, of course, all cost-effective computer effects have long been used to create three-dimensional models of food.

6. The still life

Everything about food (or pseudo-food created for the occasion) that can and should enter the eyes of the advertisers' target audience is conveniently presented through a still life. The still life is basically the "showcase" of what it is trying to sell.It is an image in which the product or set of products appears occupying the whole center of the advertising piece. The idea here is to show the definitive aspect of what has been sold, to show all the relevant details at the same time.

The objective of the still life is to create an image that remains in the memory and serves to recognize the product at the point of sale. That is why in the case of TV spots it almost always appears at the end, when the viewer's attention has been captured and it is time to help him/her reach the overall image of the product, instead of a series of fragmented images shown in different shots.