Question 1:

In today’s age of advertisements, the customers are surrounded by various appealing and
convincing advertisements. These brands, with a motive of making their product sell like
hotcakes, tend to promote conspicuous consumption by making advertisements that persuade
consumers’ thinking, making them consider the product as a necessity and not a want.

The factor that plays prime importance in planting this belief in the consumers’ minds is the
smart use of visuals. Advertisements that incorporate visual components based on psychological
notions such as fear, love, pleasure, scarcity, etc. are strong drivers of consumer desires and
behaviours (Council, par.2). This is one of the reasons why aspects of visuality in distinct
advertisements play a significant role in promoting conspicuous consumption.

For instance, Manyavar, which is a luxury ethnic wear brand had come up with an ad campaign
across the Diwali week with a tagline ‘Iss Diwali Pehno Apni Pehchaan’. The advertisements
published in newspapers were smartly-crafted, keeping in mind the importance of visuals to
persuade consumers. Indeed, The Halo Effect was used to persuade consumers as seeing this
advertisement would make the viewer feel that since these celebrities are wearing the clothes
from Manyavar for Diwali looking elegant and happy, the brand must have a good ethnic-wear
collection and in this way, the ad promotes conspicuous consumption (Birkett, sec.3).
Another example can be the Titan Raga's campaign, #MomByChoice with the tagline ‘Khud se
Naya rishta’. This ad campaign uses visual storytelling to endorse the watch, following the
speech of a pregnant woman who is overwhelmed by her emotions of becoming a mother soon.
The audience gets visually engaged with the advertisement through the emotions and expressions
of the actors while being curious to hear the whole speech that covers a beautiful
mother-daughter relationship. According to me, this one-minute advertisement is crafted by
making smart use of visual aspects like storytelling, emotions, aesthetic setting, etc. to hook the
viewer to the whole advertisement and make him/her a potential consumer. In this way, the
advertisement promotes conspicuous consumption where visual aspects play a significant role.

Both the advertisements have used different aspects of visuality to promote conspicuous
consumption by making the viewer believe that they will achieve status in society and get other
social benefits through the consumption of these products. In this way, advertisers use different
aspects of visuality to promote their products, fooling people into believing that the benefits they
receive from using the brand’s product would be much more than its actual usage.

Ad links:
Link to Titian’s ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfYyAnJRkh0&list=WL&index=1
 Sources cited
Birkett, Alex. “The Halo Effect: How It Affects Marketing.” CXL, 3 May 2021,

cxl.com/blog/halo-effect.

Council, Young Entrepreneur. “How To Harness Effective Visuals In

Advertising.” Forbes, 18 May 2020,

www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2020/05/18/how-to-harness-effective-visuals-in-advertising

/?sh=4423d30a4f7f.