One thing that rarely gets mentioned in relation to ads is the value of priming (the article almost touches on it with evaluative conditioning but misses the ma

One thing that rarely gets mentioned in relation to ads is the value of priming (the article almost touches on it with evaluative conditioning but misses the mark). Advertisements don't just influence your brand choices, they can hack your brain and change your experiences. Ads can prime you to actually increase your enjoyment of using a certain product more than you would without ads, they can increase the value of that thing for its users. Think about how this sort of thing works without ads. Everyone has things like comfort foods, favorite shirts or socks or what-have-you, maybe a favorite comfy chair, favorite music, etc. Stuff that has become associated with certain ways of feeling through experiences. Foods that remind you of the comfort of home, for example, that sort of thing. Ads can tap into the same associative system and boost their perceived value in a similar way. And just as with all of the "organic" associations they become deeper over time. When you become primed to, say, enjoy coke just a little bit more than some discount supermarket cola then you build up the anticipation of drinking coke, and when you drink it you deepen the association of drinking coke with all of the positive experiences you've imbued into that moment (feelings of refreshment, maybe family amity, maybe it's associated with the holidays, maybe it feels like you're giving yourself a treat, etc, etc.) People don't like to talk about this stuff because it's somewhat disturbing and a bit manipulative on the part of brands but it's absolutely real. Think of all of the history of ceremony, ritual, and artifacts that has developed around religions over the centuries, a lot of that stuff is based on precisely the same associative pathways that brands make use of. This is why so many branded products don't just have simple, no nonsense, nondescript packaging and instead have very distinctive or even iconic forms and distinctive labels. It's powerful stuff.