Advertising's Fifteen Basic Appeals Formal Summary

In his essay, Advertising’s Fifteen Basic Appeals, Jib Fowles outlines and explains the fifteen basic mechanisms by which advertisements manipulate consumers. Fowles begins by explaining the nature of emotional appeals and the research off of which his article is based. He poses a few ways to categorize appeals, such as Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, and Murray’s List. Then, he continues to explain each of the fifteen appeals: how that appeal is displayed in an ad, and why that appeal works for each one respectively. In conclusion, Fowles discusses the strategies or styles in which these appeals are conveyed, such as through a celebrity as a “link between producers and consumers,” (69) and discusses their effectiveness in influencing consumer behavior. He concludes on an optimistic note, saying, “on the one hand...advertising truly works, and, on the other, it hardly works,” while adding that “ it is good to keep in mind that many of the purchases which might be credited to these ads are experienced as genuinely gratifying to the consumer,” (71).