Maslow's pyramid theory

The Maslow pyramid describes physical and psychological needs. It starts at the lowest level of basic needs, things to stay alive such as air, food, water and sleep. As the pyramid goes up it becomes needs like safety (having shelter, heat and somewhere to be) and then belonging (within a group or family, feeling loved and having affection). The next step up would be esteem ( having self-esteem and having esteem from others). The top of the pyramid is self-actualisation (having personal, challenging goals and achieving control over your own life).


Advertisers use this as a way of making their money. They will tell people that things are a 'need' rather than a 'want' which is usually is. The needs in the pyramid I think go up to the belonging section. Belonging and below is what any one person will need to be happy and settled with life, feeling safe and sound. Anything above this will be products that people would want, to make them look good or feel extra special about themselves.
An example of these are car advertisers. Within their adverts they will focus on parts of the car that have been proven to be the smallest percentage better than another brand. A lot of advertisers will use the safety features of the car as their biggest selling point. Most of the time they will direct these at parents. They will tell you parents want the safest car for their family. Not only want, but 'need' the safest car.
On the other side of this example you have other car advertisers would use the esteem part of the pyramid for their adverts. They are sold on the apperance, performance or technology. The way that you would feel good and look good in one of these cars is what they would sell this on.

I have seem some adverts that I can relate back to the Maslow pyramid. Here I am going to document those adverts and explain in what section of the pyramid that it fall in to, and why I believe the advertiser has used this.

The first advert that I looked into was Heinz tomato ketchup. I wanted to look for a print advert first with some text on. I found this and thought that this advertisment has defiently been design with the pyramid in mind.

http://mariacriselda.typepad.com/mariacriselda/2009/09/vintage-chanel-no5-ad.html

This advert here, a vintage Chanel advert, I think was interesting because even though this advert was made and designed a long time ago, the advertising was still the same way in a way how they portray the 'need' and 'want'. I believe that this advert would fall into the esteem section of the pyramid. Having this perfume isn't a need, but a 'want' to make a woman feel more feminine and more attractive to males. As you can see from this print ad, the woman is quite clearly the main focus to these men, because she is obvisously very pretty, but with the added extra of the Chanel no. 5 perfume making her all that matters to the men surrounding her. Making other woman believe, this is what wearing this perfume would do if you wore it. 'Every woman alive loves Chanel No. 5'

-----------------

http://addshots.blogspot.com/2007/12/bmw-driving-pleasure.html

This BMW advert is also based on esteem. When you first look at the advert the first thing you see is the car, then my eye went to the text along the top saying 'You can describe anything. Except driving pleasure.' This advert is not based on anything such as safety features within a car, or ,how much money you will save if you buy this car', like a lot of car adverts do have, such as this one here:

http://www.peugeot.co.uk/home/

This screen shot I have done here is from the Peugeot website. Here their advertising is quite clearly selling this car on the basis of that you only need to 'just add fuel' so there is no worries of having this car, if you have any problems, Peugeot will sort this out, without extra costs, which, with the financial state everyone is in, this is what customers would be looking for with buying a new car, so from the Maslow pyramid theory, I would say that this advert is from the safety section, you would need this car to feel financially stable enough to be able to have a new car. 

-----------------

http://www.visit4ads.com/advert/Innocent-Be-Healthy-Innocent-Smoothies/68109

This Innocent smoothie print advert is showing the health of the drinks and veg pots that they produce. They are clearly showing the amount of portions of your fruit and veg are in each. These days parents and adults are very concious about the amount of goodness they are putting into theirs and their childrens body and innocent have made all their products about this, hitting every home in the country. With this I would put these advertisments in the physiological section of health, sleep and air. 

-----------------

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz_EA2PLeTw

This advert here I have used Mercedes-Benz. The car here they are advertising is the Mercedes C-Class coupe. The voice over they have used is 'you can't fit 125 years of innovation into a commercial, but you can find it all in the new Mercedes C-Class Coupe'. No where in that bit of voice over they have mentioned any reason for you to buy this car, like safety features or anything slightly better on fuel or insurance costs. This car is purely for those who can afford a car like this, if they wanted to, through no reason but to look good. Even in the television advert here, they lights pointing down on to the car make the car look luxurious, beautiful and people would star with envy. 


The song that they have used for this advert is Belleruche - Northern Girls. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYQzSIqWUH4
The music put onto the advertisement I think makes quite a bit of difference, making the car seem calm and luxury with a calm song such as this.