ODER BLOCKER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We as Americans (and as general consumers), we are constantly berated with advertisements that are attempting to get us to buy their products and pay for their services. It does not take a long session of television watching to realize that every single one of the advertisements are peripheral routes to persuasion (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). In this route of persuasion, the way in which a person tries to get you to change your attitude to what by the argument they present, but by the extra things that they present, like nice music or free food. One of my favorite examples of this is almost any and all of the old spice commercials. The point of the commercial is get customers to go out and buy their body wash isn't it? Then why am I watching as a man listens to an absurd self help tape about how he is the best at certain things? I assume that if I use the Old Spice body wash that my life will suddenly become awesome like that guys? Oddly enough, the commercial does make me want to buy Old Spice body wash (if I were to buy body wash), because whenever I think of body wash now, I think of either that nerd turned into awesome dude or Terry Crews flexing his pecs at me and yelling at the top of his voice telling me that the body wash/spray blocks BO as things explode around him. However, I do think that this is a much better alternative to the opposite, which would be them attempting to use a central route to persuasion (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986), in which they would present a logical argument as to why Old Spice body wash is the product that should be bought because of its obviously better properties opposed to others (or other things that it may be able to do for me). When I (and I'm sure 99% of Americans) watch television, we aren't watching it to be educated and be lectured about why a product is better than another (which is what infomercials attempt to do), we watch television to be entertained, and when Terry Crews is blowing crap up all over the place and raiding other products commercials, it makes me entertained enough to want to write an entire blog about it and have other people read about it.

Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). Communication and persuasion: Central and peripheral routes to attitude change. New York: Springer-Verlag.