Using Fiction As Advertisement

Let me ask you a question. Why do Harry Potter wands sell, even though they are just some bunch of wooden toys? And why do even adults are a fan of such toys?

Hello, I am Yash, and I welcome you to another one of my thoughts.

When you watch a film or read a novel, do you realize how the author eventually gains the power to manipulate your emotions? Whatever the author writes, it directly controls the characters and plot, and when you emotionally connect yourself to a character or any other element of that fiction, it hurts when it ends.

Don’t worry, it happens to the best of us. But another thing that we never give limelight to, is how these strings the author attaches to us, never cut off even after the content ends. Instead, their connection could be so strong that it starts dictating their real-world behavior.

Using Fiction As Advertisement  

The idea of using fiction as an advertisement is very similar to what we discussed above.

Let me illustrate with an example.

A person named Sam creates and launches an AI companion software named Mr. Robot (for example, no relation to the Mr. Robot series). On the other side, he writes and publishes a novel named “The Adventures of Elliot Alderson” (again, just an example). In the novel, there is a significant and attractive role of an AI companion named Mr. Robot, to which only Elliot, the protagonist, can see and talk to.

The book goes viral and the idea of a companion like Mr. Robot fascinates many people.

There are already several tools like ChatGPT and Replika that may provide them what they want from a character like Mr. Robot, but when they search it up online, they find out that there exists an AI companion software that precisely resembles Mr. Robot from The Adventures of Elliot Alderson. And what’s more interesting is that this product is launched by the same person who wrote the original novel.

This interest of people in a piece of fiction ends up controlling their action to install that app and pay for it to use the Mr. Robot.

This is, in the most basic sense, advertising, but it’s not the same kind of advertising we see every day. It’s rather a very smart kind of psychological trick played on the audience of the book.

Psychological Tactics Used In The Example  

1. Identity Anchoring: Identity Anchoring is a psychological tactic in which someone connects an idea or a product to a person’s sense of who they are (sense of identity). Once the author has made their readers to enter the world of Elliot Alderson, the readers begin to see themselves as Elliot Alderson and therefore crave the concept of Mr. Robot in real life to satisfy their own, somewhat delusional, sense of identity.

2. Scarcity and Exclusivity: There were already AI tools in the market, then why going for the Mr. Robot app? Because it was exclusive to what they just read. It was closest to the fictional Mr. Robot and therefore, made a clear place in the minds of the customers turned readers.

Conclusion  

Now you know why Harry Potter wands are being sold and why people installed Pokemon Go in the first place. It’s all because our emotional attachment to fictional works influences our real-life actions.