The Sunrise of Advertising Psychodynamic Theory

In this video, we will establish a new perspective on advertising by exploring its deep psychological foundations.

For those who want to know how advertising really works!

Hello, friends!

Thank you for watching.

You’re on the BrzhechkoAndNobody channel, where everything is about pharmaceutical marketing and advertising. I’m Yevhenii Brzhechko, an experienced marketer and advertiser in the field of pharmaceutical marketing.

Advertising isn’t just a freeform essay. However, many creative individuals believe their imaginative ideas can make good advertisements simply because they’re very creative.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

This is the third video in the basic section of my course, “Shoot It Right!” Here, you’ll learn how to apply psychomodeling techniques to create effective advertisements for pharmaceutical products.

Today, we’ll continue exploring the fundamentals of deep psychology and its significance for advertisers worldwide.

In this video and the next one, you’ll learn the difference between mere creativity and advertising creativity, and we’ll dive into the core concept of deep psychology — the archetype.

But first, like this video, subscribe to the channel, and share it if you want to learn how to create advertisements that actually sell! Also, don’t forget to follow me on Facebook for more insights and updates, and visit my website for additional resources and content tailored for advertising professionals.

In my previous videos, which I highly recommend you watch, I shared the foundation for our journey into advertising psychology.

A lot of what you hear in these videos might sound unusual: comparing advertising to cinema, theatre, likening it to myths, and much more.

So, it makes sense to revisit the main ideas that will serve as the basis for our further progress.

My goal is to create a theory of advertising. In my search for the foundation of such a theory, I came across the opinions of two directors about advertising. One believed that advertising should be like cinema, while the other compared it to a theatrical play.

Reflecting on these two positions, I concluded that advertising is neither cinema nor theater.Advertising should emulate the oldest literary genre, the one most capable of inspiring blind faith—and that genre is the myth.

Of course, I don’t mean that advertising should depict gods or mythical creatures in the way we’re used to seeing in fantasy adventures (though that’s possible under certain conditions). What I mean is using the components of myths in terms of their psychological content and significance for the human psyche. Understanding this is crucial.

Another important aspect is that myths are far from simple tales. Myths are the first projections of the human psyche expressed in literary form. The way mythological characters interact mirrors the interactions between parts of our psyche, influencing our behavior and decisions. This discovery was brought to us by one of the greatest thinkers and psychologists of the 20th century — Carl Gustav Jung.

Therefore, I decided that Jung’s psychology model should form the basis of advertising theory. The key elements of this model are archetypes. The realization and embodiment of these archetypes in advertising determine its influence on consumer decisions, and thus its effectiveness.

Before we dive into archetypes, let’s learn about an extremely important term directly related to advertising and one we’ll use often to understand each other clearly—Advertising Creativity.

Few professional advertisers enjoy working on ads for pharmaceutical products.

This field is full of legal restrictions, and it’s definitely not a place for unrestrained flights of fancy.

Advertising creativity is creativity that allows advertising to fulfill its primary function—increasing sales. This can happen either through direct persuasion to buy or by enhancing the brand’s image. (The specifics don’t matter. Even if an ad is image-focused, if the image doesn’t bring profit, then it’s not an ad — it’s just a nice video at best.)

For me, creating effective advertising creativity for pharmaceuticals and other healthcare products is a true challenge for any advertiser.

This is where the advertiser’s ability to control creativity—not the other way around—is tested.

That’s why there’s so much cheap creativity everywhere, and it’s so hard to find creativity that actually sells.

Pharmaceutical advertising is one of the most regulated fields—both legally and scientifically. While legal regulations are outlined in laws and guidelines, the advertising science side isn’t so straightforward.

Advertising for any product category imposes on the professional advertiser the task of creating not just creativity for the sake of creativity, but advertising creativity—something that drives sales. This is the first basic restriction. It filters out “free-spirited artists” from pharmaceutical advertising, who firmly believe their talent for creating something unconventional is what sells in advertising. There are product categories where, darn it, that’s exactly what’s needed. But I must disappoint you—that’s not the case for pharmaceuticals.

Pharmaceutical advertising has a few more basic requirements. These include the mandatory presence of a stable set of role archetypes:

 • The patient, who embodies the illness or problem;

 • The helper, savior, or advisor;

 • The product itself, which brings healing.

No pharmaceutical ad can do without these role entities.

The success of an ad lies in how well these entities are embodied using the right psychological archetypes. For example, the roles of the patient, the helper, and even the product must be represented by specific archetypes to have a psychological impact on the viewer.

We’ll call the process of selecting the necessary archetypes for these roles advertising archetyping. The process of creating advertising creativity based on deep psychology is advertising psychomodeling. And the theory of advertising based on deep psychology will be called Advertising Psychodynamics Theory.

What are archetypes, and how are they selected? You’ll learn in the next part.

For now, like this video, subscribe, and share it if you want to hear things about advertising you’ve never heard before!