Math in Advertising

    The creators of this Patek Philippe ad, most likely had it placed in the magazine, which it came from, using targeted advertising. The presumed certain givens about their potential consumers, and then found literature they assumed their potential customers were likely to come across. The givens, which the creators of this Patek Philippe ad assumed, are varied. While some are debatable, others are obvious. None seemed to be surprising or disturbing. The givens are the assumptions of the manufacturer, about the ad’s reader. In this case they assume the reader is a rich male with a son, or some close person of the sort, and with no meaningful preexisting family heirloom to pass on to them. I derived four logical statements. The purchase conditional is: if you buy a Patek Philippe, you will get not just a watch but a family legacy that will be passed down to future generations. This is true because this watch is an ideal candidate for a family heirloom, seeing as it lasts a very long time and is hard to ruin. As long as your bloodline after you feels the same way, your new legacy will live on. The converse is that: if you want to have a family legacy to pass down, you should buy a Patek Philippe. This is true only if you can afford a Patek Philippe watch and want a family legacy item. The inverse is that: if you do not buy a Patek Philppe, you will not have a family legacy to pass down. This is true if you did not have a family legacy item to start off with. The contrapositive is that: if you don’t have a family legacy to pass down, you did not buy a Patek Philippe. This is always true because if you had bought a Patek Philippe you would have a family legacy to pass down. All four logical statements are true as long as the givens are true.

The chain of logic, therefore, is:  If you buy a Patek Philippe, you will have an heirloom to pass down to future generations of your family.  If future generations get an heirloom from you, you will have established a family tradition and you will always be remembered. To me as a consumer, this type of analysis is useful because it allows me too see the product in a way that allows me to understand what I would actually gain from buying the product, instead of in a way based on conclusions I instantly jump to, or based on what the producer and marketer of the product would like me to believe in order to get me to buy their product. I did not relate to this ad so, for the most part, it did not affect me personally and teach me anything about myself. It did however teach me about the psychology of advertisers; mainly that they make sure to highlight any positive affect their product could have upon your life, without mentioning any negative attributes. Although this is an obvious strategy, it is interesting that in this case, where a multi-thousand dollar watch is being sold, the price of the product is not given. This project has taught me a little about advertising, and has shown me the link between mathematical practices and their non-mathematical uses which exist in the real world.