What is a bandwagon ad?

Answer 1

Bandwagon advertising is when you get a large group of companies all advertising through the same medium. A good example would be Google's AdWords which has enticed many internet advertisers into using Google exclusively for their online marketing.

If you were to advertise to create a bandwagon, then you would be working on forming a popular opinion to the masses that would virally create a domino effect in belief or action through your advertising campaign.

You should have sunglasses. Everyone else has them.

Bandwagon is one of the most common techniques in both wartime and peacetime and plays an important part in modern advertising. Bandwagon is also one of the seven main Propaganda techniques identified by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis in 1938. Bandwagon is an appeal to the subject to follow the crowd, to join in because others are doing so as well. Bandwagon propaganda is, essentially, trying to convince the subject that one side is the winning side, because more people have joined it. The subject is meant to believe that since so many people have joined, that victory is inevitable and defeat impossible. Since the average person always wants to be on the winning side, he or she is compelled to join in. However, in modern propaganda, bandwagon has taken a new twist. The subject is to be convinced by the propaganda that since everyone else is doing it, they will be left out if they do not. This is, effectively, the opposite of the other type of bandwagon, but usually provokes the same results. Subjects of bandwagon are compelled to join in because everyone else is doing so as well. When confronted with bandwagon propaganda, we should weigh the pros and cons of joining in independently from the amount of people who have already joined, and, as with most types of propaganda, we should seek more information.

Answer 2

It shows you that everybody is doing the thing in the ad so that you do it too, like peer pressure.