Having watched the marketeers for many years I have decided that TV advertising is slotted into one of three types:
1). The annoying and cringe-making kind !
2). The purely entertaining kind !
and....
3). The "save-money" kind !
The annoying and cringe-making kind ( of which the majority are made ), are meant to stick in our memories without any conscious desire for this to happen. These are the most insidious of all of the adverts as they appeal to our dark subconscious memories and are referred to without us even knowing about it.
The purely entertaining ones are remembered BECAUSE they entertain us and anything that has a "feelgood" factor attached to it can influence us at a later date. STILL rather sneaky as far as I am concerned.
The third kind, which include BOGOF, BTGOF and other bulk-buying techniques are there to appeal to our feelings of greed and avarice and as HG says we should be able to see right through these ones by realising that the best way to save is to not spend at all.
As this thread shows, all of these advertising tricks get us talking about them and if nothing else has been gained I am sure that the marketeers will be satisfied with that.