Advertising And Its Influence On Society

Advertisements are everywhere, combining images and words together to create a message to sell a product. The initial impression is that the advertisers are just trying to sell their products, but there often seems to be an underlying message. It is often heard that “sex sells.” So, many advertisers will use beautiful women and men in their advertisements to try to market a product. The hope is that “sex will sell,” and people will go out and buy what the ads are selling. There are many advertisements and commercials that use this approach. Prime examples of this are the advertisements for Orbit Gum and A Diamond is Forever. Also, the commercials for Levi jeans use sex to promote the sale of their brand. As a way to

Every day, companies present the people with advertisements everywhere they go. Advertisements have become very prevalent in today’s society nowadays focusing in on a negative connotation. Advertisement has become an effective way for producers to display their new products. In present day, they come in forms of billboards, flyers, e-mails, and even text messages. It is widely known that companies create advertisements to persuade people to buy specific products or goods; however, it is not widely known that advertisements can make a negative impact on today’s society. The companies manipulate people’s mind and emotions, swaying people by new promotions and therefore generating a strong desire to fit into the society, that causes them to make inessential expenditures. Advertisements pose a critical impact on the American culture.

Magazines play a part in creating the image of sex sells. Advertisers use an image to create an advertisement to sell a product. The Purpose of advertising is not to sell sex, but to attract the consumer. Their talent is the ability to transform seemingly neutral object to create a desirable product. It’s no wonder that we are so

These roles for females represent what the advertisement industry believe buyers deem as the real world. As Goffman asked," What messages about women have been given to society through magazine

to represent that, that I felt like a doll for so long.” Said Cara Delevingne, supermodel.

Marketing to children is not a new phenomenon; however, there have been many ethical debates on its rightness; is advertising to children a gentle persuasion of the innocent or a sinister threat to our society? There’s too much as stake if we remain silent and simply assume that marketing companies have our children’s best interests at heart; the truth is they don’t. This paper will explore to implications of marketing to children and the overall effects it has on our society. I will argue that advertising to children is a social problem. In the first part of my paper I will discuss why advertising to children is ethically wrong, I will then discuss what has changed; this will be followed by a discussion as to why it is a social problem and finally, I will conclude my paper by discussing what should be done to change it. Please note this paper is written in the first person as I have children and I have a vested interest in this topic.

Many men’s magazines feature hunting, fishing, or sports. In addition, some magazines feature sexual appeals. On average in magazines, one of two advertisements featuring women will portray them as sex objects. Since the late 1970s, many researchers have concluded that advertisements portray women as having less social power than men (Springer Science). It is very common for women to be used as models to sell products to men. Almost eighty percent of advertisements in men’s magazine present women as sex objects (Springer Science). Che’s magazine for men is an example of this statistic. Both figures below from Che’s magazine advertises a better life but this is not an effective type of persuasion because of its style, how

In John Berger’s Ways of Seeing he offers the idea that “to be a woman has been to be born...into the keeping of men.” He illustrates on page 46, that women are born to satisfy men, at least in terms of art for most European painters. He empathizes this point by pointing at nude portraits and oil paintings. I decided to analyze my own choice of advertisement to compare his theory in the modern world. I chose an American Apparel advertisement; the company has a history of invoking reactions from the public. The advertisement does not require much analysis to cause offense to the general viewer. American Apparel crosses the line in more ways than one. However, the advertisement I chose was rather tame in comparison to many others I considered.

Everyday we expose ourselves to thousands of advertisements in a wide variety of environments where ever we go; yet, we fail to realize the influence of the implications being sold to us on these advertisements, particularly about women. Advertisements don’t just sell products; they sell this notion that women are less of humans and more of objects, particularly in the sexual sense. It is important to understand that the advertising worlds’ constant sexual objectification of women has led to a change in sexual pathology in our society, by creating a culture that strives to be the unobtainable image of beauty we see on the cover of magazines. Even more specifically it is important to study the multiple influences that advertisements have

Women are the main targets in magazine advertisements; they take advantage and manipulate the female beauty and their bodies by making it overrated. The societies expectation of women have harmed us and our generation. Consequently, there are over millions of magazine sold because of the way companies diminish the female gender. It affects women greatly by limiting their abilities to take bigger and risky steps in life. The advertisement images only teach us and influence little children that women should have little value, the ideal female beauty, and gain disrespect for women. In the American society advertisements expose the female body in a negative way because it influences women to body objectify themselves, lowering women's self esteem, and their ambition all for the male viewers.

An important controversial issue that America faces today is the debate of sex in advertising. Edward A. McCabe and John Carroll are two authors that present opposing arguments about this issue. McCabe persuades the reader into thinking that sex in advertising is no big deal, while Carroll explains why this is a major problem in America. Sex ads are defined as any type of advertising that shows pictures of partial nudity with wording that relates to the body in a sexual way, usually portraying women. Sex in advertising has been around for a long time but has the industry become too sexually explicit?

Advertising has had a major impact on society. Some may be considered positive and some negative. Take a look around, advertisements are placed everywhere, television commercials, billboards, newspapers, and even on the sides of buses. Advertising is the basic form of marketing and trading throughout the world. Today’s society knows it as marketers trying to influence or persuade consumers into buying something. It also serves as a medium for services and businesses. There are many advertising strategies, but television commercials will always remain the number one strategy. Think about it, how much television is watched a day, probably a lot. What better way to advertise a product or service? Advertising has a positive effect on our economy. It does not only influence and persuade consumers, but it also benefits them in many ways. It also benefits manufacturers and their company, and the world as a whole.

When going shopping, watching the television or looking in magazines, young girls are among the most targeted, being affected and vulnerable to the social influences of marketing and advertisements. Many advertisements of clothing have depicted the female form in a sexually provocative manner. Sexualisation is when a person’s value comes only from his or her sexual appeal or behaviour, to the exclusion of other characteristics. Furthermore, sexual objectification is when the female body is seen as an object of male desire, which leads to a woman’s worth being her body’s appearance and sexual function. Evidence from social and psychological studies is suggesting that girls are exposed from an early age to sexualising content. On average, one-third of clothing items available to young girls in stores have sexualised characteristics containing either tight fitting and skin tight, low cut, or see-through parts. Such clothing emphasises sexual body parts such as the chest, bum, or legs. All of which are products that are designed and marketed for young girls below the age of fourteen. Many garments also feature sex-related pictures or writing such as Future WAG, or short skirts and dresses, along with high-heeled shoes which are not age-appropriate for young children. Some [high heeled] shoes I have seen on sale look more suited to a lap-dancing club than the feet of a young girl. Even lingerie, which is typically for adults, is being designed for girls onwards of the age of

“ads feature provocative images of well-defined women (and men) in revealing outfits and postures selling clothing, alcohol, beauty products, and fragrances. Advertisers such as Calvin Klein, Victoria’s Secret, and Pepsi use these images to cultivate a ubiquitous sex-tinged media presence” (Reichert,2002 pg. 242).

Over the past decade, the influences of the advertising industry have been growing significantly and it has become a part of our daily life. Everyone gets exposed to advertisements, because they appear everywhere: on newspapers, fliers lying on the ground, on your favorite TV shows, and you can’t even browsing the Internet without accidentally clicking on 10 random ads. Since advertising has become such a big impact on our life, advertising companies try to come up with new and effective ideas for their ads, in order to compete with others. Sadly, advertisements todays seems to be losing its creativity and starting to focus more on the objectification and sexualization of women. The “Lego for adults” ad campaign gives us a clear example of how the idea of “sexual advertisement” is being exploited by advertising companies.