Advertising Manipulates Our Choices

In today’s society, no matter where you are, there is always a good chance that you have seen an advertisement. These little creatures are everywhere. You may see them when you are reading a magazine, watching TV, or surfing the internet. We have become so used to them. Advertisements are good at making us stop what we are doing and giving them our full attention. What is an advertisement? An advertisement is an announcement made to the public. In Jib Fowles’ article, “Advertising’s Fifteen Basic Appeals,” he is informing us that companies are spending millions of dollars on advertisements to grab our attention in order to manipulate us into spending or thinking of spending our hard-earned money on their product. Even though a lot of people do not want to believe that a paper that is eight times eleven with an image and no more than five words is manipulative because we want to think that we are not that easy to trick. Nike created an advertisement for one of

Individuals decide whether or not he or she want to believe the advertisements they see and hear. Just as O’Neill evinced “You must listen. You must read. And finally you must think – all by yourself” (352). If individuals learned how advertisements work, he or she can avoid being persuaded by the salesman. The individual will no longer feel forced to buy products he or she did not want. Society should serve a positive influence for change in advertising.

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.

Every minute of every day, millions of people are exposed to advertisements. They plague televisions, streets, radio waves, and all means of communication. These advertisements employ many methods of persuasion and their influence is irresistible. Just like prisoners in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, we are told every day to invest our time and interest into the subject of these advertisements, and to accept the forms of reality they serve us. Whether it be a commercial for a must-have new car, to a spot featuring desirable fast food, or to magazines with photoshopped models; we are seduced to accept these false

The average United States Citizen views about 5000 advertisements a day (Johnson). Advertising is everywhere. Billboards on the way to work, ads on the internet, and paper products such as magazines or newspapers display a sale or a promotion of a good or service. Usually, the ad will give a brand or company name, and uses the product’s merits to draw the consumer closer. This has grown exponentially as advertisements in media in 1970 were estimated to be 500 a day, a ten percent increase in the last 48 years. (Johnson). This is due to the rise of technology, as the computer has become a household gadget within the new millenium. These advertisements are meant to give a synopsis of the product or service’s purpose, quality, and efficiency. If a consumer views 5000 advertisements in a single day and assuming the commercials do not repeat, 5000 goods or services are introduced. With more options to choose from in such little time, the consumer has a harder time differentiating the quality and perhaps necessity of the product. The marketers rely on the quick, impulsive decision making of consumers. With the misleading nature of many infomercials or radio broadcasts, the people of American society are bombarded with constant propaganda, thus making seemingly harmless promotions more potent to filling industries’ pockets and lessening the common population’s

“There are over 250 billion advertisements released to the public every year with the average person seeing over 3000 ads every single day” (Kilbourne). This is an astronomical amount of information for anyone to process in a week let alone in one day. This is a prime example of Capitalism at it’s finest. Controlling the consumer in every aspect of their lives. Jean Kilbourne also talks about how “Only 8 percent of an advertisement is actually processed by the conscious mind, with the other 92 percent being soaked up by the subconscious” (Kilbourne). Thinking about those numbers really brings into perspective how much we are truly influenced by media

Advertisements are the most commonly used way to sell and market a product or message. Although we may not realize it while watching or seeing the advertisement, there are many underlying factors that cause us to buy into the advertisement. Whether it may be the color, picture, text, or sound; the advertisers find a way to draw us in without even a second thought. Many advertisers focus on guilt, they try to find a soft spot with in us by showing us those that are less fortunate than us. “Don’t you feel bad that you are so fortunate and these people are living like this? Give to them, help them, give up your luxuries, and share with them.” This is the

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

It's September, Football season already started. By the time Super Bowl comes,there are going to be hundreds of new ads in the TV. Every Time we turn on our tv or watch youtube videos we always end up seeing ads about variety of things; from Cars, watches, clothes, perfume to household materials. Does these ads really promote what they want to sell or something else? Unfortunately yes, ads sell more than the great deals of products. They sell value, success, popularity, love and sexuality but most importantly they influence us in everyday’s life.

People see up to 5,000 commercials a day (Johnson); additionally, a number of individuals feel that these advertisements are simply informative. Actually, they are choked full of fallacies which deviously influence peoples spending. Granted, advertisements are an important element in the business world and a thriving economy because of its information, it is manipulative due to the fact that it distorts a human’s view on a psychological level by embellishing, disregarding the entire truth, and appealing to an individual’s deepest desires.

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.” (Ed Bernay) This statement made by Mister Ed Bernays clearly shows the true colors of advertisements and how it's truly means to control and coerce the populace into buying useless objects. In this day and age advertisements in the media has become an inherently sobering practice, because of its Emotional tricks, warps viewpoints, and misleads the populace into believing false info.

Each day we are bombarded with advertisements from a plethora of corporations in every waking moment of our lives. Advertising agencies have become so advanced at what they do, that often times we may not even realize we are being advertised a product. This raises an interesting ethical dilemma over a certain type of advertising: persuasive advertising. Philosophers, economists, and business professionals have debated over whether or not persuasive advertising is an immoral violation of the autonomy of consumers. While not all forms of advertising are in and of themselves certainly immoral, persuasive advertising is particularly reprehensible due to the fact that not only does it manipulate our unconscious desires of which we are completely unaware in order to sell a product, but it also routinely leads us to act against our own best interest, thus overriding our autonomy.

Advertisements, in the twenty-first century, are an ever-present medium of influence in our day-to-day lives. This notoriously ubiquitous form of publicity has become so intricately woven into our cultural and societal presence that we have learned to absorb the messages put forth by advertisements, often without any question as to their credibility. Advertisers position readers to accept the messages being conveyed, and in doing so, attain an unsettling degree of power over their readers, with the ability to exploit feelings, emotions and desires through the use of clever discourses, images and symbols. In order to undermine the influence and pervasive nature of advertising,

Dave Ramsey, America’s most trusted financial adviser and a radio show host, once said, “We buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like.” (Ramsey). Ramsey’s quote reflects the state of consumerism that our society is going through. Most of us can easily relate to this quote, let’s be honest most of us have been there done that and then later question our genuine need for whatever we have bought. Regardless, if we feel guilty or not we ought to ask ourselves why and what made this purchase seems so important and necessary at the time. Although this might not come as a surprise to most of us, the answer would be the advertisement industry. In 2016, The United States has spent more than 198 billion U.S dollars on advertising, making America the leader in advertisement in the world (Statista). These ads are designed to force consumers to keep buying things that are unnecessary by sending subliminal messages and applying psychology to trick the consumer into a spending spree. In his short story, “Subliminal Man”, J.G. Ballard uses science fiction approach to illustrate to his readers the preposterous techniques that the advertising industry has been using to boost consumerism. Ballard believes that the consumer’s brain has been tricked into buying against their well, by using technology and applying subliminal technics. Ballard short story questions the effect of consumerism on our moral values, lifestyle, and behavior. Ballard claims that

“Advertising is far from impotent or harmless; it is not a mere mirror image. Its power is real, and on the brink of a great increase. Not the power to brainwash overnight, but the power to create subtle and