Advertising in the Media and The American Culture

Advertisements are everywhere; no matter where you are there will be many different advertisements surrounding you. You see them on billboards, you hear them on the radio and Pandora, you are surrounded by them in shopping malls, etc. Have you ever wondered who created advertisements? I always asked myself that question because I was surprised by how many different advertisements there are. It was until I read “The Language of Advertising” by Charles A. O’Neill that I found the answer to my question. O’Neill believes that advertising language mirrors the fears, quirks, and aspiration of the society that creates it. I agree with O’Neill because advertisements are affected by society; if advertisements had nothing to do with society there would be no point in advertising objects.

Since the mid to late 1900’s, the advertising industry has taken off and found new ways to persuade consumers to purchase products. As is the case with most things nowadays, social media has been a monumental part in the above mentioned forward progression the advertising industry has faced. Therefore, given the modern day advances of technology, social media and advertisers have found it increasingly more easy to join forces along the journey of fusing consumers into one massive cache. However, regardless of new advances, analysts have made an abundance of shocking discoveries that besmirch advertisers and their work in recent decades. As Jack Solomon wrote in his article, “Masters of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising”, “if

What does an ad say about a society? When viewing a product advertisement, many people never stop to think why the ad and product appeals to them. However, when a more critical look is taken, it’s easy to see precisely how ads are carefully tailored to appeal to trending values of a targeted demographic, and how that makes it easy to examine the society of those whom the ad is targeted at. In the analytic writing Advertisements R Us, Melissa Rubin provides an excellent example of this, as she crafts a logical and clear analysis of a 1950’s Coca-Cola magazine ad which thoroughly explains how advertisements can reveal quite a great deal about the society in which they were created.

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.

For the longest time now, advertising has played a huge role in how we identify ourselves in the United States with the American culture, and how others identify themselves with all the cultures of the rest of the world as well. It guides us in making everyday decisions, such as what items we definitely need to invest our money on, how to dress in-vogue, and what mindset we should have to prosper the most. Although advertising does help make life easier for most, at the same time it has negative affects on the people of society as well. Advertisement discreetly manipulates the beliefs, morals, and values of our culture, and it does so in a way that most of the time we don’t even realize it’s happened. In order to reach our main goal of

In our society today a business is not a business without an advertisement. These advertisements advertise what American’s want and desire in their lives. According to Jack Solomon in his essay, “Master’s of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising,” Jack Solomon claims: “Because ours is a highly diverse, pluralistic society, various advertisements may say different things depending on their intended audiences, but in every case they say something about America, about the status of our hopes, fears, desires, and beliefs”(Solomon). Advertisers continue to promote the American dream of what a women’s body should look like. They advertise their products in hopes for consumers to buy them, so they can look like the models pictures in the ads. Behind these ads, advertisers tend to picture flawless unrealistic woman with the help of Photoshop. In our society today to look like a model is an American dream and can be the reasons why we fantasizes and buy these products being advertised. “America’s consumer economy runs on desire, and advertising stokes the engines by transforming common objects;signs of all things that Americans covet most”(Solomon).

The traditional definition of the American Dream is the belief that everyone is given an equal opportunity to prevail and rise within the social hierarchy. Companies use the concept of the American Dream to appeal to their consumers to buy their product. In his essay “Masters of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising,” Jack Solomon writes, “the American Dream has two faces; one communally egalitarian and the other competitively elitist” (167). Although egalitarianism and elitism are at odds with one another, companies advertise the two together. Apple Incorporation is an American technology company that began advertising their products in 1970. Nineteen seventy magazine advertisement “A is for Apple”, 2009 commercial “Elimination”, and

In Jib Fowles article, “Advertising’s Fifteen Basic Appeals”, he shows us fifteen ways commercials try to appeal to people around our country. The need for sex, need for affiliation, the need to nurture, need to aggress, need to achieve, need to dominate, need for prominence, need for attention, need for autonomy, need to escape, need for aesthetic sensations, need to satisfy curiosity, and physiological needs. These needs are all how companies appeal to our needs to interest us into buying their product. These appeals can be seen in almost every

In today’s mass media, it is quiet common for advertisers to assimilate class into their commercials. These advertisements portray a certain level of elegance because of the sophisticated choice to use classical background music and thick European accents. On the contrary, other advertisers take the common-folk approach by structure these commercials around the western concept. Both of these advertising tactics supports an American paradox. As argued in Jack Solomon’s “Master of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising”, the contradiction lies in the desire to strive above the crowd and the quest for social equality.

Commercials airing on the television or radio, the billboards on the side of the freeways trying to grab your attention to buy their product, even while scrolling through various social media platforms, we go through our day to day lives with advertisements all around us. In Jack Solomon’s essay, Masters of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising, he states that the main purpose of all these advertisements is to show us our unhappiness within the American dream. He goes on to describe the differences in these advertisements which are known as the populist ads and the elite ads. Solomon's description of the contradiction between populism and elitism very much affects the way advertising and media is portrayed in American society.

Advertising in a mass consumer society such as America is a very competitive industry. Advertising companies continually come up with new and more creative techniques of increasing sale. Advertising companies decide which group of people would be more attracted to a specific product and link that product to the feelings of excitement and anxiety of the targeted customers. The ads are carefully crafted bundles of images, frequently designed to associate the product with feelings of pleasure stemming from deep-seated fantasies and anxieties (Craig 197). For example, usually advertisements of beer and cars demonstrate masculine men, loners and free of

While it is undeniable that advertising has invaded a number of segments in our lives, it is equally undeniable that the manner in which advertisers have tried to connect with viewers is highly variable and dependent on the presiding values of the culture in the specific time period, which the ad was released. Ads can either try to suggest that a specific product cultivates these desirable values or on the other hand they can attempt to suggest that people that already have these values will use these products. Throughout the course of this paper, three ads from three time periods; 1935-1940: Great Depression, 1941-1945: World War II, 1946-1960: Postwar, and their subsequent dominating historical events will be examined to determine how the

My artifact for society today is a bunch magazine advertisements because I feel like the world runs on advertisements. Our minds are constantly being sold to advertisers. Anywhere we look, we will always see some form of advertisement. Billboards, posters, magazine covers, and other print media are visible almost everywhere. If Julianne hough or Katy Perry never advertised for pro active would any of us really try it? I mean they’re famous and they would “never” lie to their fans right? If kate Hudsons photoshopped abs of steel were not on the front page cover of “Women's Health” would we really believe the capitalized bolded words under it that says “Crazy-Hot ABS! in 15 minutes - shortcuts to a lean, sexy belly” with a arrow to her abs. advertising

American society has changed drastically over the past years and some people say advertisements reflect the society that we live in now. Advertising in our society encourages unhealthy habits, focuses in on our weaknesses and leads us to believe that we are materialistic. Advertisements can also change our vision of reality and makes us believe the impossible. Advertisements use sexual and racial stereotypes to help sell their products. People in our society encourage the commercials that demonstrate these things, like focus in on our weaknesses.

Thank you for reminding me that I completely forgot about media advertisements. First of all, it will start with many people knowing the university.