Anti Advertising Manifesto

After the end of the Civil War, industrialization and urbanization blossomed and changed the nation. Instead of presidential power, men were aiming to be industrial tycoons for their wealth and power. To the people, these capitalists were regarded as either admirable “captains of industry” or corrupt “robber barons”. Even though to some people they may seem like “captains of industry”, but they were actually corrupt “robber barons” for several reasons regarding corruption, employee issues, and matters of the social classes.

Media is everywhere, it became a part of our life. We are exposed to thousands of ad messages every day and it's hard to imagine how it would feel to live without them constantly surrounding us. Today we see ads in print publications, TV commercials, emails, on different products, massively scattered in sport venues, and it’s even spreading into public spaces. In his documentary, Morgan Spurlock delivered a fascinating satire of the process of placing products into movies and tried to delve into the nature of advertising in our society.

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.

In “Two Ways a Woman Can get Hurt: Advertising and Violence,” the author Jean Kilbourne describes how advertising and violence is a big problem for women. Although her piece is a little scrambled, she tries to organize it with different types of advertisement. Women are seen as sex objects when it comes to advertising name brand products. Corporate representatives justify selling and marketing for a product by how a woman looks. Kilbourne explains how the media is a big influence on how men perceive women. Kilbourne tries to prove her point by bashing on advertising agencies and their motives to successfully sell a product. Kilbourne’s affirmation towards advertisements leaves you no doubt that she is against them.

In our daily lives advertisement are seen all around is. We see them on billboards and on our phone. This is how must things get known to people .In M.T. Anderson’s young adult novel Feed, Anderson uses satire to criticize how things are advertised in order to warn readers about how advertising manipulates them into doing things.

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

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

Whether we realize it or not, we are constantly surrounded by advertisements. On average, we are exposed to approximately 3,000 ads per day, through logos, billboards, and television commercials, even our choices of brands. But in today’s society, one of the most used and influential tools of advertising are women. But the unfortunate thing is that women are not just viewed as actresses in these ads but as objects for people to look at, use, abuse, and more. In her fourth installment in a line of documentaries, “Killing Us Softly 4,” Jean Kilbourne explains the influence of advertising women and popular culture, and its relationship to gender violence, sexism and racism, and eating disorders.

Do you ever watch the Super Bowl for its commercials? Have you ever bought a more expensive product because you had seen its advertisement? If the answer is yes, then you might have been a victim of today’s marketers. Jean Kilbourne, the author of “Killing us Softly” stated in one of her lectures, “The influence of advertising is quick, cumulative and for the most part, subconscious, ads sell more products.” “Advertising has become much more widespread, powerful, and sophisticated.” According to Jean Kilbourne, “babies at six months can recognize corporate logos, and that is the age at which marketers are now starting to target our children.” Jean Kilbourne is a woman who grew up in the 1950s and worked in the media field in the 1960s. This paper will explain the methods used by marketers in today’s advertising. An advertisement contains one or more elements of aesthetics, humor, and sexual nature.

The post-Civil War era was an era filled with political corruption, economic industrialization, and social urbanization largely due to an great surplus budget. With this being the case, the industrial capitalists, such as Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and others, were leaders in this societal boom. However, it would be appropriate to say that most industrial capitalist could be accurately characterized as “robber barons” for they often unethical, self-interested, and corrupt.

From 1865 to 1900, a surge in industry and business began to come into effect. Railroads, oil, steel, and various inventions enabled the rise of these businesses. As time went on, the leaders of the businesses would become more eager to achieve wealth. Some historians have described these people as ‘robber barons’ or people who use extreme methods to control and maintain their wealth and power. Others would chastise that belief, declaring that it is an unjust conclusion to draw. Despite the oppositions fervent belief, the undeniable evidence supports the belief that many of the businessmen in the late 19th century were ‘robber barons’. These men had a blatant disregard for human lives and an unquenchable urge to assume control over citizens’ lives that instilled corruption and greed in them.

Advertisements are an extremely prominent part of American society. Very few places exist that an individual can go without being exposed to some form of ad. From product placement to billboards, advertisements exist in nearly every facet of life. Marion Nestle discusses what she considers to be one of the more heinous forms of advertisement in her essay, “The Supermarket: Prime Real Estate.” Nestle uses several persuasive techniques to convince her audience of the evils of supermarkets. Her use of emotionally charged phrases paired with her more logical assertions help to drive her point home while her clear bias and lack of supportive source detract from her overall argument

Magee has been protesting the use of advertisements in public spaces for about a decade, often times ending up in a trip to jail. Magee has no intent to stop, stating, “I feel that advertising is so entrenched in our society that to get people to question it you have to go out and make a meaningful protest” (Magee, “video, 11th december 2015”). His protest is a perfect example of engaged citizenship. As he does not agree with the advertising practices of large companies, he goes out of his way to obscure them in hopes that he can enact change on the advertising companies. I can relate to his frustrations. When I was younger, I would go to the mall quite often. One time, I remember I saw them installing a large display for the sole purpose of extending advertising in more obtrusive ways. While I do not know what the alternative to the current system of advertising, I commend Magee’s persistent stance on advertisings respecting public

Mass media plays a great part in our lives. Television, newspapers, magazines surround us everywhere every day of our lives. All of them are stuck with different kinds of ads. But how often do we pay attention to the real sense of those ads and the ways the advertisers try to sell various products to us? We see dissoluteness and challenging behavior every day in life and we got so used to it in, at first sight, such small pieces of film, and apparently of our day routine, as advertisement, that we hardly notice the big picture. For over twenty years, Jean Kilbourne has been writing, lecturing, and making films about how advertising affects women and girls. In her essay, "‘The Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt':

In fact, “from 1997 to 2007, these procedures, overall, rose 457% to almost 12 million per year and an increase of 114% in actual surgeries, such as breast implants and liposuction”(Hodgson), all as a result of the influence of the advertising environment. Yet despite these statistics, many people feel exempt from the influence of advertising, this is because “only 8% of an ad’s message is received by the conscious mind, the rest is worked and reworked deep within the recesses of the brain”(Kilbourne). This working and reworking of the ad’s subliminal message of the brain is exponentially increased by the amount of ad’s the average American is exposed to every day. On average, Americans are exposed to over three thousand advertisements per day and will have been spent two years of their lives watching advertisements on the Internet and television by the time they die. This two hundred and fifty billion dollar per year industry that we call advertising profits from the appeasement of its consumers but at the cost of the consumers mental state. The cost of this environment, however, goes much further than just the environment itself, and extends rather into the direct objectification and dehumanization of women.