Charles ONeill's The Language Of Advertising

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

Advertising has come a long way in terms of advancement with the enlightenment of the new technological age we live in now. In James Twitchell’s essay “What We Are to Advertisers,” the author explains that mass production means mass marketing, and mass marketing means the creation of mass stereotypes. Generally, the use of stereotypical profiling in our society not only exists in regards to race, social class, personality type, and gender but also holds a special meaning in advertising circles as well. To advertisers, stereotyping has become an effective means to pitch their products according to the personality profiles they have concocted for us and are most times eerily accurate. For instance, according to advertisers, the daytime

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).

As the article “what we are to Advertisers” by James B Twitchell informs that Advertisers use the strategy of positioning to attract consumers to their product. Positioning is a marketing strategy that exerts a brand to get the attention of customers. The product itself doesn’t even have to attract the consumer, the advertiser just needs to make an ad that creates a spark into people's minds. Although a product might be similar to its competitors, an ad can make a difference with how they are interpreted. Twitchell makes to understand that even though all of us are put into a category, we somehow all connect.

“Introducing the lasted, newly improved widget… anyone whose anyone has one… it is a must have!” These words sound familiar? This is due in part, because advertising today has taken such extreme measures to persuade the American public; materialism has become the most prominent and universal mentality. The need to have the newest and best has become an instilled characteristic of the average citizen. How, you may wonder, has the advertising industry become such a powerful entity? The answer is that propaganda has always played a vital role in society; this is not a new concept. Throughout history propaganda/advertising has been to entice, elude, and manipulate people.

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

He and Lutz’s arguments coincide on the grounds that advertising is primarily about selling a product, and that there is unique language involved in doing so. O’Neill suggests that “Advertising is nothing more than the delivery system for salesmanship” and asserts that it is the consumer, not the advertisers, with the power to buy or not buy a good or service. He later delves into the many techniques used by advertising agencies, from their unique advertising speak to the powerful imagery used to capture the attention of their demographic.

Over the last few decades, American culture has been forever changed by the huge amount of advertisement the people are subjected to. Advertising has become such an integral part of society, many people will choose whether or not they want to buy a product based only on their familiarity with it rather than the product’s price or effectiveness. Do to that fact, companies must provide the very best and most convincing advertisements as possible. Those companies have, in fact, done

For advertisements sell distracting, purposeless visions? … Perhaps, by learning how advertising works, we can become better equipped to sort out content from hype, product values from emotions, and salesmanship from propaganda” (O'Neill 416). As O’Niell states, advertisements often change a consumer’s mind through persuasiveness and use of rhetorics. To some extent, consumers are not given the chance to buy a product because they faithfully trust it, rather because they are duped into believing it is a fantastic product than what it is worth. This is shocking because a consumer’s decision making power is stolen by the corporations. Corporations want maximum profit and use of their product, so they are more likely to use insincere language to persuade the consumer the best way possible.

He states, “There’s is a flaw in the argument in that advertising can’t be democratic, because it can only appeal to the people who can afford to buy the things they are selling.”(99 Miller). Miller asserts that television shows are now made around the advertisements, with the product being placed within the show or being “repetitions of the ads themselves.”(98) Miller concludes that advertising works like all propaganda, despite your will or reason. It is working on a more visceral subconscious level rather than a persuasive level as many advertisers think it

Advertising invades every aspect of our modern lives. It is shoved upon us from every aspect of media. Internet, television, radio, movies, and even our streets seem to be centered on it. We are asked to buy, try, and consume the next best thing. While most things advertised are meaningful and can possibly be used to either help or make our lives better, we do not necessarily need it. Mostly what we are exposed to in advertising is propaganda, and to define it better, the authors of the book, “Propaganda and Persuasion” state propaganda as the following, “Propaganda is the deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the

Advertisements are a huge part of our everyday lives. We see different types of ads everywhere we look; while watching television, listening to the radio, riding on the bus and even walking around your school campus. It seems like the whole world is being flooded by advertisements.

“A good campaign doesn’t just offer the right product to the right consumer. It gets them emotionally stimulated.”*(2)This is a quote proudly stated on the homepage of an advertiser. The media have convinced us through thousands of lies every day that we are inadequate in every way. That we need everything and that it must always be new and fashionable, and we must keep up with the Joneses. Its better to buy the more expensive name brand, just for the sake of status. A slew of must have clothes, shoes, and home decor for each season, and seasonal commercialized holidays can enhance our status in our community and also feed this consumerist lie. This lie we hold so dear manipulates us into perceiving a need where it didn’t exist before and also giving the means of satisfying that need and achieving our need for status and self-importance. You’re considered ugly if you don’t buy this; you’ll be beautiful if you use this product or that.The commercialism of today is so advanced at lying to the world they have physiologists figuring out how to make you think you need something. One of the best ways they have found is to manipulate people, is our children to get to our pocket; companies invest deeply into convincing people, and their children they need stuff to be happy and it is a mindset that continues throughout life. It has been a profoundly effective lie; it has made