How Advertising Affects Our Society Essay

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 is not only used to sell products, it also affects the ideas of who we are. Each and every day we are induced to believe that we must spend money to attain an ideal

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.

Unfortunately, advertising is sending our country into a quick downward spiral, doing an immense amount of harm and little good. Companies pay millions of dollars each year, in hopes to successfully pull the wool over our eyes and get their product sold. The dishonesty is leaving the citizens of this country with nothing to gain. The biggest problem with advertising is that the majority of it is alarmingly misleading. Advertisements convey an unrealistic view of a particular product. Companies go to extraordinary lengths to persuade consumers to indulge in unnecessary luxuries. Once again, the consumer falls victim to their tricks and

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.

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.

We seek often to tar advertising as propaganda, something we have labeled an almost “dirty word”, but at it’s core what is propaganda? Propaganda is the propagation of ideas, a concept so basic that it exists everywhere in our society. We do this in our kindergartens and our high schools (Source C) - we use this to teach. We need a way to communicate with large groups of people, to spread ideas. People should have a way to know where to buy the most affordable homes, the healthiest drink, the most suitable car (Source C). Advertising is a way of bring information directly to the consumer, a way of mass communication to the masses. We need a way to make our voices heard. It is not the medium itself that causes the pain the darker side brings, but the ideas that lie behind it that shape the impact of advertising. Despite the ability of advertising to put us in the dark, it can also shine a light. Advertising doesn’t only have the potential to make life easier, it has the ability to make us better. It can hammer message we might not want to hear or easily forget, let people know the dangers of drunk driving, not using a seat belt, or doing drugs (Source D). With the same pervasive nature that drives us to do silly frivolous things, it can motivate us to do something useful for our society, give us a

The beginning of the twentieth century signaled a major transformation in the United States that brought about a new economy based on consumption and mass production. The onset of new technologies that were developed towards the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century had affected the entire U.S. populace, which ultimately led to a society marked by a whole new lifestyle centered around technology, music, and entertainment. These new technologies not only affected every facet of American life, but they had also helped to revolutionize the American advertising industry spurred by the creation of new mediums between the consumer society and the marketers. Through the creation of the radio, and later the television, the advertising agencies were able to play a very influential role in the mediation of commodities to consumers. However, the success of the

Advertising has been defined as the most powerful, persuasive, and manipulative tool that firms have to control consumers all over the world. It is a form of communication that typically attempts to persuade potential customers to purchase or to consume more of a particular brand of product or service. Its impacts created on the society throughout the years has been amazing, especially in this technology age. Influencing people’s habits, creating false needs, distorting the values and priorities of our society with sexism and feminism, advertising has become a poison snake ready to hunt his prey. However, on the other hand, advertising has had a positive effect as a help of the economy and society.

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.

media by way of advertising. The price a consumer may have to pay to receive

     However, with every positive side comes a negative, and advertising is no different. Advertising has been blamed for a great variety of negative social impacts. One of the major criticisms received by advertising is that it forces people to buy things they don’t really need, often projecting negative emotions such as fear, anxiety of guilt upon the consumer (Engel). It is claimed that advertising plays with our basic human emotions and takes advantage of them, using them as merely another technique to sell goods or services.

Advertising today focuses on specific targeted demographic groups. There is a direct focus on marketing products to young consumers. This age group sees the commercials, but does not really understand the directed message. This can have an adverse effect on the way children interpret and understand the message being presented to them. 'The average American child sees more than 40,000 commercials a year, and advertisers spend more than $12 billion annually marketing to them?double the amount of 10 years ago.' (APA-1) Children watching television are exposed to every channel running commercials that are sending out a mature message to an immature audience. There needs to be something done to

Advertising is said to be like glue that holds cultures together. It allows us to share a common experience incorporated by brands, images, logos, and even silly jingles. We define who we are by what we buy and wear because we know that others judge us by what we buy and wear. And advertising influences those judgments. Today because of advertisements conditioning and trendsetting, judgments are made on what clothes people wear, what shampoo and kitchen cleaner they use, not on whom we really are. This leads to a certain degree of social discrimination and emotional insecurity especially in younger population.