Negative Effects Of Advertising

Magazines are popular in the United States; they can be found in stores, offices, and houses. They are popular for advertising. Television, news, radio, billboards and online websites are just a few forms of media that companies use to advertise their products or services. Companies use advertisements to influence the consumer to either buy or use their products and services. Advertisements are used to manipulate consumers in many ways.

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

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.

What is the Influence of Advertising on our children today? The influence of advertising on our lives, for both our children and us, for many years the influence of advertising has changed. Some people may remember when the advertisements of toy companies were directed at the adults instead of the kids, hoping that the adults might buy the products. Today’s advertisements have changed. Advertisements are more pervasive, sophisticated, and are now aimed directly at getting kids addicted to “products” at a very young age (Marconi, JM.). This goes to show that advertisers have realized that it is better to go right for the person who the product is for and not for the person that will be buying it for someone else. So how has advertising

Nine hundred sixty three million dollars was spent this year by McDonalds on advertising. This is up 8 percent from last year. The sad truth is that the number of fast-food ads produced each year is increasing, as well as the percentage of obese people in the United States. Advertisements of high in sugar and calorie foods are almost directly related to obesity within America. There needs to be a stop to this epidemic. Companies spend vast amounts of money to put out an enormous amount of ads. Many of which are viewed by children ages 2-11. On average children in the US see about 253 McDonald’s ads a year. One might see common fast-food ads on TV, billboards, or just about anywhere else in the media. Advertising is a growing market and it is expanding all the time. There is no way to can cut them out of your life.

Save money. Live better Walmart! Their slogan has a nice ring to it. Whether it’s on the radio, a billboard or a halftime commercial, there is a small chance that the average consumer would not know the slogan by heart. Advertisements are a significant part of today’s culture because they influence everyday lives in both positive and negative ways. The concept of commercials is very controversial on whether they hold predominantly negative or positive effects on consumers. It is important to consider how the intense amount of propaganda used in commercials is having an adverse effect on the viewpoint of consumers. Commercial propaganda has a negative impact on consumers through their false realities and bandwagon appeal.

If you think excessive advertising is harmless and affects no one, sadly, you are absolutely wrong. Advertising has many problems and negative effects on people and you are right to be annoyed by the waves of ads you are attacked by everyday. The problem I chose to explain is advertising targeting teens & tweens, this affects people by draining them of money, priorities, and even their social obligations. However, you can solve this problem by educating yourself and being aware of all of the marketing techniques and ads that you, not just kids, are deluged with daily.

Today I went to the bathroom in Tyson’s mall, and I saw a Lenovo camera advertisement stuck in front of the stool. It made me feels like a camera recorded everything in the bathroom. No matter where you go, walking on the street, taking the bus or subway, looking for websites or watching TV shows you always see advertisements. So I believe advertisements are harmful.

According to Lefebvre, Goodman,Weinberg & Loughrey,(1995). Young children can be motivated to change their eating behavior to approach by telling them of the risks to their health or discussing the nutrient value of foods has not been effective. Behaviorally focused nutrition education targeted to children uses such strategies as exposure to foods in a positive social context, modeling by peers and adults, and appropriate use of rewards (Contento, I. et al. 1995).

Advertising is how a company encourages people to buy their products, services or ideas. An advertisement is anything that draws good attention towards these things. It is usually made by sponsors and are broadcasted using variety of media.

According to outlets such as Media Smarts, “Parents today are willing to buy more for their kids because trends such as smaller family size, dual incomes and postponing having children until later in life mean that families have more disposable income.” Being so, this allows children to have access to more devices in which they can watch TV wherever they go. Parents who have a higher income, and can afford to buy their children TV’s for their bedrooms and smartphones for daily use, they do it because they want to compensate for the time they do not spend with their children. Also according to Media Smart, “Today’s kids have more autonomy and decision-making power within the family than in previous generations, so it follows that kids are vocal about what they want their parents to buy.” One resulting cause can be that parents buy materialistic items because they are guilty that they can not afford to spend quality time with their children. Therefore, as a result children spend more hours inside watching TV instead of doing any other social activity. Additionally, more time spent watching TV means the more advertisements children are exposed to per day. Also with the usage of smartphones, children have access to the internet which collect information from recent searches and then presents children with personalized advertising.Therefore causing children to be influenced by these advertisements.

Every day we see advertisements all around us that are there to specifically persuade viewers to buy a product or donate money to a certain organization. While these organizations are morally good the authors of advertising continually come up with new ways of persuasion to, as stated before, persuade. As the endorser of the BCSPCA Sarah McLachlan persuades viewers to help abandoned and abused animals she appeals to our pathos, logos, and ethics while also applying weasel words, and multiple propaganda strategies.

Advertising has a large impact on today’s youth. This impact is largely created through use of commercials on television. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention published an article which explains that food commercials are one of the major components of advertising and they are leading to an increase in health and weight problems in children. In addition to this, psychologists such as Sandra L. Calvert have discovered that commercials give children a distorted sense of reality and can lead to personality conflicts. Parents and scientists alike have found that advertisements also can cause self esteem issues in young people, and this is a major concern. In conclusion, the negative effects of advertising on children are alarming.

Advertisements are a way to promote sales of a product or service through visual communication. Magazine covers, advertisements or any publication embed a set of ideologies. O’Shaughnessy and Standler describe ideologies as “sets of social values, ideas, beliefs, feelings and representations by which people collectively make sense of the world they live in” (2012; 174). Ideologies try to “manipulate people into buying a way of life as well as goods” (Dyer, 1982:5). Adverts such as the Pravda vodka example above, which appeared in the January 2014 issue of GLAMOUR magazine add relevance to a product whether it’s a certain trend, desire or mutual value in order for the product to become a highly favoured commodity. Glamour magazine is popular amoungst young women of all races who are middle class citizens. This specific advert was used to introduce Pravda’s new vodka range aimed at women. It communicates ideologies of feminism, class, leisure, night life and enjoyment. The purpose of this essay is to use semiology to analyse the attached article. The Advertiser, “should do more than just label or identify the product; it should also bring flattering associations to mind, associations which will help to sell it.”(Dyer, 1982:141) and that is where semiology comes into play.