Negative Long term 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.

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.

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

The space I chose to observe and write about for this essay is ULTA Beauty in the Greenwood Mall. In this analysis, I will be focusing on the impact of advertisements and products within class, gender, and beauty through the study of semiotics, connotation, and denotation. ULTA sells haircare products, skin care products, perfumes and cologne, high end makeup brands, and drug store makeup brands as well.

Sexualizaton and objectification in the advertisements we see and the media we watch has become a very strong issue in our society. With the idea that “sex sells”, consumers don’t even realize that they’re not viewing the advertisements for what they are, but for the women (or men) that are being portrayed in a very erotic way, posed with whatever product they were hired to sell. Many articles have been written so far to challenge and assess this problem, but one written by Jean Kilbourne (1999), “”Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt”: Advertising and Violence” holds an extensive amount of authority. Using her personal experience with the subject, as well as studies she has conducted herself on the topic of sexualization, she talks about how the amount of sexualization in advertising affects how society views the culture and products consumers buy. She also notes that because of the quantity and prevalence of these ads, the rate of all forms of sexual assault, specifically rape (mostly towards women of all age), increase, as well as other forms of assault. It is important to examine Kilbourne’s use of rhetorical devices, such as ethos, pathos, and logos, and how effective these devices make her article. This way, it can be examined for its validity and her understanding of her own research. Kilbourne’s article is very effective through her uses of pathos and ethos, but at the same time, it loses its effectiveness through her absence of a counter-argument, as well as a lack

Today’s quick-moving world of technology has media texts such as advertisements to make sure that people understand with just a glance. Having adverts on magazines, social media and billboards allow them to use tools such as semiology, genre and narrative because it makes their messages clear instantly. These signs allow us to carry meaning through advertisements, connotations and the signification process. These tools let brands, mainly celebrities, and the option to produce and create a myth of the product such as “Be daring. Be an inspiration” to sell it to the world. We are in a time where advertisers use ‘simplicity’ in their adverts; there are no more paragraphs. It is mainly down to the person and the few words shown in that advert.

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.

Ads sell much more than products. They sell moral values and cultural images, such as concepts of success, love, and sexuality. Jean Kilbourne argues that advertising is a very powerful social force that should be taken seriously. Her videos (e.g., Killing Us Softly: Advertising Images of Women; Still Killing Us Softly; and Calling the Shots: Women and and Alcohol) use print advertising as a vehicle to provide careful and cogent analyses of gender inequality. (Cortese 14)

Advertising is an over 100 billion dollar a year industry and affects all of us throughout our lives. We are each exposed to over 2,000 ads a day, constituting perhaps the most powerful educational force in society. The average American will spend one and one-half years of his or her life watching television commercials. The ads sell a great deal more than products. They sell images, makeup, skin and hair care, diet pills, and cosmetic surgery as a means of normalcy.

For my semiotic analysis essay i have chosen to evaluate the Oxfam’s ‘Lose yourself - Vintage’ campaign. This will be used to show how advertising uses codes to develop an image in order to attract customers. “Advertising is the official art of the advanced industrial nations of the west”, the industry uses a wide variety of techniques to get attract the audience. The placement of particular text, imagery, colours and other signs is an imperative aspect to what makes an advert successful.

The products and ideas in advertisements are ever changing but, the techniques in which the products and ideas are presented have remained vaguely the same. Kilbourne analyzed women’s advertisements ranging from late 1900’s to 2,000’s, even though these ads promoted different products they all had the same intention, to leave an imprint on an audience. Lantry on the other hand, analyzed much older advertisements. The advertisements which Lantry analyzed were from the early to mid 1900’s. Lantry’s ads may have been older, but they still had the same concept of leaving an imprint. When comparing the ads analyzed by both authors a clear pattern appears. The strategy of making a women need a product opposed from making her want a product is evident. Advertisers make it seem like buying or adopting a certain idea will make intended audience’s life better. An article on the brief history of ad’s for Cosmopolitans 2nd birthday mentions ‘"Most ads produced are often standardised international ones. The things that stand out tend to be special inserts and gatefolds."’ This statement is from 1997 almost 20 years ago, and both Kilbourne and Lantry would agree that it perfectly describes how advertisements are still produced

Advertisements are means for corporations to present and persuade the public into buying their products. However, the notion that they are simply selling a product overlooks the deeper realities of advertising which, sells us ideas, constructs, and understandings of the world around us. Societal values and consensual truths underpin the advertisement industry. I argue that the Axe excite commercial creates a distorted reality, where identities are depicted through familiar but exaggerated representations. I will use the concepts of partipulation, virgin/whore dichotomy, and race to understand the deeper subtexts of mainstream media.

The advertisement that I chose to analyse is the one of the most famous brands of perfumes around the world, Dolce & Gabbana, which was created in 1982 by two Italian designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana. Nowadays, texts of media, for example, advertisement, expect to pass on significance with a simple look. Through utilising or operating with a smart apparatuses, for example, semiotics, genre and narratives, implying that advertisement can effectively communicate with a simple look or appearance. It is the determination and blend of distinctive signs that permit us to pass on importance through the connotations that exists and what we give attention from diverse kind of signs.

The theory of semiotics, as proposed by Roland Barthes, has been used to analyze advertisements and the effectiveness of advertisements on viewers. In the articles that I researched that used semiotics to analyze particular advertisements, I found four common and related themes. First, the articles mentioned that the viewer determines the meaning of the advertisement or the viewer interprets the advertisement. Second, this meaning that the viewer assigns to the advertisement is largely determined by context, both social and cultural. Third, advertisers use culture and predominant cultural beliefs in their advertisements in efforts to reach their audience more effectively. Finally, these advertisements actually end up supporting the