Our Lives are Crowded with Products

Advertising in a mass consumer society such as America is a very competitive industry. Advertising companies continually come up with new and more creative techniques of increasing sale. Advertising companies decide which group of people would be more attracted to a specific product and link that product to the feelings of excitement and anxiety of the targeted customers. The ads are carefully crafted bundles of images, frequently designed to associate the product with feelings of pleasure stemming from deep-seated fantasies and anxieties (Craig 197). For example, usually advertisements of beer and cars demonstrate masculine men, loners and free of

Commercials, such as the 2012 Chevy Silverado Super Bowl commercial, have become part of people’s everyday life, constantly shocking, exciting, and engaging people with the meaning behind them. People see commercials every time they turn on the TV and file the information away for later situations, such as information about a cell phone data plan or a new vehicle just announced available. Each commercial watched promotes some sort of cause, object, or idea that companies want to sell to the common person. Commercials use symbolism, imagination, ethics, logic, and emotion to sell these things using their promoting techniques, one strong example of these things in action being the 2012 Chevy Silverado Super Bowl commercial.

The ad relies mostly on pathos and logos. This is seen throughout the video, as the Hyundai Sonata car provides evidence of how it is more appealing and useful than the Toyota. For instance, the Hyundai has a panoramic sunroof and Android auto which adds safety and efficiency. The Toyota Camry in comparison doesn’t have any of those features. Additionally, the Hyundai mentions that it is covered by America’s best warranty unlike the Toyota. Thus, it is evident that the advertisement uses evidence and authority to attract the

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.

“There are over 250 billion advertisements released to the public every year with the average person seeing over 3000 ads every single day” (Kilbourne). This is an astronomical amount of information for anyone to process in a week let alone in one day. This is a prime example of Capitalism at it’s finest. Controlling the consumer in every aspect of their lives. Jean Kilbourne also talks about how “Only 8 percent of an advertisement is actually processed by the conscious mind, with the other 92 percent being soaked up by the subconscious” (Kilbourne). Thinking about those numbers really brings into perspective how much we are truly influenced by media

In this documentary, PBS uncovers the evolution of marketing. Marketing has moved from targeting large groups, to targeting individuals and smaller segments. With so many messages being transmitted through the media, the line between what is being absorbed and what is not has become blurred. Getting through the clutter is difficult. Every thing is done to break through the clutter. Therefore, marketers need to market to only those who really want to hear the message, and to get those people that hear that message, to have an emotional response to it.

Do we want basic cereal or the fancy kind that athletes promote, or can we live with a plain shirt or do we want the one with a guy riding a horse emblem? These want that stray away from our basic needs are all driven by advertisement. No one is born wanting a Gucci shirt, they are taught and conditioned to want one. The Frontline documentary, “The Persuaders”, delves into the world of advertisement in order to explore different aspects of the industry that drives our desire.

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

Commercials airing on the television or radio, the billboards on the side of the freeways trying to grab your attention to buy their product, even while scrolling through various social media platforms, we go through our day to day lives with advertisements all around us. In Jack Solomon’s essay, Masters of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising, he states that the main purpose of all these advertisements is to show us our unhappiness within the American dream. He goes on to describe the differences in these advertisements which are known as the populist ads and the elite ads. Solomon's description of the contradiction between populism and elitism very much affects the way advertising and media is portrayed in American society.

Being in a spiralling economy, the automobile industry must step up their games to produce attractive advertisements. Creativity is crucial to attract potential buyers and gain more sales. To target specific prospects through ads, the automobile industry usually apply rhetoric concepts to enhance their product’s appeal in every way, and not just purely on the automobile designs. As men are the main target audience, car ads are usually being advertised as appealing and dangerous. Nevertheless, there are other important aspects to be highlighted as well, which can be perfectly marketed with certain rhetoric aspects. Although automobile ads always target the male audience, the industry also understands how partners or family can influence in purchase

When analysing all of the advertising around us, sometimes we don’t look at what the true message of a commercial really is. We live in a world that is controlled by mass media and because of this advertisers are trying harder each year to outdo themselves and their competitors. Rhetors use techniques in their advertisements such as fantasies or surrealism to catch the attention of their audience. Companies like Audi pour millions of dollars into their marketing teams to make sure their cars look the best and attract consumers. Commercials that are shown on television today are great examples of rhetorical artifacts because of the many techniques being exercised by the rhetor. Analyzing this through the lens of rhetorical

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

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.

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

Advertising is a persuasive communication attempt to change or reinforce one’s prior attitude that is predictable of future behavior. We are not born with the attitudes for which we hold toward various things in our environment. Instead, we learn our feelings of favorability or unfavorability through information about the object through advertising or direct experience with the object, or some combination of the two. Furthermore, the main aim of advertising is to ‘persuade’ to consumer in order to generate new markets for production.