The Daily You Analysis

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

“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

In today’s mass media, it is quiet common for advertisers to assimilate class into their commercials. These advertisements portray a certain level of elegance because of the sophisticated choice to use classical background music and thick European accents. On the contrary, other advertisers take the common-folk approach by structure these commercials around the western concept. Both of these advertising tactics supports an American paradox. As argued in Jack Solomon’s “Master of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising”, the contradiction lies in the desire to strive above the crowd and the quest for social equality.

The rise in advertisement played a key role in the rise of consumption. Thanks to well-developed advertisement campaigns, America redefined what a necessity is. Advertisers encouraged Americans to actively work towards maintaining a high social standing. “Advertisers made no secret of their intention to promote novelty for its own sake, in the hope that consumers would exchange perfectly serviceable goods for goods that conformed to the latest fashions” (Lasch, 2000). Consumers devoured this advertisement scheme and began to rapidly increase their spending. Many advertisements for common, household products made claim that they could make the normal appear comparable to the high end. For example, Lux, a soap company, ran an ad in 1920 that depicted two women talking - one of the women complemented on the other on the quantity of sweaters she owned, only to find out that it is not a new sweater, but rather her old sweater that Lux soap made it look brand new (Lux)! Men and women alike began to believe

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.

We humans first concern ourselves with our survival needs: air, food, water and protection from predators. Once we believe that we have obtained all these needs we then look for a mate, we try to make a social connection and have an approval from society. No matter what the outcome entitles, we are never satisfied, never happy. Our minds become bored, needing constantly something to occupy them with a new challenge. A particular set of people know this; taking advantage of our easily controlled attention, advertisers. Advertisers manipulate us to purchase unnecessary things, products that we have no need for, they convince us to be “devoted narcissists”. We are bound to associate brand names that instantly bestow status upon us. Making us believe

People who are swayed by consumption typically are not conscious about their decisions and show low levels of self-clarity. Believing that products are the answer to their identity and invest their values on buying happiness. Unfortunately, that’s most likely not the case. “You, happier? No.

In an average day, an American is exposed to over 3000 advertisements, (Kilbourne). Whether they want to admit it or not, they are drawn toward them. A common scheme of the advertisers is to allow the consumer to “picture the new them.” Whether this be a wealthier them, a skinner them, or a prettier them, they gear there product towards every person and want everyone be able to connect with the advertisement and picture the “new them.” American Idol, Nutrisystem, and The Biggest Loser, the lottery, and many other “products” promote that anyone has the chance to be famous, fit, or fortunate. The successes from these “products” present themselves as they were before, with the sob story that hopefully touches a nerve with

We live in a country where television and advertisement is designed to entice people into always wanting more than what they already have. This enticement is achieved by feeding into the human desire for happiness. Advertisers create persuasive campaigns that inundate the public with images of societies narrow interpretation of success and beauty. These images are then presented as a precondition to the happiness that human beings are searching for. When a person’s reality does not match this narrow image, the message sent through television and advertisements is that in order to be content people need to find a way to acquire it. As a result we live in a society where people are continuously longing for a happiness that

Happiness can be described as the one emotion that makes the world bearable for many people or a least the promise of happiness does. Happiness is seen as a virtue in America, something that should be obtained or pursued in order to live a satisfying life. In today’s world there are many products out here that are supposed to help buyers find said happiness or at least make the pursuit of it more efficient. Advertisements have long been seen as one of the most efficient and helpful way to inform consumers about products. However, with people’s growing apprehension towards advertisements due to false ads or advertising scams, the advertisement agencies have had to change their approach to advertising in order to continue gaining consumers purchases. It’s this new approach of emotional and psychological appeal that has led to advertising that has wrought emotional havoc on our everyday emotional states. This is also a contributing factor in America’s growing obsession with happiness. Due to our consistently being surrounded by advertisements we have created a skewed sense of happiness along with other positive emotions by replacing healthy life experiences with goods and services that pretend to provide the same, if not better experiences, but without the same results.

The 1980s was a crucial time in the development of advertising. People were fed up with the trials and struggles of the 1960s. These struggles indicated signs of what the future would be like in the 1980s and people started working to make the future different. Society use to work together for mutual interests but slowly changed to focusing more on their own personal interests. This change affected culture, politics, and education. It was the beginning of the ‘the me’ generation. People were only concerned about themselves and consumption was about self-expression and individuality. People started becoming committed to making a lot of money and also did a lot of spending. It was a generation fixated on fulfilling expressive lifestyle arbitrated through rich consumption and a stylized demonstration of the accomplishment self (Featherstone,

Therefore, the needs are essential for the person’s existence while wants are essential for comfortable and cozy living. Gilbraith wrote in his essay that modern production creates the wants that it seeks to satisfy through advertising which is exactly what the “Dependence effect” is. He called ads “a system to create needs” (Gilbraith). Those created needs are what we call artificial wants. Аdvertising stimulates false needs, that are imposed on people’s minds - false desires that would not occur without advertisements. The user responds inadequately by submitting fаlse information about his or her needs. The circle advertising → false needs (called artificial wants) → wrong signals → unnecessary goods → advertising turns infinitely and distorts the society’s perception of what the real meaning of needs and wants is. All these wants are artificially created by advertising and are designed to support a person’s comfortable way of living. They are not essential for one’s survival. And just because of that reason, corporations spend millions of dollars each year in order to develop well-planned advertisements that are so powerful they can create artificial wants which in turn are essential for a companies’ prosperity.

Every day, Americans are surrounded by countless advertisements. On the way to work, billboards and radio ads bombard the senses. Most ads are quickly forgotten while others stick with the audience. What makes some ads memorable and others forgettable? The product may be visually appealing, from a desirable brand, or presented as a solution to the viewer’s problem such as anti-aging cream for wrinkles. Such is the case for an ad for The Venetian resort and casino in Vanity Fair, a high-end magazine. Featured in the ad is an older woman sitting invitingly on a luxurious white bed with bountiful pillows. This ad may appeal to a high socio-economic class of viewers with a desire to belong in a high-class society in accordance with a term called snob appeal (134), coined by Stuart Hirschberg, the Associate Professor at Rutgers University. The argument suggests advancing age will not interfere with having fun by targeting a specific audience, using unconventional visual appeals, a logical text structure, The Venetian’s status to establish credibility, and opportune timing.