Truth and Deception in Advertising

In his 1982 article, “Advertising’s Fifteen Basic Appeals,” Jib Fowles informs readers of various psychological human needs, defined as appeals. These appeals are used in advertising, to persuade consumers to purchase a product. Due to the prevalence of advertisements in today’s society, consumers have learned to block out advertisements. By using any of the fifteen appeals such as the need for sex, or the need for affiliation, companies can get into consumers’ minds, with hopes of selling their products. In other words, by appealing to consumers desires, the chance of marketing success

(Twitchell, p. 178) As if this tidbit of information was not enough to raise awareness of the bad side effects that come along with social media and advertising, a study was conducted recently to determine just how important advertisers found ethics to be; the results were shocking. It turns out that among twenty-nine different advertising agencies, two general groups were able to be formed: “those who feel ethics is largely irrelevant to advertising, and those who ‘typically recognized moral issues and talked about them inside the agency with their coworkers and outside the agency with their clients and potential clients.’” (Drumright and Murphy, 2009) Unfortunately, the majority of the agencies who were interviewed fell into the category of believing that ethics is largely irrelevant to advertising. Since ethics turn out to be of so little concern in the advertising industry, and since advertisements clutter social media, it is fair to conclude that said industries are not in existence to look out for consumers, but rather to provide a platform for sales and increased revenue.

Advertisements are an extremely prominent part of American society. Very few places exist that an individual can go without being exposed to some form of ad. From product placement to billboards, advertisements exist in nearly every facet of life. Marion Nestle discusses what she considers to be one of the more heinous forms of advertisement in her essay, “The Supermarket: Prime Real Estate.” Nestle uses several persuasive techniques to convince her audience of the evils of supermarkets. Her use of emotionally charged phrases paired with her more logical assertions help to drive her point home while her clear bias and lack of supportive source detract from her overall argument

Advertising is all around us. Companies of all sorts rely heavily on internet, television, print, and various other types of media outlets as means to reach their audience. Advertising aims to bring in more customers and thereby, more profit. All of this is complicated by the fact that, out of the vast number of products and services available, companies want to prove that theirs are the best. From this is born the tricky and unique language of advertising. In their respective articles, With These Words, I Can Sell You Anything and The Language of Advertising, both William Lutz and Charles A. O’Neill discuss popular ploys used by marketing advertisers to rope in the most customers. Lutz takes a

Advertisements all have one purpose, which is to make a customer aware of them so that the product or message being advertised can be brought to their awareness. The goal of gaining a person’s attention towards a product so that it can be bought is often achieved by appealing to the author’s credibility. An example can be seen in the American Red Cross Poster reveals that by giving blood, it brings communities together and it helps save lives of many (Red Cross). It can be seen that credibility is trying to be gained by showing that the audiences best interest is being made by stating that the blood would help save other lives and people would be closer together. Another example of the appeal to ethos can be seen in a passage from the book

Advertisements are a part of our everyday lives and we encounter thousands every day on television, in newspapers, on the radio, on the internet. Advertisements use three basic tricks to persuade the people as listed by Aristotle: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. Ethos is an appeal to ethics, and it is used to convince the viewer of the credibility. Pathos is an appeal to emotion and is used to convince the viewer by creating an emotional response. Logos is an appeal to logic and is used to persuade the viewer by logic. An advertisement may use one, two or a combination of all three. They have the power to persuade us into buying things that we might or might not want. Not every advertisement aims at materialistic things. Some advertisements want to educate us on a persistent issue, some might want to raise awareness and even aid funding, some try to remind us of important events that might be taking place in our county. The advertising agencies try to be as creative as possible in order to grab utmost attention. But sometimes, in doing so, they end up hurting sentiments of a community of people. I will discuss one such advertisement in my journal below.

The article Advertising: The Whole or Only Some of the Truth by Tibor R. Machan states that only telling the partial truth is ethical in advertising. I completely agree with the author’s standpoint and am trying to defend his viewpoints by supporting in four aspects. Firstly, I am going to prove Machan’s position that sales associates are selling a combination of product, environment and service. Although there will be various prices for the same product at different stores, sales associates are not obligated to provide all of the locations that sell the product, and the price of said product at each location.

The author of the mock press release of The Onion use strategies that ridicule how products are marketed to consumers. The author supports their opinion by providing different strategies to try to get customers to invest in buying their product. The author appeals to their audience by attempting to establish literary credibility.

In American consumer society, it is common knowledge that businessmen are rarely 100% truthful. Exaggerated advertisements, cheapened materials, and other similar practices have become part of business. The topic of debate, however, is whether this dishonesty in business is ethical. According to Albert Carr in the article “Is Business Bluffing Ethical?”, bluffing is morally acceptable within the parameters of doing business.

Each day we are bombarded with advertisements from a plethora of corporations in every waking moment of our lives. Advertising agencies have become so advanced at what they do, that often times we may not even realize we are being advertised a product. This raises an interesting ethical dilemma over a certain type of advertising: persuasive advertising. Philosophers, economists, and business professionals have debated over whether or not persuasive advertising is an immoral violation of the autonomy of consumers. While not all forms of advertising are in and of themselves certainly immoral, persuasive advertising is particularly reprehensible due to the fact that not only does it manipulate our unconscious desires of which we are completely unaware in order to sell a product, but it also routinely leads us to act against our own best interest, thus overriding our autonomy.

According to Bassham et al. (2002), a logical fallacy is “an argument that contains a mistake in reasoning” (p. 140). There are two types of logical fallacies, fallacies of relevance, and fallacies of insufficient evidence. Fallacies of relevance happen when the premises are not logically relevant to the conclusion. Fallacies of insufficient evidence occur when the premises do not provide sufficient evidence to support the conclusion. Though there are several logical fallacies, four logical fallacies commonly found in advertising are amphiboly, appeal to authority, appeal to emotion, and non sequitur.

Companies involved in targeted advertising also have to deal with ethical issues. According to a study conducted by JL Davis on decision making in advertising, most of advertising experts were influenced only by legal actions, while ethics contributed as the minor factor. Based on the study of Wallace Snyder, advertising ethics, especially targeted advertising, is often given little attention until the company is compelled to make a response when challenged by the law (Snyder 2008). Some consumers haven’t been aware of that their privacy are stolen. Even if consumers were aware of online

Serving the public is the best thing in the world . For the sake of serving people Advertising, public relations, marketing communications, news, and editorial all share a common objective of truth and high ethical standards. Research suggest that consumers do believe in honest and ethical advertising. Now the industry has started growing and they have committed to highest standards of truth and accuracy. Professionals have to build and maintain consumer trust so that they can

SS. Where a reasonable person can understand product packaging and advertisement, the Court should dismiss false advertising complaints against it. See Freeman v. Time, Inc., 68 F.3d 285, 290 (9th Cir. 1995). The facts in this case do not reveal any breach of law. Therefore, the Court should grant Prairie Foods’ motion to dismiss because the claim that the packaging for “Complete Blueberry Pomegranate” cereal is “misleading” is unfounded. California Business and Professional Code § 17500.

Advertising and promotion, ethical pitfall: Issues over truth and honesty. Issues with violence, sex and profanity. Taste and controversy and negative advertising