Advertising: Information or Manipulation?
In today’s difficult economy who can afford to spend their hard-earned money carelessly? Americans want good quality and low prices, and businesses that advertise their product make saving money possible. Advertising was created for one reason, so businesses could make known their product (Black, Hashimzade, and Myles). Some consumers may argue that advertising is not informative, but that it is manipulative because some advertisements make false claims. Fortunately, there are regulations and consumer rights that promote truth in advertising. Consumers must embrace their rights to keep advertising the way it is meant to be. Advertising is meant to be informative and not manipulative, and consumers play a great role in promoting truth in advertising.
Advertising in America was created when businesses wanted to attract customers by providing information about their product or service (Black, Hashimzade, and Myles). Advertising has been used for many centuries, and was even used during the American Revolutionary War, 1775-1783. Businesses used different advertising techniques such as posters and signs to provide consumers with information about their products, and to persuade them to buy American. Before the war, Americans received their goods on ships from England. The American colonies won the war and became the United States of America. Now it was important for Americans to build a strong American economy (Milton 9). Even today American’s are partial to anything that says, “Made in America.” The economy thrives because of consumerism, so if advertising brings in more businesses than Americans benefit as well.
Americans continue to benefit from the use of product and s...
... middle of paper ...
...dleton, Kent R., Robert Trager, and Bill F. Chamberlain. The Law of Public
Communication. 5th ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2002. 299-341. Print.
Milton, Bess. Advertising. New York: Children’s Press, 2004. 9. Print.
Mitra, Anu, Mary Anne Raymond, and Christopher D. Hopkins. “Can Consumers
Recognize Misleading Content in a Media Rich Online Environment?.” Psychology & Marketing 25.7 (2008): 655-674. Business Source Complete. ESBCO. Web. 27 Oct. 2010. pdfviewer?vid=4&hid=13&sid=6735641b-1986-4a51-857c-c7676ec5d556%40sessionmgr12>. NAD Review. The Advertising Industry’s Process of Self-Regulation. Council of Better
Business Bureaus. 08 Mar. 2010. Web. 27 Oct. 2010.
.
“The Pepsi Cola Story.” Pepsi. PepsiCo, n.d. Web. 15 Oct. 2010.
.
All in all, the book Age of Propaganda: The Use and Abuse of Persuasion by Partkanis and Aronson points out the flaws in the advertising and marketing methods. The purpose of the four stratagems in marketing is to most effectively catch consumers’ attention and get them to buy their product. The strategies are pre-persuasion, source credibility, message and emotion. The authors point out that the race of corporations to beat one another to consumers has created a world of advertising that is cluttered with tactics that take away the truth of the product. If this trend continues, and these stratagems continue to be installed, our world will be littered with over-the-top and pointless campaigns.
A person is subjected to numerous advertisements throughout their everyday lives via television, applications, radios and the internet. Due to the massive numbers of advertisements seen by the public, advertisement designers pose manipulative tactics known as propaganda techniques. As seen in the article “Propaganda Techniques in Today’s Advertising,” the author Ann McClintock states and lists the seven tactics of propaganda used and seen unknowingly in common advertising. McClintock shares “One study reports that each of us, during an average day, is exposed to over five hundred advertising claims of various types” (McClintock 205). This factor causes advertisements to incorporate propaganda into their selling of products. Two advertisements which are composed for opposite audiences do not only contrast but are similar in the form in which they are portrayed to the audience.
Is advertising the ultimate means to inform and help us in our everyday decision-making or is it just an excessively powerful form of mass deception used by companies to persuade their prospects and customers to buy products and services they do not need? Consumers in the global village are exposed to increasing number of advertisement messages and spending for advertisements is increasing accordingly.
Competitors will use “less-bad claims” and will spread bad information on a product because even though their product may have some undesirable features, they are not as bad as features of a similar product. Calfee describes this procedure as giving the consumer a complete advantage in the “give and take of the marketplace” (124). There are many others who believe that advertising is more helpful to society than it is
Each year people are robbed due to false advertisement, or so they think. Sue Jozui in her passage suggests that the people should boycott the advertisement business. The author supports her argument by first listing ways the advertisers advertise the products. She continues by demonstrating the “personality”of the advertisers, and telling us what they do. Jozui’s purpose is to point the flaws in advertisement so that people can see what they are truly doing so they can boycott them. The author creates a bitter tone for the consumers. One can disagree with author Sue Jozui’s argument, the people should boycott the advertising business for false advertising, using celebrities to advertise, and to form rules to regulate advertisement.
Advertisements are one of many things that Americans cannot get away from. Every American sees an average of 3,000 advertisements a day; whether it’s on the television, radio, while surfing the internet, or while driving around town. Advertisements try to get consumers to buy their products by getting their attention. Most advertisements don’t have anything to do with the product itself. Every company has a different way of getting the public’s attention, but every advertisement has the same goal - to sell the product. Every advertisement tries to appeal to the audience by using ethos, pathos, and logos, while also focusing on who their audience is and the purpose of the ad. An example of this is a Charmin commercial where there is a bear who gets excited when he gets to use the toilet paper because it is so soft.
This book has opened a whole new perspective on advertising and the reasons we buy things and regret them later. Thinking that I have the urge for a McDonalds hamburger may feel real, or it might just be an elaborate, expensive advertising technique used to manipulate my buying behavior.
A reader will clearly understand whether the advertising influences people or not, also will recognize how advertising forces people to buy things they do not need. It is also important to distinguish between manipulation and influence. During the whole work, we will show exact examples and evidence of how actually advertising manipulates people and why we do not see it. On the other hand, we will also describe non-manipulative advertising and how people can avoid senseless purchase.
The digital information age has most certainly changed the face of our world. No matter where one looks, the effects of technological evolution can be seen. As recent as ten years ago, merchant companies were accustomed to using mass mailings, ad campaigns, and television commercials as their main form of advertising. Now, with e-commerce flourishing as strongly as ever over the Internet, these same merchants have a more powerful medium to utilize in advertising their products. In theory, there is nothing wrong with advertising fairly, honestly, and with the sole intent of selling products. Today, many of the advertisements on the Internet are not geared towards selling consumers honest and fair products. There are thousands of people who prey on the ignorant and computer illiterate. These advertisements are not always simply just on the Web, but they are in fact spread like wildfire to consumers through mass e-mailings.
Advertisers and corporations are liable for using modern and sophisticated forms of mind control to the extent level of brainwashing consumers, in order to manipulate their choices and their spending habits. Our society is being negatively impacted, by becoming a consumer driven society constantly distracted by overwhelming persuasive advertisements, as opposed to ideal informative advertisements. The most vulnerable and negatively impacted targets of persuasive advertising are the younger, less mature, and/or less knowledgeable and self-directed consumers. Ironically, it was once said “An advertising agency is 85 percent confusion and 15% commission” (Allen). It is quite clear that social benefits are not part of this equation. The harm and severe social related costs far outweigh any economic growth and benefits deemed necessary for advertising and marketing companies.
As a consumer in a world of constant advertising messages being flashed before my eyes, I am always wary of the truth of those messages that I see. It is terrible when consumers see an advertisement, whether it is in a magazine, television or any other medium, and they decide to make a purchase only to find out they are not getting what they originally planned or have to pay more than they had expected. Deceptive advertisements have been a problem since the early days of media and consumers have needed to keep an eye out for them. Yet, with so many advertisements that consumers are exposed to each day, worrying about the truth of every line and every sentence of an ad is quite inconvenient. Advertisers must follow strict guidelines to stay clear of lawsuits resulting from deceptive advertisements. I will be focusing on automobile advertisements and how consumers have been deceived through their ads.
Advertisements are located everywhere. No one can go anywhere without seeing at least one advertisement. These ads, as they are called, are an essential part of every type of media. They are placed in television, radio, magazines, and can even be seen on billboards by the roadside. Advertisements allow media to be sold at a cheaper price, and sometimes even free, to the consumer. Advertisers pay media companies to place their ads into the media. Therefore, the media companies make their money off of ads, and the consumer can view this material for a significantly less price than the material would be without the ads. Advertisers’ main purpose is to influence the consumer to purchase their product. This particular ad, located in Sport magazine, attracts the outer-directed emulators. The people that typically fit into this category of consumers are people that buy items to fit in or to impress people. Sometimes ads can be misleading in ways that confuse the consumer to purchase the product for reasons other than the actual product was designed for. Advertisers influence consumers by alluding the consumer into buying this product over a generic product that could perform the same task, directing the advertisement towards a certain audience, and developing the ad where it is visually attractive.
Advertising plays a significant role in today’s society. It allows us to understand trends and important facts about what our world is being shaped into. We use ads as motivation in corporate settings and within our day to day lives. Without the motivation to purchase a product many of us would not buy most of the things we have. It is just important to remember to use the essential values and ethical behaviors of advertising.
...maintain that advertising exists primarily to create demand among consumers. People have certain types of wants and needs, and they are perfectly capable to discover it for themselves. People today just need food, clothing and shelter everything else is superfluous and additional stuff. Advertising are able to create demand that would not exist just by manipulating people’s min and emotions. Advertising is master in manipulate reality and fantasy, by creating “magic show.” It is true that advertising has been a powerful mechanism that distorts our whole society’s values and priorities. On the other hand, advertising educate people about several issues. In political terms, it moves mass of people and persuade them to vote for a candidate. And, of course, in terms of economy, contributes in the development through the consumption of the costumer.
We buy every product for a reason and if there wasn’t a such thing as advertisement we would be buying products for no reason. There would be no competition between businesses and no product would be unique and different from products that have the same purpose, some people prefer to wash dishes with Dawn dishwashing liquid over Joy dishwashing liquid even though they have the exact same purpose. In some way one dishwashing liquids advertising was better than the other which makes the consumer prefer one dishwashing liquid over the other. In modern time we will all be advertised at almost 24/7 until we die. But if you really just take a look at the products that you 're buying and ask yourself why you 're buying that product it might help you be more efficient in buying the products that you think are better, when in reality you’re just feasting on all the advertisement that that product and company is feeding you when really that product isn’t the best and actually isn 't really that good compared to all of the others that didn’t stand out to