Misinterpreting Inappropriately In Advertising

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Approaching Inappropriate Images Appropriately in Advertising People’s views are constantly evolving on what it means for a television advertisement to be considered inappropriate. Therefore, companies have to play a balancing act to be as least offensive as possible in their advertising, but they also have to take risks to be competitive. In both the 1990’s and in the 2010’s, inappropriate images on television commercials were alike and unalike in regards to misinterpretation, controversies, and sex appeal. A parallel between the two decades is that viewers of advertisements misinterpreted what companies were trying to say in their ads. However this misinterpretation is more common in the modern decade. Controversies revolving around inappropriate …show more content…

Everything that is advertised in commercials can be considered inappropriate because it upsets someone one way or another, since everyone has different beliefs. In the last thirty years commercials have expanded to more viewers since people seem to watch more television and use more social media. This expansion allows for greater viewership and a faster response time by viewers on applications like twitter, but this increase of viewers also creates a larger grey area of what is acceptable, since each individual has their own morals. For a television ad to not be okay nowadays it has to be accepted by most and be inoffensive to all groups. This is harder than the 90’s because people now can showcase their anger quickly and publicly through social media, hurting the company’s …show more content…

One study that looked at sex appeal in television ads for sporting events between 1997 and 2000 concluded that “commercials for health and beauty products continue to show conventionally beautiful, young models,” since beauty sells (Wearden and Creedon 206). The use of sex appeal being timeless can also be seen in the year 2010, when Pepsi released an ad starring celebrities with all of the female stars just wearing armor to protect their private areas, which placed emphasis on their thin bodies and curves (Tarsem). If it is still working for companies like Pepsi now after all of these years of using beauty, it means they are still making money off the idea of females showing skin on

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