Imagine it is the end of another stressful day at work, you take the 5 pm subway across town, finally, home. You sit down on the nice leather couch, broken in by the years of use. Engulfed by the warmth and comfort that you have succumbed to so many times before. You click on the T.V, expecting to hear the Channel 2 News, but first, commercials. Mindless gulps of information that go by way too fast to make sense. These commercials that you are exposed to, for hours in a week, for days in a year. How does this relate to you? They are advertisements; something that is synonymously irrelevant to your life. Prepare to be bombarded with an idea that will blow your mind.
In the 21st century, advertising has become a topic so unique to its audience that it really is all about YOU. In more professional terms, “Advertising is the paid, impersonal, one-way marketing of persuasive information from an identified sponsor disseminated through channels of mass communication to promote the adoption of goods, services or ideas. ” (UNCP). It is created for every viewer, and has acclimated in that sense. Over the course of the past century, advertising has grown significantly and differs in many ways. As a result of this adaptation, two major strategies emerged; Honest advertising and Subliminal advertising. These two contradict each other by the virtue of their many characteristics and is arduous to establish which of them is more favorable in society. “Hence, the purpose of advertising is to assist the consumer to make informed-purchase decision by creating awareness about product. ” (Mahapatra). Honest advertising grasps the overall goal of marketing in a much more practical method because it provides many perks to society opposed to sublimina...
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... also be called the "too-good-to-be-true technique" or the "omitting details technique" (Ten Steps to Improving College Reading Skills). This is common in political campaigns and competitive branding because it provides an exaggerated amount of information to drown out the other side. Another frequently used propaganda style is referred to as the plain folks method. This is due to the idea that people more often distrust rich, white candidates because they tend to not understand the problems of the lower class. “Candidates often try to show that they are just "plain folks" by referring in their speeches to how poor they were when they were growing up or how they had to work their way through school. ” In essence, this is lying because if it were not for the propaganda, the viewer would likely form a different opinion of the candidates as they correctly should.
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.
Today’s commercials cloud the viewers’ brains with meaningless ritzy camera angles and beautiful models to divert viewers from the true meaning of the commercials. The advertisers just want consumers to spend all of their hard-earned money on their brand of products. The “Pepsi” and “Heineken” commercials are perfect examples of what Dave Barry is trying to point out in his essay, “Red, White and Beer.” He emphasizes that commercial advertisements need to make viewers think that by choosing their brands of products, viewers are helping out American society. As Rita Dove’s essay “Loose Ends” argues, people prefer this fantasy of television to the reality of their own lives. Because viewers prefer fantasy to reality, they become fixated on the fantasy, and according to Marie Winn in “Television Addiction,” this can ultimately lead to a serious addiction to television. But, one must admit that the clever tactics of the commercial advertisers are beyond compare. Who would have thought the half naked-blondes holding soda cans and American men refusing commitment would have caught viewers’ attention?
In the end, I find that Robert Scholes is correct in his conclusion that commercials hold a certain power, with which they can alter our decisions whether or not to buy a product. Through visual fascination, we are offered images we could never have on our own; through narrativity, we are told what to think and how to think it; and finally through cultural relativity we connect with the rest of the world. When these three forces are combined by advertising, our brains cannot help themselves, we allow ourselves to become brainwashed by corporate America. This is why Robert Scholes feels that Reading a Video Text should be taught in school.
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.
We see advertisements all around us. They are on television, in magazines, on the Internet, and plastered up on large billboards everywhere. Ads are nothing new. Many individuals have noticed them all of their lives and have just come to accept them. Advertisers use many subliminal techniques to get the advertisements to work on consumers. Many people don’t realize how effective ads really are. One example is an advertisement for High Definition Television from Samsung. It appears in an issue of Entertainment Weekly, a very popular magazine concerning movies, music, books, and other various media. The magazine would appeal to almost anyone, from a fifteen-year-old movie addict to a sixty-five-year-old soap opera lover. Therefore the ad for the Samsung television will interest a wide array of people. This ad contains many attracting features and uses its words cunningly in order to make its product sound much more exciting and much better than any television would ever be.
In order to generate sales, marketers often promote aggressively and uniquely, unfortunately, not all marketing advertisements are done ethically. Companies around the globe spend billions of dollars to promote new products and services and advertising is one of the key tools to communicate with consumers. Conversely, some methods that marketers use to produce advertisements and to generate sales is deceptive and unethical. Ethical issues concern in marketing has always been noted in marketing practice. According to Prothero (2008), ethics itself has a profound, varied and rich past. It emphasizes on questions of right and wrong or good and bad.
Nowadays, advertisements are everywhere embedded in our daily life. They are powerful resources that inform people the latest news about a particular product or brand in many different ways. Most of the people are being able to get more information and detail of a product from media, radio stations, newspapers and internet. Even though advertising is a big informative source, it also can be considered as a marketing tool to control the mind and desires of the consumers to manipulate and persuade them to buy things they do not need.
Advertisements are pieces of art or literary work that are meant to make the viewer or reader associate to the activity or product represented on the advertisement. According to Kurtz and Dave (2010), in so doing, they aim at either increasing the demand of the product, to inform the consumer of the existence, or to differentiate that product from other existing one in the market. Therefore, the advertiser’s aim should at all times try as much as possible to stay relevant and to the point.
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.
The theme of advertising can be seen in many different parts of our daily lives and has a large effect on what we chose to buy and who we support forum a retail standpoint. There are many ways advertisers attempting to influence us in all types of consuming media, magazines, newspapers, video games, social media, movies and the list goes on. All these different forms of media are used to go after and push the viewer into some understanding of the product and convince them of something. Exploring one of theses disciplines of media, we will find this overarching theme just as, predominantly, personalised website advertisements are a good example to use for this. The use of this highly targeted media is done in such a way that is always compliments whatever you are looking at or might wish to look at and every ad company uses
Whenever we turn on the television, open a magazine, or flip on a car radio, we are directly faced with advertisements for every product that is imaginable. Advertisement has been taken to a hold new level. For instance, in order to sell a product, advertisers will exploit the consumer's most personal feelings.
Advertising is an information source to inform people about the products and prices of the company, which can help them to make informed choices. More recently, a huge amount of money has been spent on advertising throughout the world. Different types of advertisement such as television, radio, magazine, newspaper, the internet, billboards and posters can influence consumer’s behavior positively or negatively as there are different arguments and opinions. This essay will focus on the purpose of the advertisement for the company, the positive and negative effects of the advertisement on consumer behavior. According to Shimp (2007), there are five important factors which determine the purpose of an advertisement in terms of marketers’ communication with consumers.
Advertisements are significant and necessary as they inform the consumer regarding the existence of a product. Without advertisements, it would be very difficult for consumers to find a product that is right for them. But it is also very important to control the emotions towards an ad and reconsider the claims claimed by the advertiser. Advertisements not only inform the people regarding new products or events but also persuade the people to purchase their product. Consumer must be able to determine the truthfulness of the claims an ad claims and then make the decision on whether or not to purchase a product. Often times, advertisements seduce consumer’s mind and consumers fail in controlling the innocent and emotional reaction towards the ad, and become the victim of misleading advertisements.
Advertising has been defined as the most powerful, persuasive, and manipulative tool that firms have to control consumers all over the world. It is a form of communication that typically attempts to persuade potential customers to purchase or to consume more of a particular brand of product or service. Its impacts created on the society throughout the years has been amazing, especially in this technology age. Influencing people’s habits, creating false needs, distorting the values and priorities of our society with sexism and feminism, advertising has become a poison snake ready to hunt his prey. However, on the other hand, advertising has had a positive effect as a help of the economy and society.
This chapter presents the problem statements, objective of the study, theoretical framework, significant of the study, and scope of the study. According to William J. Stanton, the definition if advertisement is consist of activities involved in presenting to an audience a non-personal, paid-for message about a product or organization. Advertising is used to communicate with the present and potential customers. Advertisement is a non personal communication because the communication involved in mass media. The advertisement provides information about the firm, product’s qualities, and place of availability of the product. The information should be complete and true. Advertisement is essential for both the sellers and buyers. In the modern age of production, the manager can push the sale of their product increase with great advertisement. Every firm has advertising that need to tough competition in the market and adapt the fast changes with the new technology to gain more customers. A good advertisement involves creativity and high imagination that matches the expectation of the customers. According to World Health Organization (WHO) stated that the meaning of health is a state of a complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. Health advertisement was done to persuade people to more concern about health and buy product that give benefit on their health.