Advertisements became the most powerful tool companies use to create product awareness to audience through which they highlight the product or service benefits. Advertisements seen everywhere around us in magazines, TV channels, webpages and billboards in streets. Advertising is a way that companies and organizations use the media to market their products through to a mass audience. Companies now assign a significant amount of their budget for the advertising sector to drive the sales of their products and services. However, unfortunately, nowadays many organizations neglect the ethical standards when advertising their products. Unethical advertising offends and misleads many individuals in the society; it is an indecent phenomenon that should be banned by law.
To begin with, many companies cheaply use women as sexual tools to promote their products and they often stereotype their role as housewives who are shown to be jobless and performing all household work. Recent studies show that “In many advertisements, the ideal woman is an object that exists to satisfy men’s sexual desires. Many researchers have shown that women in advertisements are portrayed as sex objects” (Baker, 2005). Women usually appear as an attractive material standing beside the product to grab the attention of the buyers. The advertising companies distract audience focus by presenting their products in hands of sexy looking females with little clothes covering their bodies. . One example of this is a Hardees advertisement showing the famous celebrity Kim Kardashian in revealing clothes lying on a bed and eating Hardee’s new chicken salad. We can see sexual women in all kinds of advertisements of products from cosmetics and fashion to food and airlines. No logi...
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...he clear rules of ethical advertising in order to protect ethnic groups, minorities & gender from any offensive hints and prevent advertisers from claiming false claims that misleads people. Public should also play a role in censoring the advertisements and enforce governments to apply sanctions on advertisers who deviate from the clear rules of ethical advertising.
Works Cited
Baker, C.N. (2005).Images of Women’s Sexuality in Advertisements: A Content Analysis of Black- and White-Oriented Women’s and Men’s Magazines. Retrieved on 10-4-2014 from http://www.academia.edu/
O'Brien, G. (2011).Marketing to children: accepting the responsibility. Retrieved on 10-4-2014 from http://business-ethics.com/
Mathew, J. (2014). “Novartis Faces Criminal Complaint in Japan Over Exaggerated Advertising of Hypertension Drug”. Retrieved on 9-4-2014 from http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/
This thought has been held on for far too long. In a consumer-driven society, advertisements invade the minds of every person who owns any piece of technology that can connect to the internet. Killbourne observes that “sex in advertising is pornographic because it dehumanizes and objectifies people, especially women,” (271). Advertising takes the societal ideology of women and stereotypes most kids grow up learning and play on the nerves of everyone trying to evoke a reaction out of potential customers, one that results in them buying products.
Michael R. Hyman; Richard Tansey; James W. Clark (1994). Research on Advertising Ethics: Past, Present, and Future: Journal of Advertising, Vol. 23, No. 3, Ethics in Advertising pp. 5-15.: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
In “Beauty… and the Beast of Advertising” Jean Kilbourne argues that advertisements sell a lot more than just their products: “They sell values, images, and concepts of success and worth, love and sexuality, popularity and normalcy” (1). Kilbourne states that in advertising there are two types of women, “Housewives” and “Sex objects”. Kilbourne calls the sexually objectified women “a mannequin, a shell” because their beauty is flawless, they lacks all of the imperfections that make people appear human (2). Kilbourne also states that these women are all skinny, often tall and “long-legged”, and youthful (2). She claims that all “beautiful” women in ads obey this “norm” (Kilbourne 2). Kilbourne strongly states that advertisements lack the sense
“Selling sex is illegal, but using it to promote economic growth is not.” (Sexualization and Sexploitation of Women in the Media; Rosery Films) What actually happened to our culture, people wondered? Has advertising gone too far? And are we being corrupted by sex? According Sex in advertising: Perspectives on the Erotic Appeal, in 2005, approximately one-fifth of all advertising used overt sexual content to sell its product. Society’s interest with sex and the advertising designer’s acceptance of it as an effective tool have served each other for the course of the twentieth century. And has always been separated on the extents to which sexuality can and should be used to sell. Advertising has become the single largest source of visual imagery in our social society. No matter where we look, we see advertisements trying to sell us things. Provocative advertising has been characterized as a deliberate attempt to gain attention through shock. (De Pelsmacker & Van Den Bergh, 1996) In 2007, The American Psychological Association sent out a press release to the media stressing the harmful effects of sexualizing our youth: “The proliferation of sexualized images of girls and young women in advertising, merchandisin...
Sex is one of the most controversial and enticing subjects in today’s media. No wonder it has become a dominant marketing strategy, it appeals to a basic human interest in sex and uses it to persuade an audience. Sex, as a marketing tool, has become extremely pervasive in the United States today. An individual living in America will certainly be exposed to this marketing tool. Music industries, television commercials, magazines and other advertising media have given in to this marketing technique. The fact that companies use people’s natural interest in sex to sell their products is upsetting. The way advertisers use sex appeal to sell their products reflects poorly on and undermines our society’s morals.
Open up any magazine and you will see the objectification of women. The female body is exploited by advertising, to make money for companies that sell not just a product, but a lifestyle to consumers. Advertisements with scantily clothed women, in sexualized positions, all objectify women in a sexual manner. Headless women, for example, make it easy to see them as only a body by erasing the individuality communicated through faces, eyes, and eye contact. Interchangeability is an advertising theme that reinforces the idea that women, like objects, are replaceable.
In a study done by The 4Th Estate, the results showed men are quoted around five times more than women in stories regarding women (Pesta 1). With media being so male centered, it is not surprising that often women become the target of sexual objectification in all realms of media. With the concept of “Sex Sells” still holding true, many advertising outlets have continued to fund ads with sexually focused content. Whether you are listening to the radio, reading your favorite magazine, or just window shopping in the mall you are being targeted by media’s gendered advertising.
The portrayals of men in advertising began shifting towards a focus on sexual appeal in the 1980s, which is around the same that women in advertising were making this shift as well. According to Amy-Chinn, advertisements from 1985 conveyed the message that “men no longer just looked, they were also to be looked at” as seen in advertisements with men who were stripped down to their briefs (2). Additionally, advertisements like these were influencing society to view the male body “as an objectified commodity” (Mager and Helgeson 240). This shows how advertisements made an impact on societal views towards gender roles by portraying men as sex objects, similarly to women. By showcasing men and women in little clothing and provocative poses, advertisements influenced society to perceive men and women with more sexual
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.
An article by Christina N Baker, Images of Women’s Sexuality in Advertisements: A content Analysis of Black And White Oriented Women’s and Men’s Magazine emphasizes on how women’s are portrayed in media such as advertisements and Magazine. The author analyzes how media has a huge impact in our society today; as a result, it has an influence on race and gender role between men and women.
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.
In 1994, a new form of advertising and getting products and services into the world was discovered: the internet. Online advertising has been growing rapidly. We can see advertisements on almost any webpage we go to. Even if you try to avoid ads, you are bound to find some. This leads us to a crucial part of advertising which is ethics.
We have freedom of speech, and since in general people are free to ignore advertising if they want to, but after all each initial group can be easily manipulated. Peacock K. (2003)
audience, the advertising industry is charged with several ethical breeches, which focus on a lack of societal responsibility (Treise 59). Child Advocacy groups and concerned parents, among others, question the ethicality of advertising claims and appeals that are directed towards vulnerable groups in particular, children (Bush 31).
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.