Advertising Dbq

It would seem this question has been on the tips of our tongues for some time, and still we've yet to come to a definitive answer. In the following paragraphs I will attempt to illustrate a portrait of American advertising and the harmful affects it has on our youth.

Teenagers have a “... need for independence, rebellion, and personal control,” (Source F). Marketers can use this in many ways. They can use it to their economical advantage by manipulating teenagers into buying their goods. But, PSA’s can really show teenagers the facts and promote good morals. Recent studies look into how advertisements affect adolescents, “... these studies show that social marketing has successfully changed health behavior such as smoking, physical activity, and condom use, as well as behavioral mediators such as knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs related to these behaviors,” (Source F). While it's true that it's easy for teenagers to be manipulated by commercials, a lot of other commercials can be a strong influence in building better lives for them. If people could focus on the pros rather then the cons, then they could see the big picture of marketing to

With the new technological advancements of the 1900s, the concept of advertising prospered into a new industry based on the desires of the people. Historically, magazines, newspaper, radio and television have all greatly improved advertising, making it one of the largest forces that works to help or hinder society. “Before 1910, advertisers mostly sought to inform customers about products; after 1910, the main goal was to create a desire to purchase products” (Blackford 3). Thus, business strategy was created that convinced people that they needed a product. This opened up a new world for people to be manipulated into spending their money on what they thought would improve their lives. Advertising improved the

Advertisements are leading teens to have heart disease, asthma, high blood pressure, obesity, cancer and type two diabetes. These advertisements are giving the target audience, children, are having effects on their lives. Advertising is playing a horrible effect on the lives of youth because it is diminishing the health of our children, it can also make children need to have things to have a high social status. Also, the advertisements make children want to use their parent's money to buy what they want that is on television, but all they are doing is paying the people who are creating the advertisements.

Ads have existed for so long for a reason, there’s really not another alternative as effective in trying to introduce someone to a product, movement, or idea. The particular smoking ad from an organization called Health Canada created an Ad that clearly shows the negative effects of smoking cigarettes, not only that, but they also try to give aid to those who are looking to quit their detrimental habit; they carry out this goal of informing and persuading users to quit or abide from starting, by using many elements which include purpose, photo, text, and content. This Ad was great to analyze since it’s easy to define what the media is trying to portray, as well as to it having distinct images making it intriguing to question and inspect.

“In the twentieth century, advertising evolved into a form of persuasive social discourse intended primarily to influence how we perceive the buying and consumption of goods,” (Danesi 179).

Advertising invades every aspect of our modern lives. It is shoved upon us from every aspect of media. Internet, television, radio, movies, and even our streets seem to be centered on it. We are asked to buy, try, and consume the next best thing. While most things advertised are meaningful and can possibly be used to either help or make our lives better, we do not necessarily need it. Mostly what we are exposed to in advertising is propaganda, and to define it better, the authors of the book, “Propaganda and Persuasion” state propaganda as the following, “Propaganda is the deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the

The definition of advertising is outdated. It was previously, to endorse a product and praise goodness to induce the public to buy. They are now brainwashing consumers to buy their products using images to sell the product. The advertiser’s aim is to make the product look as good as it can through an attractive image. There are statistics, which I obtained from a Dolly Magazine, 16th May 2000, which proves that one out of four people in Australia buy a product because of the image shown in the advertisment. The images are eye catching and mention something important about the product. Ultimately it is true that, “Advertisers sell images, not products.”

It’s clear that the sole purpose of advertising is to inform the viewers about their product for the targeted audience to purchase that product. While this may be true for most commercials and advertisements the FDA has devoted billions of dollars to prevent the purchase of only one product, tobacco. Are you aware that everyday, nearly forty thousand teens in the U.S smoke their first cigarette while one thousand start smoking daily? If you weren’t aware, this is precisely why the FDA created the tobacco prevention campaign known as ‘‘The Real Cost’’. The Real Cost discourages future smokers through anti-smoking advertisements which show the harmful affects of smoking tobacco to raise awareness. According to www.fda.gov ‘‘Initial campaign advertising

In "Brands R Us", Stephen Garey explains the silent danger of advertisement to the public and to the world. Although advertisements affect such a small amount of people, the dangers of advertisement may not seem realistic. According to Garey, people consciously do not notice it. He goes on to tell that there are between 3,000 to 5,000 advertisement messages in a person's daily life, which influences the affect. People do not realize how much a massive flood of ads cause an effect. Though consumerism was once good, it has now started to become a serious problem for the world. Many Americans today have a hard time affording the items advertised and fall further into debt. The environmental side of it though, is how ads have affected the globe. Many of the items sold are toxic to the environment. Garey does offer an alternative to these problems. He suggests people avoid advertised streets, buy more small town items, and do not purchase anything brand named. Though his solution may be rash, the problem advertising and brands cause us can be minimized. I agree that “Advertisements are the most prevalent and toxic of mental pollutants.” Advertisements today have a great effect of appealing their viewers with these toxic advertisements. Society as a whole needs to break away from the influence of the toxic advertisements, start helping smaller businesses that are affected by toxic advertisements, and invest less money into big name brands that encourages the problems from

Every day millions of Americans are exposed to upwards of 5,000 advertisements per day. Whether a consumer’s eyes are glued to a television while watching an advertisement or briefly glancing at a billboard, the ads he/she sees have an effect all the same. It is important to shed light on the fact that the contemporary society that America is a part of is continually influenced by the advertisements within it. Children and young adults often determine a mold of who they aspire to be simply through viewing a commercial on a television. The “Macho-man” and/or “Skinny Model” serve as the universal standard in contemporary advertising, and oftentimes even for products that are in no way related to the health or looks of an individual. Along with this, products and/or the appearance of people in advertisements are often tampered with to create an unrealistic image or effect. People have become acclimated with the number of advertisements that occur in their daily lives, leading them to become oblivious to the dangers that are, no pun intended, right in front of their faces. The concept of advertising itself is not an issue, in fact advertising has its benefits such as the ability to spread information quickly or help local business owners stay competitive in the corporately driven market. However, the benefits that the ability to advertise gives to society are oftentimes overshadowed by the negative impacts that come with it. The three major issues with advertising today are

Advertisements can be positive and negative in a person’s day to day life. Advertisements are all around us. Advertisements can be found on t.v., internet, magazines and on billboards. Some of these advertisements help decide what people should spend money on. Those advertisements give people so many different choices on what clothes and makeup people want to buy, what different foods are out there to satisfy the different cravings people have or what exotic vacation destination to take. The one advertisement that sticks out the most to me are the advertisements about drinking and driving. Advertisers and Advertisements use the fear appeal to get these driver’s attention to stop and face the reality of what drinking and driving will do to themselves and to others.

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.

While today’s generation encourages smokers to kick the nasty addiction of cigarettes, commercials and ads from the early 1900’s promoted that smoking tobacco was the best thing since sliced bread! By using attractions of sex appeal, social acceptance and even as a tool to health, the tobacco company produced thousands of advertisements hoping to persuade their audiences to increase their profits. Everywhere you looked, there were ads for smoking! Even all the movies had actors with a cigarette on hand in every scene, tempting those watching that smoking tobacco was a lifestyle worth living. Though the companies made their advertisements persuading the customers that buying their product was in their favor, all they truly care about was the money in their pockets.

     However, with every positive side comes a negative, and advertising is no different. Advertising has been blamed for a great variety of negative social impacts. One of the major criticisms received by advertising is that it forces people to buy things they don’t really need, often projecting negative emotions such as fear, anxiety of guilt upon the consumer (Engel). It is claimed that advertising plays with our basic human emotions and takes advantage of them, using them as merely another technique to sell goods or services.