Understand The Purpose Of Persuasive Advertising

No matter where children are or what they are doing they’ll always find some sort of advertisements. It can be when their casually watching television, reading a magazine or just playing games on their computer. Advertisements are different forms of communication whose purpose is to make their product known to the public. Marketers aren’t partial to certain people; they target anyone and every age group, but recently there has been an upsurge of advertisements aimed towards children. In Eric Schlosser’s article, Kid Kustomers, he demonstrates how child advertising has boomed by the tactics marketers use to get children to want and demand certain companies’ products.

In today’s media obsessed society, youth is greatly influenced by advertising. For example, Marketing to kids gets more savvy with technologies is how they ,“Online games like Webkinz show ads on the site draw youth to buy the product or just to look at it for ‘money’”. Because this tactic works, the ads are an excellent at make youth to talk about this and be annoyed. In Facts about Marketing to Children, it says, “Children pack 8.5 hours of media a day’, is what the Facts about Marketing to Children says.” Because children are on the media so much it is easy for marketers to advertise and get children to buy the product. “ Anne Lappe says that when her daughter grows up, and goes to a movie, the character might have a soda or fast food.”

One of the most successful marketers is quoted in the article “Get kids to nag their parents and nag them well”(260). In the initial few sections, he discussed the present time effects of the advertising on youngsters. Through this he contend that, previously, there weren't numerous child based marketing organizations that concentrated exclusively with respect to children and have their own kids' divisions, while now, they have huge amounts of organizations that makes a whole advertising division for the

Will Rogers once said, “Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don’t have for something they don’t need.” Targeting youth by advertisements happens in all forms and advertising companies are the only ones getting the profit from it. Advertising affects the life of youths lives in many negative ways because it has skyrocketed health risks, lowers self-esteem and increases money spent by youth.

Children are easily influenced, and this can be taken advantage of in the commercial industry. Thy have the desire to fit in and do what is considered “cool”. Many people believe that people use this desire to their own benefit in order to create profit. While it’s true children are easily manipulated by commercials, these commercials and be beneficial to the child's development. Commercials can be used to bring good ideas and good life skills to children that will lead them to being a successful adults. Commercials aimed at children are ethical because they can reinforce positive behaviors and good ideals. This is shown through articles, press and reports.

Advertisements are everywhere. They are a major part of modern day society. Whether it be a television commercial, an internet banner, or a billboard, advertisements influence people of all ages, but they affect a certain age group much more than others. Children ranging from toddlers to teenagers are exposed to thousands upon thousands of advertisements each year. Some of these advertisements are damaging to children, while others are a positive influence. Advertisements can either be used as a tool or a weapon. Food advertisements and manipulation strategies are both positive and negative, and how companies use them decides whether or not marketing to children is ethical.

Children between the ages of 8 and 18 spend a whopping 44.5 hours in front of media sources that are possibly displaying these ads. Research has shown that children less than age 8 cannot tell that the advertisements are merely trying to be persuasive. Children under age 6 cannot even tell the difference between an advertisement and a program. Yet

Companies are continuously in search of innovative marketing techniques by encouragingly establishing individuals to purchase their advertised products. As intelligent as marketing companies are, they are indeed aware of the fact that adults are more likely to watch an advertisement and detect why they should or should not purchase such product. In such instances where the company cannot reach the focus of an adult, parent, or parental figure, marketers will target young children and teens in their advertising campaigns. Advertising campaigns targeting the youth have significantly impacted the ethical consideration in the children’s market through media, ethics, as well as food advertising to children.

Many people believe that everything is black and white, especially when it comes to advertisements. What many don’t understand is that everything has an underlining meaning. Every advertisement has been thought out thoroughly to catch the attention of the consumers it is aiming towards. Advertisements aiming towards children has definitely been a topic that many people can’t seem to wrap their mind around. It’s been a topic that many have exposed because of the way marketers are willing to manipulate children in ways that only benefit their own. This whole issue began after the progression of marketing to children during the late 70s and early 80s with the advertisers’ intentions of making children lifelong consumers of products.

Marketing to children is not a new phenomenon; however, there have been many ethical debates on its rightness; is advertising to children a gentle persuasion of the innocent or a sinister threat to our society? There’s too much as stake if we remain silent and simply assume that marketing companies have our children’s best interests at heart; the truth is they don’t. This paper will explore to implications of marketing to children and the overall effects it has on our society. I will argue that advertising to children is a social problem. In the first part of my paper I will discuss why advertising to children is ethically wrong, I will then discuss what has changed; this will be followed by a discussion as to why it is a social problem and finally, I will conclude my paper by discussing what should be done to change it. Please note this paper is written in the first person as I have children and I have a vested interest in this topic.

Each day we are bombarded with advertisements from a plethora of corporations in every waking moment of our lives. Advertising agencies have become so advanced at what they do, that often times we may not even realize we are being advertised a product. This raises an interesting ethical dilemma over a certain type of advertising: persuasive advertising. Philosophers, economists, and business professionals have debated over whether or not persuasive advertising is an immoral violation of the autonomy of consumers. While not all forms of advertising are in and of themselves certainly immoral, persuasive advertising is particularly reprehensible due to the fact that not only does it manipulate our unconscious desires of which we are completely unaware in order to sell a product, but it also routinely leads us to act against our own best interest, thus overriding our autonomy.

The advertisement from the opening segment to the last frame is laden with persuasive marketing techniques to lure a potential consumer. It cleverly uses all 3 persuasive categories by as a credible spokesperson, appeal to the audience with emotion and body language, and uses logic to persuade you that a reverse mortgage is beneficial,. The telephone number and website address is displayed throughout to entice impulsive viewers to call immediately. The purpose of the ad is clear to the viewer that you must be over age 62 and own a home to obtain a reverse mortgage with no payments or taxes. What this advertisement neglects to advise is that you are still responsible for local and state taxes, that they own your home until you have no more

An advertisement is usually thought of as promotion and generally the main goal is to generate money, however, that is not always the case. There are many genres of advertisement such as marketing, persuasion, or encouragement in which all have similar, yet different, goals and purposes. A marketing advertisement main motive is to sell a product. This can be achieved through many common advertising techniques such as claims, repetition, association, bandwagon, or promotion, to name a few. Persuasion and encouragement advertisement may also be projected by these techniques as well, but there may be a different goal. Persuasive advertising could also tie into marketing as well being that some ads try to sway consumers into buying their company's product. Encouragement and persuasive ads may also go hand and hand with each other as well. These types of ads are usually less about money and more about getting a point across to the people. Well known examples of this is a Click it or Ticket it commercial or an advertisement telling people to stop smoking. Every company has a specific goal in mind and

Advertising has become an integral part of our society. In the world of advertising, many tactics and strategies are used to lure consumers into purchasing a product or delivering a message. Producers try various ways to attract people’s attention, and persuasive advertising is one of the many methods they use to promote ideas that can earn them consumers’ trust and loyalty as well as to advertise for their products. In persuasive advertising, advertisers try to apply the appropriate use of persuasive tools to appeal to the consumer and get their message through. The BMW advertisement of texting and driving uses pathos, or the emotion of regret, and the use of this emotion is being applied effectively because regret is associated with all car accidents especially those due to texting and driving.

Advertising today focuses on specific targeted demographic groups. There is a direct focus on marketing products to young consumers. This age group sees the commercials, but does not really understand the directed message. This can have an adverse effect on the way children interpret and understand the message being presented to them. 'The average American child sees more than 40,000 commercials a year, and advertisers spend more than $12 billion annually marketing to them?double the amount of 10 years ago.' (APA-1) Children watching television are exposed to every channel running commercials that are sending out a mature message to an immature audience. There needs to be something done to