It is an audio-visual type of communication that delivers a message to sell or promote a certain product or service. The advertiser pays for the message he or she wants to deliver, which makes it different from public relations. Advertising has been criticized for using content that emphasizes sex, unattainable looks, promiscuity and an unhealthy focus on obtaining wealth. I totally agree with this point that it does emphasize obtaining unhealthy wealth.
Advertisements that we see are not inherited bad. Many advertisers use it in such a way that we don’t even realize that we are being manipulated by the advertisement. While watching a movie or listening to a song, we see an ad pop up in the middle of what we were doing at that time. It’s easy to say that they’re just ads. A lot of people find it differently that advertisements are manipulated because they want to show that they have full control over their choices. Advertising exists in society to tell you about a product that is as simple as a soap, but when competition comes in, advertisements start to change for a certain product to increase revenue or to increase traffic that will buy that certain product or service being advertised in the advertisement (Dachis, 2011).
To arouse interest in a particular product, brand or service, the advertiser simply puts provocative sounds and subliminal messages. Mostly the reason behind it we tend to focus more on these voices, it’s natural I would say that negative things are easy to remember about anything. For example, popular Men’s magazines like FHM and Maxim put a cover of a half-naked woman, and men buy it to explore what’s more inside that magazine. So, sex really does sell in advertisements (Suggett, 2018).
There is currently a persistent inequity between white and minority American women, which is further exacerbated by racialized stereotypes in advertising (Bonilla-Silva, 2013). It has been seen in almost all the advertisements related to birth control that show a black woman but never show a white woman. Stereotypes are still used in advertising, with the main target of black women via advertising text.
We have seen advertisements that show messages that say smoothing skin can be turned into a muscular one. These types of images do not depict the reality but have changed the course of people living in the UK, as they are involved I heavy surgeries, taking medicines that will give them muscularity but they do not know that by doing such things it will affect them badly after some time. Such kinds of advertisements are some of the techniques advertisers use to generate more and more revenue. It has been said in the article that one out of four people living in the UK has a feeling of depression over his weight, and as far as women are concerned, the study revealed that three out of four women living in the UK would sacrifice their lives to get an ideal body weight and shape. Half of the girls in the UK said that the pressure to look good is something that makes them feel ashamed of being female (Swinson, 2011). Now, it has been clear that advertising does make contents that emphasize unattainable looks, sex, and obtaining unhealthy wealth.
Bibliography
Dachis, A. (2011). How Advertising Manipulates Your Choices and Spending Habits (and What to Do About It).
Suggett, P. (2018). Does Sex Really Sell in Advertising?
Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2013. Racism Without Racists. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Swinson, J. (2011). False beauty in advertising and the pressure to look good.
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