Implications of advertising

Extract

[...] Implications of advertising Consider a method of persuasion that an audience would consider entertaining, experience about 3000 times everyday, and not even understand that they were being influenced. It almost sounds too good to be true. Amazingly, advertisers have mastered this technique, and the implications are unsettling. Because of the messages that advertisements teach society, individuals change their behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, values, and even outlook on life. Essentially, advertising pushes society in a negative direction in an attempt to sell products. [...]

[...] According to the article, “Social Communication in Advertising, Persons, Products, and Images of Well-Being,” by William Leiss, et al. this is accomplished through several ways that people in advertisements are positioned. This includes women barely touching objects, as though they were slipping out of their control; women on beds or floors, literally positioned lower than men in the ads; and women acting like children, touching fingers to their lips or snuggling up to men (Leiss 216). Unfortunately, the messages in these ads transition into reality, and the gender gap widens. [...]

[...] Jackson Lears's article, “From Salvation to Self Realization: Advertising and the Therapeutic Roots of the Consumer Culture,” Elmo Calkins, advertising executive, is quoted saying, “Modernism offered the opportunity of expressing the inexpressible, of suggesting not so much a motor car as speed, not so much a gown as style, not so much a compact as beauty” (Lears 22). Rather than forcing these concepts on the audience, advertisers make them more attractive than existing norms. This way, the ideas gradually become socially acceptable, and an entirely new mindset is created simply because companies wanted to improve sales. [...]