These are some of the common advertisements that we can see and hear in our everyday life. Advertisement according to oxforddictionaries.com means that “a notice or announcement in a public medium promoting a product, service, or event or publicizing a job vacancy”. Advertisements are everywhere around us. Whether we noticed it or not, it has been long existed. In fact in Egyptian time, they used papyrus to make sales messages and wall posters to attract the consumers. With today’s advancement of the media, the numbers of magazines increasing, newspapers, TVs and radio stations, people are bombarded with thousands of advertising daily.
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Advertising is in fact important because it creates awareness to the consumers about products that are available in the market. With the presence of the advertisement, it helps to increase the demand for a certain products. It also let the consumer to choose from a number of products available in the market. But does all these advertisement really give the information to the consumers or just plain tactics to manipulate us to buy or use the services?
A lot of the advertisements nowadays are actually manipulating us rather than giving us the real information. The advertisers are in fact intelligent people. They know that normal advertisements that only contain facts are plain boring and seem dull. Therefore they created fantasies to make the advertisement look more appealing. We can clearly see that most advertisement created used our desire, such as sports, sexy women and superstars so that we become attracted and intend to purchase them. As an example this one commercial about a
deodorant, AXE, that being use by this man. After he uses it, he is able to attract hot and sexy women towards him. People are being trick by such advertisement and they started to buy these products. After they put it on, they feel as they are the same as in the commercial. This clearly shows that they are playing with our emotions. Think wisely why they use such act. Does this have connections with the quality of the product they release to the market? We consumers should be more cautious to the method used in order to prevent us from being manipulated by the advertisers.
Be alert that the advertisers worldwide are succeeding in making people change their lifestyle. In this case, they know that popular artist can play their role in making people especially their fans to follow their way. For example popular artist from Japan, Gazette. Their appearances: clothes that they are wearing and their hairstyle, are so cool that many fan decided to follow their style. By using such influence, most people don’t mind in spending their money just to be same as their idol. Doing this kind of advertisements is in fact quite expensive. However, they are prepared to spend a lot of money in the advertising so that they can sell their products. It has been estimated that the price of a product may go up over to 40% due to advertisement costs. Still, due to the success of manipulating the consumers, the advertisers get a lot of money. As an example, according to Welt-Online, they reported that the US pharmaceutical industry spent almost double the amount on advertising (57.7 billion dollars) than it did on research (31.5 billion dollars). Yet few consumers noticed that they are the ones paying for every cent the US pharmaceutical spent for public relations, advertisements, rebates,
packaging since they ordinarily get included in the price calculation. In the end the consumers will pay more to them while the advertisers gain more profits.
Another interesting fact is that they also know how to attract people according their age group. In one case, they try to persuade a group of age between below 8 years old. According to American Psychological Association, they found out that young children are unable to understand and interpret televised advertising messages wisely and thus are likely to consider commercials as truthful, accurate and unbiased. This can lead to many problems like unhealthy eating habits as evidenced by today’s youth obesity epidemic. The young children also being targeted as they can also persuade their parents to buy the things that they are being attracted to like toys, sweets and ice cream. One successful commercial like the car models from Hot Wheels where they had successfully sell thousands of their toys. As the children are unable to think wisely it is more likely easier to manipulate them by putting more of what they desire in the advertisement rather than supplying information. On one research, it is found that advertisers had spent more than $12 billion a year on messages aimed at the youth market. The average child watches more than 40,000 television commercials a year. This clearly shows just how they are willing to spend money in order manipulate the consumers rather than giving them much more useful information.
The young ones are also not the only one being targeted by the advertisers. Today’s adolescences are also being seduced by them. Most male adolescence love sports especially football. The advertisers take this chance by using the football stars in their commercial to
market their product. It is likely of us nowadays to follow our idol way. No wonder some brands become top in their games as they are able to increase their selling products and gain more profit. One example of one popular brand company, Nike, where they hired Lebron James, a professional NBA player to be one of their ambassadors. The female adolescences also being manipulate by the advertisement. Not being biased but the female is most likely easy to be trick by certain advertisement. Just see how many women are willing to spend their money and time just for shopping. Younger women especially in Malaysia nowadays are attracted and had followed the Japanese style which also known as the Harajuku style that have been started by some of the popular artist like Ayumi Hamasaki and Kumi Koda.It is likely of them to answer like this:
“Well, this is the latest trend for the season”.
They buy things like clothes that are being considered popular for the season. Rather than “What should I wear today?” it has become “What trend must I wear for today?”. Not only just clothing, even other things like hairstyle, shoes and even skin color are being considered. It makes us set our mind that it is more important to look good rather than the real purpose of wearing clothes. This proves that advertisement manipulate rather than giving information.
The advertisers also use tactics like the linking of sporting heroes and smoking through sports sponsorship, the use of cigarettes by popular characters in television programs and cigarette promotions. Like what is happening in India, as the actors smoke, the viewer intend to do the same thing as they feel it is “macho” to smoke. People rarely think deeply on the effect that might be faced by them on long term side as they think only for short time. Same thing goes
to other products like alcohol drinks. The consumption of alcohol is being glamorized and shown without consequences in advertisements, music, magazines, television programs and even in movies. With the media overwhelmed by these kind of advertisements, no wonder more people especially the youngster below aged drink, even though the fact that alcohol bring harmful to the human body.
Not all advertisement told the truth. Some of it sometimes hides the real information or facts that are supposed to be told to the consumers. In fact they are just “sweet talk” so that people will be attracted to what they offer. For example advertisement about shampoo that can make the hair smooth and straight. As nowadays people are eager to have such hair, they are easily influence by these kind of commercial and purchase the product without knowing the fact whether it really do make the hair to be as what they desire for or just bluffing. On top of hiding the real information they also send a blurry fact to the consumers. Just like a fog or mist that we encounter in the early morning, we can’t see clearly of what we are facing in front of us. We are not sure whether it is safe or danger in front of us. This implies just the same as the blurry advertisement. It may be good for us and it may be the opposite.
In summary, advertisement do contain both information and at the same time trying to manipulate the consumers. However based on the points given earlier, it clearly shows that most advertisement are actually manipulating the consumer rather than giving them full information on certain things. To prevent this from happening, the government should regulate on which advertisements are appropriate to be shown in the mass media so that less consumers are being trick by these kind of advertisement. Still, it is up to the consumers to be alert on what is happening so that they would be cheated easily by some advertisements.
Work Cited:
“Advertising”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising [retrieved 7 September]
“Criticism of Advertising”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_advertising
[retrieved 9 September]
“ADVERTISING: Information or Manipulation?” http://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2010/05/advertising-information-or-manipulation/ [retrieved 9 September]
“Information or Manipulation? Regulators Urged to Further Limit Ads Aimed at Children” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A659-2004Feb23.html
[retrieved 12 September]
“ADVERTISEMENTS:Manipulation of innocent people” http://isariamwende.blogspot.com/2005/05/advertisements-manipulation-of.html
[retrieved 14 September]
“Power of advertising” http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2010/4/13/lifefocus/6018920&sec=lifefocus
[retrieved 14 September]
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