Media: Advertising

- There is nothing inherently wrong with advertising corporations have the right to publicize their
product to the public; public has the right and desire to know about what is available in the market.
- Deviated from its original purpose of informing; also about creating desire creating false needs &
wants, turning luxuries into necessities.
- Simple shallow messages > dumbing down of media content to promote a buying mood being
carefully noncontroversial, light and nonpolitical
Audience fundamentally products of advertising
- Media captures attention and sells attention to firms audiences a valuable commodity to the
advertisers e.g. 30 second advertisement slot during Oscar Ceremony costs US$1 million as it
promises 60% of American female viewership
Over-exposure can desensitize us and work messages into our subconscious
- Encroaches into our private life and space unable to control what we are exposed to
- Any physical surface is exploited as advertising space e.g. modern athletes have become walking
billboards for various brands especially race car drivers + surface of products
- Breeding ignorance e.g. more children in America today recognize the MacDonalds logo than the
Christian cross
Promoting feelings of inadequacy rather than self-satisfaction
- Create dissatisfaction to create a permanent supply of viewers receptive to products
- Since one has to be confident before thinking of society, advertising creates a self-centered society
- E.g. slimming center services and bust enhancement advertisements link a womans confidence
solely to the upkeep of her looks
- Encourages a culture of perfecting ourselves and how to buy our way into perfect life of happiness
Stealth advertising lowers our guard
- Harder to get audience attention > advertisers come up with smarter techniques
- Go to the extent of paying people to tattoo themselves with logos or sponsor research that may
yield satisfactory results to better promote the product (tobacco industry)
- Advertorials editorials that are actually subtle product advertisements
News programmes advertising another programme belonging to parent network e.g. ABS used
prime news to advertise Touchstone Pictures movie Pearl Harbour as they all belong to Disney
- Advertainment deliberate product placement for advertisement in entertainment media
- TV American Idol judges always seen drinking coke, Survivor contestant rewards centred around
challenges on Chevrolet cars, Target house appliances & Visa card-bought dinners
- Movies literally 2 hour long commercials.
- E.g. The Italian Job promoting the revival of the mini cooper
- E.g. Tomorrow Never Dies landmark $100m of advertising with James bond featuring BMW
roadsters, Heineken beer, Omega watches and VISA credit cards
- E.g. I am Sam featuring starbucks as a kindly corporation that hires mentally stunted people
Questionable cultural values being expressed and encouraged
- Narrowing concepts of masculine and feminine beauty: oversimplified into anyone young, tall,
toned and well groomed with latest fashions, cosmetics and accessories. Men: muscular, athletic,
chiseled and toned; Women: long legs, long hair, white complexion with above average bust size
- Materialistic focus accelerates rate of consumption: advocates that a happy satisfactory life
can be bought through the right clothes, cars, club memberships and diet pills.
- While we probably have enough food to feed everyone in this world if distributed equally, what we
have instead is increasing obesity and diabetes in developed nations from overconsumption and
starvation in the least developed ones
BUT it can be used intelligently and responsibly in the promotion of important causes
- United Colors of Benetton ads in 1990s effectively raised awareness of pressing world issues
- Body Shop Promoted female empowerment and environmental awareness. Printed adverts of
missing children all over trucks to help police in their search
- 2005 International campaign for Dover: debate about beauty challenges preconceived notions of
womens beauty.
Ultimately: devotion to getting audience attention and securing advertising dollars has damaged medias
ability to truly educate us and change society: Pressures of advertising undermines intelligent and rational
debate.
Conclusion: It is very easy to go overboard in ones criticism of advertising; so much to criticize in the way
it influences/misleads us, the shallow culture it promotes, and the way it compromises the truth. But we
need to realize it is a necessity in an information society; advertising is required to sustain the media.