"All Advertising Should Be Banned" - Discuss

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“All Advertising Should Be Banned”

 Jenny Luckett

A man on the point of death is shown lying on a bed, Aids has taken such a grip on him that he will never return from his state of unconsciousness; is this advertising or exploitation?  Another man, half naked, with a Kalashnikov in one hand and a femur bone in the other is used to sell jumpers to the worldwide public; is this again exploitation or just effective advertising?  Both of these are, however, effective if a person remembers this company’s name, United Colours of Benetton, but at the same time it can be argued are exploitation.  Whether for a good or ghoulish reason the company has used successful advertising.  This is a widely debated area: where to draw the line in advertising or whether to ban it all.  The advertisements that subliminally penetrate our minds everyday through magazines, television, billboards and posters are rapidly increasing.  Every company wants a slice of the advertising world.  From chocolate to washing machines, from hats to the latest happy meal at Mc Donald’s,  the average person is exposed to one thousand three hundred advertisements a day whether they may realise this or not.

The word advertisement comes from the Latin “Adverto” which means to turn; advertisements are made to turn people or persuade people into buying a way of thinking, a product or a service.  This is what advertising is meant for but with the money to be made there are often ulterior motives at work.  This is when it is no longer harmless; the advertisers will stop at nothing to achieve their aims, they exploit people so that the product is remembered for all the wrong reasons.

Is it acceptable that all the conniving tricks used actually work?  The Benetton advertisements for example are disturbing; they provoke questions over morality yet anyone seeing the advertisements will remember the company’s name.  This is not to suggest that Benetton were right in their advertising techniques, quite the opposite in fact, the advertisements were clearly morally wrong in these circumstances.  To use such an incredibly moving image, the man dying of Aids, in this context- to advertise clothes was insulting; Benetton refused to comment whether they had asked permission of the family to use the photo.  There are many advertisements that are far-fetched and manipulate emotive images for their own purposes; Benetton is not alone in this.

Sexist, racist and belittling images are used for commercial purposes.  Companies claim that they are appealing to their target audience, but can this stereotyping and conformity really be called advertising?  The Land Rover advertisement for their Freelander depicted a bare-breasted Himba women wearing traditional Namibian dress, whose breasts have been pulled sideways by the power of the passing vehicle; the company was forced to retract it.  Advertisements like this, which mock other cultures and use racial stereotyping, should be banned.  How can society obliterate racism when international car companies use a form of it to sell cars?  Advertisements rely on sexism too, the stereotypical housewife image or the degrading blonde bimbo, they are all equally distasteful.  If the children of today grow up with these stereotypes deemed acceptable then what will the generation of tomorrow be like?  Land Rover claims that no offence was meant by the image of the Himba woman.  So does that mean it was tolerable - no.

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Violence is a much debated concern-how much violence is too much?  Violence is displayed in numerous advertisements and quite often it is entirely unconnected with the subject.  It is appalling the number of video games that are created based on killing other people, and the advertisements display this.  These games and the advertisements shown can influence children’s subconscious, confusing reality and fantasy.  Excessive viewing can start to sway children’s perception of right and wrong.  In extreme cases children start to believe that it is acceptable to hurt someone when they are angry.

Other advertisements that are of doubtful ...

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