Advertising is the widespread and readily sponsored contribution of goods, services, or ideas through any medium of public communication.
Advertising Advertising is the widespread and readily sponsored contribution of goods, services, or ideas through any medium of public communication. The primary marketing media include newspaper, magazines, television, radio, and direct mail. Those who support advertising say that it is meant to sell products, not create values, and that it furthers product improvement through competition. Those who don’t support advertising claim that it causes false values and persuade people to buy things they neither need or want. So what is the importance of advertising to the media? What are the major effects of advertising on society at large? What sorts of changes are needed? Understanding society and mass media is crucial in understanding advertising.Advertising comes in other forms besides those of the electronic medium. The use of billboards, posters, printed bulletins are cheaper and are more commonly used for advertising. There are even more unusual forms of advertising such as blimps and planes with banners attached. Advertising is only limited by the imagination. One of the typical forms of advertising is a magazine. There are hundreds of varieties of magazines so an ad stands a good chance of being seen by a wide variety of people. Mail is a means of communication used as a convenient way to advertise. Flyers, bulletins, postcards, envelopes filled with discount coupons go directly to the home and into the hands of potential
customers. Ads placed in newspaper often bring results quickly. An advertiser can choose to place an ad in a variety of sections in a newspaper, such as sports, food, or in the classified. Radio and television advertising has the largest effect on advertising. The radio has given sound to ads and many catchy words put to music keep reminding us to remember a product. An advantage the radio has over the television is that the radio can be found anywhere and are less expensive than a television. The television combines audio and visual. It is almost limitless what advertisers can ...
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customers. Ads placed in newspaper often bring results quickly. An advertiser can choose to place an ad in a variety of sections in a newspaper, such as sports, food, or in the classified. Radio and television advertising has the largest effect on advertising. The radio has given sound to ads and many catchy words put to music keep reminding us to remember a product. An advantage the radio has over the television is that the radio can be found anywhere and are less expensive than a television. The television combines audio and visual. It is almost limitless what advertisers can do on this medium. Images, movies, sound, special effects and a host of other creative ways can influence the consumer. Mass media can be described as the extensive phrase describing television, radio, film, newspaper, and magazines. It is not just the journalistic aspects of the apparatus of popular communication. The mass media often perform as the focal point of social control and the source of popular culture. Media help preserve historical events, and teach morals. The commercial enterprises media can represent how we dress, what we buy, and how our society functions. The mass media in the United States are owned primarily by six corporate conglomerates with political and economic agendas of their own—Time Warner, Viacom, General Electric, Disney, Bertelsmann, and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. As a result of this, ideas and information deemed too radical are often under-reported, misrepresented, or ignored by the mass media.Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman developed a detailed and sophisticated analyses of how the wealthy and powerful use the media to propagandise in their own interest. The best of these analyses is the “Propaganda Model” expounded in Manufacturing Consent. Chomsky and Herman’s “propaganda model” of the media gives a set of five “filters” that act to screen the news and other material disseminated by the media. These “filters” result in a media that reflects elite viewpoints and interests and mobilises “support for the special interests that dominate the state and private activity.” These “filters” are: (1) the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms; (2) advertising as the primary income source of the media; (3) the reliance of the media on information provided by government, business, and “experts” funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power; (4) “flak” (negative response to a media report) as a means of disciplining the media; and (5) “anti-communism” as a national religion and control mechanism. At the turn of the century, advertising was informational. It told you that a product existed and told you where it could be found. If it made a claim, it was either outrageous (This will cure everything!) or simple (We have shoes of various sizes.) Advertising then told about the “utility” of the product. Today advertising talks about the product’s status (style, appearance) those attributes which have little, if anything, to do with whether the product functions for its intended purpose. In the 20s, manufacturers had to find ways to pay for mechanization. Initially, manufacturers tried traditional free enterprise methods as in reducing the price to attract more buyers and encourage buyers to buy more of the product. This helped, but it did not solve the problem. The manufacturers decided to alter the consumer’s needs. They turned to advertising as a means to generate interest in products. All advertising delivers to us an important message: You can transform yourself by buying something more, and this more will make you in some way richer. Affluenza is a powerful virus which has infected American society, threating our wallets, our friendships, our families, and our environments. Affluenza is a painful, socially transmitted condition of debt, anxiety, and waste resulting from over-consumption. In other words, we spend and buy far more than what we need. Advertising plays a major role in affluenza. Advertising’s primary purpose is to promote affluenza. As Pierre Martineau, marketing director for the Chicago Tribune, “Advertising’s most important social functions is to integrate the individual into our present-day American high-speed economy.” The average American will spend nearly two years of his or her lifetime watching T.V. commercials. Television advertising is now a $200 billion a year industry, more than twice the average rate of the economy as a whole. Advertising for something good is what we need more of in our society. Advertising for the Red Cross, N.A.A.C.P., the National Cancer Society, are organizations that help society as a whole. We also need more educational channels which would also help society. On the other hand, advertising also can be negative. Currently, over $900 million per year is spent on beer and wine advertising. Since 1960, per capita consumption of beer and wine has increased by 50%. Since being banned from T.V. advertising, the tobacco industry has creativily financed the print media to the extent of $3.27 billion per year. “Joe Camel” is as recognizable to 6-year-olds as the logo used by the Disney Channel. Alcohol and tobacco both are detrimental to the health of people to this planet. Yet, alcohol and tobacco companies are some of the richest companies in the world which mislead people with their advertising. There is no secret that alcohol contributes to different illnesses, and nicotine contributes heavily to lung cancer among smokers. Advertising has a major social effect on our society. It creates an affluent, interesting lifestyle for their advertisements. They sell the lifestyle and then sell the product. People think if they buy products, they will somehow become richer. Overconsumption is a negative aspect of advertising. On the other hand, advertising for the right cause is positive to society as a whole. What is sad about advertising, is the fact that it will never go away, and that it is now part of our culture.
