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Corporate advertising in this modern age of instant communication plays a hefty role in influencing our culture by molding the minds of its viewers. As advertising becomes increasingly intrusive into nearly every aspect of our lives, the impact of the industry on consumers can only increase. The messages have become more controversial, and critics of the current advertising industry have started to speak out with staggering ferocity. “There's an effort to hang an ad in front of our eyes at every waking moment of the day and night,” says Gary Ruskin “Americans are sick of it.” (Marshall) Advertising has invaded email, highways, telephone, even your doorstep. In places where advertising has been it’s become more and more invasive. TV viewers now see nearly a full hour of advertisements during a typical night of primetime broadcasts. Today’s advertising critics are operating in an environment some are calling the “fragmenting of America” --a period when economic, social and technological trends are prompting Americans to emphasize their differences rather than nurture their similarities. (Clark) In many cases the emphasis of differences can be considered the main change in cultural values that modern day advertising has either spawned or at least proliferated through the years. Advertising is intent on turning our values toward our differences and carrying pride in those differences instead of our similarities as human beings. Advertising has reduced our culture to materialistic hopes and dreams instead of the morals that mankind has treasured since the dawn of his existence. The intrusiveness of weaving advertising into our private lives has established a strong foothold and is affecting our cultural values.
The essential goal of advertising is to convince the consumer that he or she would have a better life or would be better off with the advertised product. Advertisers are constantly reinforcing the fact that we are flawed and we are expected to be better. Of course they also tell us the only way we can reach the level of beauty, intelligence, or some other value is through the use of their product. For example, with the “Give your hair a Boost!” ad, it is obviously counting on the woman with gorgeous hair who fills up the entire ad and is used to make you wonder if your hair is good enough. (“Fruit Kicks”) The text in the ad is minimal and that which is there is very weak in arguing for this product’s superiority. The advertiser’s main hope is when you go to buy personal hygiene products, you will remember the beauty of the woman and the healthiness of her hair. (“Fruit Kicks”) They are confident their target audience will transfer feelings they get from this woman’s appearance toward the product and will end up purchasing it. Hence advertising has been able to persuade buyers into decisions without engaging the rational portions of their brains. This technique has been able to eliminate one thing humans consider important, our intelligence and ability to reason.
In recent years advertising has really begun to invade our lives in newspapers, streets, the radio, television, internet, buses, trains, planes, clothes and in many other places. In many cases you can’t even use a public restroom without finding a print ad right in front of your face. One technique commonly used by the advertising industry is that of trust. Companies will donate to local services or help with a community park to prove to their customers that they are ethical and can be trusted. For instance the Development Bank of Southern Africa print ad states that they’ve provided technical assistance with the infrastructure needs of their biggest soccer tournaments ever. They provide public transport, accommodation, security, as well as medical emergency and venue training services. (“Soon we’ll all Score”) The donations provided to the community while hosting a local event are showing potential customers that Development Bank of Southern Africa is a principled establishment and is worthy of the public’s trust. At almost every moment of everyday, corporations are attempting to shape our thoughts and actions into success. Even when we do not realize it, the advertising industry is competing for our attention. Advertisements have become so obnoxious; many groups have begun to take action against it because of interference with their daily lives and fears that the effect the industry is having on our culture.
Advertisers are not only fighting to get our attention, to make us feel inferior, but also are working to establish that being different, being your own person is a wonderful thing. This is a point that can easily go with many different ads in showing that if you have or use a certain product you will be different, and inherently better than others because you have what they do not. A Zune print ad that I found for example, is all about standing out and being the outlier. As many people well know, Ipods have and presently do dominate the MP3 player market. Microsoft has recently set out to change that with the release of their Zune MP3 player line. All their ads are about being a rebel stepping away from the crowd and going for something different. (“Zune”) The ad’s style is retro, in small text it lists some technical specifications for those who are interested, but mainly the ad wishes to bypass our rational brains and let us just focus on how beautiful the product is. The Zune and Ipods are very similar when you compare them to a wide range of MP3 players, but Zune hopes to drive home what many advertisers have, telling people to be different and to value distinctions between yourself and others, instead of our similarities as human beings.
Many people find it scary to realize what the impact advertising continues to have on our quickly changing Western culture, and many have begun to stand out on the prevalence of ads and the content of many. People have grown sick of advertisements and countless products appearing in front of them twenty-four seven in a most annoying fashion. People may be frightened and oppose it, but I believe as long as we have a materialistic consumer market in the form that we do now advertising will always be rampant and will exhibit our cultural values as well as shape them into values that would benefit such corporations. The fragmenting of America is a grand testament to the effect of advertising; in many cases advertisers have forced us to accept the idea that people value material possessions more than objects of trust and friendship. Looking ahead it seems as though there will be a battle waged between corporations and the ideals they endeavor to install in us and between people who want to keep the cultural values determined by the people that are the culture.
Edited by Temerity, 01 July 2009 - 09:09 PM.
