How advertisement effects people’s lives Essay

As Americans we atomic number 18 exposed to ads everyday. pack be pressu departure from every direction by advertisements which exploit their deepest fears, attractions, call fors, and desires, shaping their behaviors, goals, and thoughts. They ar led into believing false study and promises that are mostly never kept, all for the simple reason of merchandising the product and making profit. We see advertisements everywherein magazines and newspapers, on the radio, on TV, on flexure, in the mail, even over the ph sensation.These advertisements use the basic themes of either providing an elite group location with the possession of the product, or giving a sense of be to a group or community. Since the recent military activity in Iraq and Afghanistan, a nonher ever present idea has been make prominent and that is development patriotism to evoke rafts desires. Americans are persuaded into buying redundant items everyday however, we bring to realize that no matter what adver tisements say we should bribe items for their usefulness, not to fill voids in our lives, so we can help lead the problem we face today of being a materialistic society.The nationalistic theme affecting pluralitys hearts, minds and senses, is comm besides used to finagle them into buying things. Since everyone has love for their country, using it to sell products is a brilliant idea, still I believe this is a bad practice. It makes people believe they are not ideal Americans, nor are they similar to the people around them if they do not buy that product. The Palmolive advertisement, in Seeing and Writing 2, is a differentiate example, it appeals to the wives of the men at war in World War II (417). On the top of this advertisement at that place are three medals which insure picture of three different men in their uniforms and the words For Him protrude next to each picture.In the lower part of the advertisement there is a woman looking up at these medals and above her for eland are the words, I pledge myself to guard every bit of bang that he cherishes in me, and finally in the background there are several faces of women also looking towards the medals. This advertisement is basically communicating to the wives the idea of guarding their dish aerial, by using this soap, just wish their husbands are guarding their country. The ironic point is that soap cannot make someone beautiful, nor do people lose their beauty if they do not use the correct brand of soap. This advertisement is connecting a heroic and chauvinistic actto one used for mere beauty, in order to sell the soap.The Palmolive advertisement was run in 1943, but a more current advertisement which uses similar attributes is Chevrolet and its slogan for its recent line of railroad cars, An American Revolution. This slogan is always placed on a secular sky background and the writing is in bold white letters, save for the E in Revolution, this letter is written in red ink. So when you co me across this slogan, not only does the slogan buy the farm firm to you, it also appears to be patriotic because it incorporates the red, the white and the blue.This phrase says to its sense of hearing that every American is buying and driving a Chevy car and so should they. Another detail that could be interpreted out of this advertisement is that since the U.S. is currently at war and fighting a revolution against terrorism, a person living in the U.S. can participate in this patriotic revolution by purchasing a Chevrolet. This would be true only if Chevrolet was funding the war, instead of the US government.along with this, another advertisement that exploits this conception was the Netzero advertisement run during the time before the elections. In this advertisement the spokesman was foot scarper for President under the alias of Candidate Zero. His main goal was to return cheaper and faster internet to every family and household. In order to get peoples attention, this c lever idea was used, and it certainly worked on people like me. Viewers could also connect the advertisement with the actual presidential race and that way the product of the advertisement was stuck in their conscious awareness. The whole patriotic theme is strange because the connection between patriotism and the product does not make the product function better, so wherefore do we palpate obligated to pay attention to the advertisement and even purchase that product.Along with patriotism another concept used widely is the elitism the product brings to people with its possession. As Jack Solomon wrote in his essay Masters of Desire, We Americans dream of cost increase about the crowd, of attaining a social summit beyond the reach of familiar citizens (1). He is basically saying that Americans desire to be better thusly the people aroundthem and this belief is what marketers feast on, creating status symbols like Rolex, Mercedes, BMW, and so forth One advertisement that crosse s my mind in terms of using elitism would be the new U2 iPod Special Edition advertisement. This promotes an iPod with a black cover and optical maser engraved spots of the U2 band members everything else is similar to a regular iPod whereas, the price is $50 more. People are led into believing that the U2 iPod is better than the regular one only because it is endorsed by U2.Another ironic detail is that a chemical formula iPod itself is a product of elitism, because even though it has similar functions to a Sony or any other MP3 player, it costs $100 more only because it comes with the signature white headphones. These headphones, unique only because an iPod come equipped with them, bind made themselves and the iPod a status symbol. Most people only buy an iPod because they want the headphones to show the illusion of superiority and uniqueness. Solomon says, The explanation is quite simple when an reject (or puppy) either costs a lot of money or requires influential connection s to possess, anyone who possesses it must also possess the necessary means of act upon to acquire it (3). This explains why the white headphones have made the iPod a status symbol, since its shows possession of an expensive item, even though rationally speaking the gloss of the headphones does not make the iPod function better, they only make it different.Solomon also talks about another part of the American Dream, in which belong to a group is important. The Chevrolet slogan connects us to the entire American population the iPod connects us to other owners of an iPod, and so on. We need a sense of connection and belonging, effectuateing our need for attention and affection. Abraham Maslow, a founder of humanistic psychology, created a triangle in which he placed a persons needs in the order they needed to be fulfilled and the need for love and belonging was the third basic need. Disillusioned by the advertisements, people try to fulfill this need by buying the products. This p roves that using this theme advertisers are capable to affect the person on much deeper levels then recognizable, yet by no means does the product itself become more useful.It is understandable that advertisers need to appeal to people in order tosell their product and that is why they use these tactics, but what is not understandable is while knowing the equity people believe the hoaxes and let advertisements dictate what they are going to buy. People need to realize that products should not be used to fulfill our weaknesses they should be consumed based on our needs, because companies will keep manufacturing status symbols until we accept that products and items are only materialistic and we can never attain all the extravagance items around us. We are scammed into buying false promises everyday, after we realize that we have a choice against it, we can choose not to let advertisements or minor details about the product like the endorsements, or the colouring material of headph ones, or the catchy slogan persuade us into buying a certain item.