The dark side revealed

advertising-in.com

Advertising has grown to be the leading industry world wide. It is present almost everywhere. From billboards, newspapers, internet, and even in the simple packaging of products—advertising is always there.

In the world where every public spaces and where media has flooded and saturated with ads and endorsements, one question arise, is having widespread advertising good for a society?

Although advertisements help the consumers decide what to choose and what a certain product could offer, I believe this extensive advertising can be harmful to a society. It makes people want too much. It makes people get disappointed when they don’t have something they want very much. And it makes people open to risk of feeling insufficient and empty for not having something they can’t afford.

Advertising now days is just too much. You cannot start your day without being bombarded by these widespread endorsements. You walk down the streets and you’ll see posters of different businesses glaring at you. You try riding in a bus and you can’t reach your destination without having a glimpse with these giant billboards towering over you. Try listening to radio or watch television and you’ll have enough of these ads aired over and over again. This is how people are being attacked with information they do not necessarily need. Information that they may not want but are being imposed for them to embrace.

Some might say that no one is forced to look at these advertisements or one could even argue that you can switch the TV channels, or just flick past ads in newspapers if you don’t want to see these advertisements. Well, people cannot just choose to ignore advertising because advertisers use techniques to ensure that their messages cross their audience. Print ads for example have attention grabbing words or provocative pictures while TV and radio ads employ subliminal messages and effective jingles for easy recall.

Also, many advertisements do more than just advertising products. Some try to make people feel inferior if they don’t have the product. Perceptions of beauty and fashion have been defined by these media advertisements. Many young people have low-self esteem and live unhealthy lifestyles because they feel that slim body figure and white complexion makes a person beautiful.

Another downfall of having extensive advertisements around is that it makes people too materialistic. People now a days gives value more on material things because this is what’s being exposed to them most of the time. They tend to always want the latest product because advertisements portray that if you have it, you are on the top. People become selfish because they always think what they want. They put these material and superficial things on higher pedestal forgetting other things which value most like family.

Advertising is not bad. But having too much of it is a great deal to handle.