Selling More Than Just a Produ
Advertisements for various products are seen everywhere a person looks-on billboards, in magazines, on television, and countless other places. What draws the consumer into the advertisement-the actual product, the display of the sensual woman as she drinks a glass of milk, or the muscular man sporting a Ralph Lauren blanket as a loincloth? These types of advertisements display unlikely depictions of men and women to society. Today, advertisers use the influence of gender and sex to sell various products to consumers, resulting in unrealistic expectations of men and women to society. According to Vernon Fryburger, author of the book The New Age of Advertising, "The most important job for advertising is to "make a sale" for a product or a service, and to do so it must clearly establish a rapport with its audience, which means that it must consciously stay within relatively narrow bounds of acceptability in terms of language, visualizations, and general background and frame of reference" (15). Advertisers use many different strategies to sell their products to consumers. They spend over 200 billion dollars per year attempting to get the attention of consumers and to influence their decisions
What can be done to prevent these feelings of insignificance? Advertisements as a whole can and should portray a more realistic display of men and women instead of a lie. Sending letters to ad agencies and government officials, in addition to boycotting certain products of things that could possibly bring about these feelings, are only a few suggestions that can be done to prevent this from happening to other consumers. The best thing for consumers to do is to not be silent about this problem in our society, but to take a strong stand in what they believe in. The truth of the matter is that material possessions cannot bring a person happiness, love, acceptance, success, etc. The person himself is solely responsible for that, not advertisements. If people come to grips with this reality instead of the "reality" depicted in advertisements, life would be use this product, which is entirely false. Consumers feel that if they do not use this 'wonder' product, they will be forever ugly, out of style, or fat. Most advertisers feel that by using sexually orientated or seductive ads, the product will be sold much quicker. When consumers see these portrayals of men and women along the street, staring down at them from billboards, or on the television screen, consumers desire to be like the individual in the ads, because this will bring happiness into one's life, success, sex, and much more by sporting a particular name brand of clothing, wearing a new perfume or cologne and such. "By giving consumers an attractive picture of the products available to them, advertising motivates them to buy," stated Courtland Bovee and William Arens in a study conducted for ad objectives and ad planning, in addition to consumer behaviors (11). Another idea that consumers grasp is that by using a particular product that promotes dieting, cosmetics, clothing, etc., the consumer will become like the people in the advertisement themselves and so much more if they
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Approximate Word count = 2502
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)
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