Advertising and its Appeal

A detailed Summary of Advertising and its Appeal

Advertising and its Appeal on Society

Today we live in a society that is being dominated and confounded by commercials and ads. A new age, which could be referred to as the advertising age where commercials and ads tell us what is a necessity and what isn't. Howard Luck Gossage in his book Is There Any Hope for Advertising? Stated that there are ads and commercials everywhere around us in which there is no escape. "I like to imagine a better world where there will be less, and more stimulating advertising. I suppose all of us would like to see this come to pass, it would certainly clear away some of the confusion from advertising's murky picture and make it easier to comprehend" (7). Ads and commercials have flourished everywhere like a virus, once it strikes there is no way we can remove the marks it left behind. It creates this blurry, confusing picture, a "murky picture" as Gossage stated, which most people won't find the genuine truth behind what the product really mean and if its really useful or not. Advertising forces consumers into buying products by manipulation which make the customers buy products they think are good for them when in fact it isn't and they do this by appealing in their innermost desires. Ad

Advertisements could have many meanings to people, it could be complex like "activities by which visual or oral messages are addressed to the public at large or to a selected number of people, for the purpose of informing them about, and influencing them to buy, the merchandise featured in the advertising.". Or it could be simple as "Advertising is the means of making known in order to buy or sell goods" (Jefkims 8). In these previous two examples the word fear or the act of playing with negative emotions was never brought up. These meanings are just all about influencing and persuading people, like what the VW commercial does, nobody mentioned anything about the use of fear. Advertisers try to persuade the customer by developing commercials that will evoke fear into the consumer from the consequences of not buying their product. That's exactly how most of today's commercials are being developed, it plays with basic human emotions and takes advantage of them. Most of these commercials are usually the commercials that are targeted especially for women like make-up commercials. One of the most well-known make-up companies is Maybelline. In one of its recent ads about mascara, Maybelline featured Sarah Michelle Geller who is a very well known, famous actor walking with her flaunful looks and immaculate beauty asking: "Tired of using all these different brands of mascara that smears and smudges? Now get the look with the new water proof Full'N Soft mascara that won't run smear or smudge!" This commercial is primarily implying that without using maybellin's new mascara, women will have smudges and smears all over their faces and they won't look as ravishing as Sarah Michelle Geller. The fact that commercial uses a very famous beautiful actor in the commercial makes it more swaying and persuading for women to get up and buy this mascara immediately.

One way to persuade and plunder the customer's attention is to use catchy slogans, characters, symbols, and icons with which the advertisers use to identify and advertise their products. Volkswagen has been one of the most famous car companies that have been known to use catchy slogans and different symbols. For instance, in 1988 Volkswagen made a commercial that generally says that a car is more precious than diamonds to a girl.

Another big example which also plays on evoking fear in the customers mind are the gym commercials. The commercials of Bally's Total Fitness, 24 Hour Fitness, and many other gym commercials try to overwhelm the viewers with the distress that if they don't join the gym, they will be unfit, unattractive and therefore unwanted. Gym commercials succeeded in doing so not just by evoking fear but also by gett

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Approximate Word count = 1828
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English