Advertising Can Be Hazardous To Your Health

Advertising Can Be Hazardous To Your Health

How far will companies go to sell their products? All too often the answer is too far. Advertising is a marketing technique that both blatantly and subconsciously persuades consumers to purchase products. Companies exhibit a breech of ethics in their strategies to sell their products, being even more reprehensible when the marketing is targeted to children. Advertisers are not held accountable for the effects their marketing efforts have in the process of boosting sales. Social responsibility would be achieved as a result of strict laws and federal regulations reducing the hazardous consequences of advertising.

Why is it so easy for advertisers to cross the line of social responsibility? Because there is no line. There are no laws to govern advertising or repercussions to follow. There are self-regulatory guidelines that should be followed but no punishments result when they are not. There is no accountability for the lack of business or moral ethics. The Children's Advertising Review Unit (CARU) is a council of the Better Business Bureau that has set forth guidelines regarding advertising geared to children. CARU reviews advertising directed toward children and offers advertisers the chance to voluntarily correct advertising that does not adhere to the self-regulatory guidelines. There is no punishment as a result of a morally incorrect advertisement. The public needs to depend on businesses to make socially responsible decisions regarding advertising.

Billions of dollars are spent annually for advertising. There are advertising departments of companies and advertising firms whose sole purpose is to develop campaigns that will sell products. Would this be done if advertising did not influence consumers? Of course not. Marketing works. "Advertisers work hard to create an image around a product" (DiConsiglio, 2006). Unfortunately this image is not always appropriate or represented truthfully.

Children are most at risk to being harmed by advertising. They are more easily influenced and trusting, lacking judgment and maturity. In an effort to appear mature and able to make their own decisions, young people tend to believe they are not susceptible to marketing ploys and suffer from disbelief of their mortality. This makes them even more vulnerable. CARU urges advertisers to be truthful and accurate when advertising "recognizing that advertising may play an important part in educating the child..." (2003).

With the innocence of youth and deficiency of life experience, children do not have the ability to determine the credibility of the source from which they receive information. Advertisers claim it is the role of the parent to manage influences on their children, and this is an accurate statement. However, the advertisers need to share this responsibility as it would be impossible to counteract all of the potentially adverse effects. Children must endure the consequences of advertising that is not appropriately directed at them from all mediums. All adults, parents and advertisers, must join together to deflect the contradicting messages derived from marketing such as health risks from smoking or drinking alcohol, proper diet, obesity, and unrealistic body image.

The inappropriate images used by advertisers are exacerbated by the placement of the ads. Children are subjected to various mediums of marketing including advertisements on television, billboards, Internet, radio, newspapers, and magazines. Social responsibility is oftentimes disregarded in the placement of these ads. Unsuitable ads are being placed in magazines including Sports Illustrated or Entertainment Weekly, or television commercials during sporting events, where a significant percentage of the audience is underage. When a large part of the audience is minors, advertising geared toward young people would be more appropriate.

Issues surrounding smoking are usually hot topics around the country. Tobacco advertising is an ongoing controversial issue. Cigarette ads make smoking look cool and fun with glamorous people having a good time. No tobacco advertisement will show a 40-year-old woman who looks approximately 60 years old with premature wrinkles and yellow teeth, coughing with emphysema. Nor will it mention the ill effects of second-hand smoke. In 1998 a tobacco company, commonly known for using a particular cartoon character for advertising, was sued and made to stop using advertising geared to teens.

In addition to traditional advertising methods, tobacco companies use marketing techniques such as giveaways of CDs and games with trendy designs obviously alluring to young people. So why would companies gear their advertising towards teens who are not even old enough to legally purchase cigarettes? In 1981 the maker of Marlboro cigarettes was quoted saying "Today's teenager is tomorrow's potential regular customer" (DiConsiglio, 2005). This disturbing comment shows why the tobacco industry still finds it profitable to target teens when advertising and why there should be laws prohibiting such marketing.

As equally unethical as advertising tobacco to teens, is the advertising of alcohol. A study reported in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol found that completely banning alcohol advertising would greatly reduce deaths from harmful drinking (Hollingworth et al, 2006). This is synonymous with a national study reported in Contemporary Pediatrics claiming "the amount of alcohol advertising to which 15- to 26-year-olds are exposed correlates with how much they drink" (As alcohol advertising increases, so does youthful drinking,2006). This study was based on findings from hundreds of young people interviewed which lived in 24 different geographical areas during a 21-month period regarding their advertising exposure and alcohol consumption.

Larger expenditures on alcohol advertising were related both to higher levels of drinking among youths to a steeper increase in drinking over time. Young people who lived in a market where there was relatively more alcohol advertising drank more, increased their drinking more over time, and continued to drink more into their late 20s. (As alcohol advertising increases, so does youthful drinking, 2006).

A hidden hazardous effect of young people drinking is that this is when people develop habits they carry into adulthood. The health risks associated with drinking combined with the risks associated with underage drinking unfortunately can be fatal. There is a need for laws to regulate advertising of alcohol to prevent these horrific effects of underage drinking contributed to by advertising.

When it comes to tobacco and alcohol, the technique of advertising is not the only offense. The original source of corruption is in the products themselves