Advertising

Advertising Effects Paper

Advertising in our society today has become a tool used by corporations to flood consumers with ideas on why they should buy their product. Advertising is very influential depending on how the corporation presents the advertisement to the public. Advertising is defined by the American Heritage dictionary as, "The activity of attracting public attention to a product or business, as by paid announcements in the print, broadcast, or electronic media" (www.ask.com, pg 1). In this paper I will describe the effects of advertising on the attitude of the public, describe some advertisements I have seen and the effects the advertisement hoped to draw from its audience.

There is an advertisement commercial that is shown on television about a body spray called "Axe Body spray." The commercial is shown on all channels available on television, but it is shown several times a day on sport channels. The advertisement is geared toward men. There are several commercials shown on television for this product. The first commercial for this product shows a young man spraying his deodorant along his arm and down his chest. It then cuts to the guy in his car with a girl. The girl smells down his arm and started down his chest. The commercial then stated, "Show them the way." The next commercial included another young man being sprayed in the same manor as the first by two of his friends. The friends then sprayed a path to his house. Four women picked up the scent and followed like dogs. The commercial again ended with the slogan, "Show them the way." This commercial is targeting guys who want to smell nice and will pay $7 a bottle for it. The subliminal message being expressed in this commercial is that if a guy wears this deodorant he will smell nice and attract beautiful women.

The next commercials I found interesting where the bud light beer commercials'. Again there are several different commercials shown about this product. In the first commercial there are two guys running through the woods because they are being chased by a bear. The two guys split up and go in different directions. The bear follows one of the guys and catches up to him to corner him against a mountain, so the guy pulls out a bud light beer, opens it, and sits it on a stone rock in front of him. Then out of nowhere the other guy runs by and snatches the beer and keeps running.

The second bud light shows two guys in an elevator wearing suits. One guy asks the other guy how his weekend was. The guy says, "He spent the weekend at the office because he had an idea to hide bud light beers around the office to boost moral. Then the elevator doors open and the entire office is in a rampage. The employees are smashing walls pulling out bud light, fighting with each other trying to find the bud light beers, and at the end it shows the guy boss holding a Bud Light beer saying, "I guess the savages didn't find all of them." The first commercial targeted men and the second commercial targeted men and women because the office contained men and women tearing the office up looking for the bud light beers. The subliminal message being delivered in this commercial is that women and white collar workers drink Bud Light beer making it a choice of drink by working people, men and women.

When taking a look at the legality and morality of advertising methods in creating and responding to the needs of society has been cloudy. Laws have been put in place to put a limit on what advertisements can have in them and what advertisements can say. The argument of this is that corporations feel that they should be able to advertise freely