Seminar unit 9 art and humanities - Research Paper Example

Running Head: Seminar unit 9 art and humanities Advertising involves focusing attention, inventing or identifying people’s anxieties that can be resolved by purchasing some specific brands (Wernick, 1991). Recently, I went shopping in the city and I saw Coca-Cola company brands on an advertising billboard. The billboard featured energetic football players whose strength and energy were connected to the advertised brands. There were brands like Fanta, Coke and Sprite; which are all brands from the same multinational soft drink company.

Each of these brands was associated with a sport activity; for example, Coke was linked to football, Sprite to basketball and Fanta to rugby. Advertising is extremely effective because it persuades and influences people to buy advertised products. Advertising is also capable of changing markets while at the same time improving the profit margins for any company (Wernick, 1991). It is clear from the pervasiveness of advertising that it easily influences consumption culture. Various researches have proved that advertising increases sales and profit margin for producer companies (McFall, 2004).

Suppose two brands of soap are made from the same raw materials and given different brand names. Incase one of the brand is advertised while the other one is not; the advertised brand will have higher sales compared to the other brand (McFall, 2004). Most consumers have a developed loyalty for certain brands in the market (Wernick, 1991). For instance, one of my neighbors always uses Lux soap simply because it is advertised as being hundred percent effective in killing germs. She told me one day that she finds it extremely difficult to use other soap brands because Lux is the only soap that she could trust.

This shows that, the brand has been advertised to an extent of influencing my neighbor’s loyalty in an irreversible way (Wernick, 1991). ReferencesMcFall, L. (2004). Advertising: A Cultural Economy. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Inc.Wernick, A. (1991). Promotional Culture: Advertising, Ideology and Symbolic Expression (Theory, Culture & Society S.). London: Sage Publications Ltd.