Principles of Advertising - Assignment Example

Introduction This paper aims to critically evaluate the appeals that are used by advertisers when delivering their claims to the market. In the worldof advertising, there are still businesses that instead of focusing on what their consumers want and need, they try to use advertising to manipulate their consumers into buying their products with the use of some appeals. These appeals include weasel words, or words that are used but do not provide support to the claim at all, words that provide associations to the product in order to divert the consumers in looking for the benefits, and unfinished words in order to leave the meaning and analogy of these words to the consumers. In line with this, Lutz examines these appeals and recommends that consumers should become more critical in believing the claims of the products. These claims, when assessed from a logical and philosophical perspective, prove to have fallacies. These fallacies are flaws to the reasoning of advertisers, which they deliberately use in order to manipulate the consumers. Because fallacies are distortions to the truth, advertisers do not care about the fallacies as it is sometimes their objective to provide promises to consumers which are not entirely true. They are able to escape the legal obligations that arise from such claims by utilizing the appeals that are cited in the article of William Lutz. These provide means for them to manipulate the consumers at the same time avoid litigations. Body Critical thinking on advertising The main objective of a business for its operations is to generate sales of products or services. Over the years, as the marketplace becomes more and more competitive, advertisers are trying to win their consumers through subtle manipulations and appeal to emotions rather than reason. While there are products that really meet the needs and wants of the market, there are more businesses that have not yet adopted the new marketing concept of building relationships with consumers, thus giving only what they want and need. These advertisers who have not adopted the marketing philosophy, aims to increase sales by manipulating people through advertising. And manipulation takes place when these businesses stake claims that do not support some evidence as regards their products. The general use of ambiguity to both entice consumers, at the same time avoid litigations Summing up all the appeals to advertising through a logical assessment, we can see that these appeals generally use ‘ambiguity’ and ‘vagueness’ in their messages. Due to tight regulations in order to curb abuses of these businesses, advertisers are forced to phrase their messages well in order to prompt the market to buy, at the same time removing the legal responsibilities arising from the claims. Andresito Acuña, in his book Philosophical Analysis (46) defines an ambiguous term as “… a term through its history of usage has acquired numerous uses and each of these has mutually exclusive intentions.” He defines intensions as ...”the trait or set of traits, characteristics or even functions shared by the members of the domain of the concept (29).” In essence, the article by William Lutz outlines the appeals of advertising, some of which has used ambiguity in staking their claims to the public. Of these appeals, he mentions weasel words as one of the most commonly used in the advertising world. Weasel words are words that in essence claim something which, in reality they seldom or usually do not support at all. These weasel words are ambiguous terms that are added to an action words when advertisers make their claim. According to Lutz, help is the number one weasel word, in that, when ‘help’ is linked to an action word, it creates a context to enforce the action word while having a means to get away when litigations arise because of the claim. When advertisers make their claims through phrases, they carefully choose the words which will fit two objectives: one, to entice the market to buy; two, to provide a leeway in cases where litigations arise because claims are not able to satisfy the expectations of the consumers. Help, when added to an action word in some phrases of advertisers, accomplishes the two objectives. In Lutz’ articles, ‘virtually’ has made a company win a litigation case by escaping the legal responsibilities through the word’s meaning. As the word has usually been ignored by consumers when reading claims of the company, the company utilizes this word in order to add a means for escape without the consumers paying too much attention to it. As virtually means ‘near’ or ‘almost’, consumers cannot stake legal claims from the phrases that advertisers have made about their products. Fallacies of reasoning in advertisers’ arguments Apart from the ambiguous terms, fallacies in the claims of advertisers to appeal to consumers are the other issue that Lutz tackles in his article. Some of the fallacies that are apparent in advertising claims include the red herring fallacy, false analogies, and argumentum ad vericundiam or appeal to authority. Other words that advertisers frequently use have provided figures of speech in order to entice the market to buy by providing associations to the product. While there are legitimate associations to products, many advertisers put claim into their products by using words such as ‘like’ which creates false analogy or red herring fallacy in their argument. Red herring fallacy occurs when the shift is diverted from the product to the comparison that is made with it. By associating the product with another thing that is not its equivalent to create an analogy, the advertiser creates a false analogy. Lutz tackles this issue and recommends that people should be aware that there are fallacies to the arguments of advertisers—when the premise does not support the conclusion—and when advertisers are committing these fallacies only to entice their market to buy even though their claims have no truth values to them. These fallacies are also apparent in another appeal used in advertisements in the form of unfinished words. Unfinished words are used by advertisers to leave the interpretation of the message to the listeners or viewers. By unfinished words, as Lutz mentions, advertisers are able to create nonexistent analogies which they aim to be filled by consumers. This creates an analogy that does not focus on the product, but with the association in the product which the consumers fill in their minds. Unfinished words also lead to committing of red herring fallacy. Argumentum ad vericundiam, or appeal to authority is not entirely a fallacy if the appeal is made to the right authority. In most circumstances however, as Lutz has noted, advertisers use the appeal to authority only to increase the support of their argument, although the authority is not usually the right authority to support the claim. Evaluative claims coated by empirical claims to gain support Lutz’ main recommendation in his article is for consumers to critically examine the messages that are sent by advertisers in order to be aware of the fallacies that advertisers use to coat their manipulations and make consumers buy. Apart from the fallacies that we have mentioned earlier, another flaw in advertisers’ reasoning lies in the premises that they give to support their claims. Empirical arguments, according to Acuña (180), are made when empirical generalizations are used as premises to their claims. Empirical arguments appeal most to our society where scientific and statistical claims provide support in order to make the arguments acceptable and believable. This is one of the flaws in the reasoning of the advertisers. With the use of scientific terms for generalizations, or even just the term ‘scientifically proven’ as mentioned by Lutz, the impression of giving an empirical argument to listeners and readers is made. This impression makes the claim to the product more credible. Advertisers do this to make the market buy the product, given the perceived truth value of the promise. However, when advertisers give an impression of giving an empirical argument, their premises are usually evaluative. An evaluative argument, according to Acuña (191) has a premise which requires judgment—good or bad, beautiful or ugly, etc. While the advertisers aim to make their premises believable using empirical generalizations, the other premise that they use requires judgment on the other hand. With vague phrases that use words that do not have definite meanings, or meanings that rely on relative perceptions and judgment of the people, advertisers cannot make an empirical argument altogether. This constitutes the flaw in the advertisers’ reasoning. These flaws are not accidentally placed in the advertisements. These fallacies are used by advertisers in order to divert the consumers from the real meaning of the ad, in order to influence the behavior of the consumers. Conclusion Even in the modern times when consumers become more and more demanding, thus marketers are faced with pressure to deliver promises that are true and offering real value to consumers in order to create relationship, there are still some businesses that only aim to boost their sales through subtle manipulations with the use of advertisements. Advertising has lost its credibility because of these false claims that are made by businesses. However, although regulations have been formed in order to curb abuses due to these manipulations, advertisers have found a way in order to still get away with them. With the use of careful words that will both manipulate the consumers, yet make them avoid with litigations, advertisers have used certain appeals to make these possible. William Lutz in his article ‘With these words, I can sell you anything’ highlights the appeals that are used by advertisers in order to manipulate the people. His major recommendation in order to combat this manipulation is to be aware of the message, and be critical in examining the truth value of these messages—or at least if what they claim is credible before making a purchase. With these words, people are made to believe in claims which when analyzed from a logical and philosophical perspective, seem to contain a lot of fallacies. This is the major reason why Lutz recommends such critical analysis. By critically examining the arguments of advertisers using these commonly used appeals, we are able to see the fallacies that they use in order to divert the consumers in looking at the truth value of their promise, which is contained by the message of advertisement. This includes the use of ambiguity, red herring fallacy and false analogy, appeal to wrong authority, substituting evaluative premises with empirical generalizations to make the arguments look as though proven by scientific methods, thus more credible, etc. These words that have evaluative weight on them aim to provide an evaluative claim to the argument, instead of an empirical claim. Thus, by knowing these words that are evaluative by nature or those that require judgment, consumers will become more aware of the real meaning of the advertisement, instead of the meaning that the advertiser wants them to think about after seeing or listening to the ad. By being aware of these fallacies, other forms of manipulations can also be detected, thus be probed in order to provide a more rational purchase decision on the part of the consumers. Works Cited Acuña, Andresito. “Philosophical Analysis: Advance Analysis for Critical Thinking.” 7th ed. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2006. Duncan, Tom. “Principles of Advertising and IMC.” 2nd ed. New Jersey: McGraw-Hill, 2005. Mutz, Diana C. "The Influence of Perceptions of Media Influence: Third Person Effects and the Public Expression of Opinions." International Journal of Public Opinion Research. Volume 1, Number 1 (1989). 1 November 2008 . Read More