Advertising and Its Relationship to Some Aspect of Contemporary Culture Groups - Coursework Example

Advertising Advertising is a media tool used for the communication in marketing. It is specifically used to encourage, persuade and even manipulate the audience. It works as a motivational toolfor the audience in order to encourage them towards the benefits of a product or discourage them from certain things in society. One of the most important goals of advertising is to drive consumer’s behavior. Advertising may also be used to reassure to the employees that a company is viable and reliable. Advertising is not only used for entertainment purposes. It delivers the main idea and purpose of a product. AntoraDutta comments that advertising is a mass marketing technique. This mass marketing technique is used for the persuasion of the consumers. It informs them about their requirements that why they need the product which is being advertised. Advertisements deliver to the audience about the benefits of the product. Advertisement makes the product easily familiar to the viewers. It has been one of the major reasons for the increase in the consumption of products. Advertisements have multiple tasks. Besides increasing the consumption level of a particular product its major purpose can also be to generate the awareness among public. It can be used to educate the people about the things that they never knew. Providing information about a social event, charity functions and concerts has also being its purpose recently. People get to know about present happenings in the society (Gilbody et al, 246). There are two kinds of advertising. One would find advertisements on television which is called electronic advertising and advertisements in newspapers called print advertising. It is said that television advertising is more affective as it is more visual to the audience. The advent of television dramatically changed the American advertising. The advertising industries annual expenditure exceeds 25 Billion dollars today. The ads are creatively produced and are proving to be instrumental in changing American attitudes and lifestyles in selling products (O’Guinn et al, 49). Research has proved that advertisements have a great and huge impact on society. This impact can be positive and negative, effecting society in a different way. These impacts are affecting the society positively and negatively. Advertisements have numerous positive effects on people, culture and society.it persuades people, spreads awareness and promotes products. ArvindMohanram states that apart from raising awareness commercials play an important role during the times of crisis and calamity. Without advertisements there would have been a huge disconnect between those who are willing to give and those who are in need of such aids. Advertisements promote social awareness among people not only within society but across society also. Yagnik is of the opinion that TV ads have a negative impact on the culture. He says that the television advertising has become the focus of criticism in recent years. The longest ongoing controversy concerns advertising directed towards children (Yagnik, 757). Young children who watch televisionmix up cartoons with reality. These youngsters cannot distinguish between a program and a commercial; they learn a lot from commercials (Firth & Barbara, 124). It can be said that commercials and advertisements plays an important role in the growth of children. They learn many things from advertisements. Children can be negatively affected by those advertisements. Advertisements not only promote good products that are healthy and beneficial for its audience but it also promotes harmful products that can destroy one’s health. Beer and wine promotion through advertisements has increased peoples intake of alcohol. Ads attempt to attract new drinkers, specifically the young people (Jernigan & Craig, 38). The relationship of advertisements with society can be Inverse,on one hand advertisements affect society and on the other hand society too affects advertisements. While interpreting the advertisements one has to look for the features that are associated with society . Society has a deep influence on the presentation and construction of advertisements. There are different methods of interpreting advertisements. The method of semiology is the most commonly used method for the analysis of advertisements as it also shows the connection of society with advertisements. Semiology concentrates on the idea of the creation of meaning. It focuses on the relationship of between different elements that resides within the message and the display and its circulation to the social world; advertisements have to be understood according to the internal and external factors that direct its meaning. Internal factors refer to the content and form of the advertising text, systematized by codes and conventions which should be known by a reader from the same culture. External factors refer to the production, circulation and consumption of the text. Apart from the external and internal factors it is also important to consider the contextual aspect of the advertisements. The analysis of the context will help to analyze the present situation and point of view according to which the advertisement is constructed and presented. The analysis of the different advertisements is necessary to understand the terms related to advertising. Different ads convey a different message. For example the print ad of the Justin Bieber’s album ‘Girlfriend’ shows the promotion of a particular video album by him. If the print ad is carefully analyzed then one would find the tool being used for the promotion of the music album by Justin Bieber. The cover of the album has a picture of the lead singer Justin Bieber and his real life girlfriend Selena Gomez. One would conclude the Ad is the promotion of his album ‘Girlfriend’ by a popular music artist Justin Bieber, the promotion tool being used is the picture of his real life girlfriend. These tools help to promote the product so that the audiences notice it and are motivated to buy the album. The second print ad says ‘I Has a Dream’. It clearly depicts the situation of Black Americans. It is an ad which was printed in New York Times on October 9, 1998. The picture conveys the feeling of African Americans who spent 400 years fighting for the right to have a voice. The ad specifically describes the feelings of the Black Americans from the perspective of language. Ebonics is a particular dialect of English. Just by looking at the ad on comes across the whole historical perspective. The white Americans wanted their English to be pure and refined and they were against the Eboniclect of their language. The ad also points out the contribution of Martin Luther King for the rights of the African American. He paid the price for the voice of the people. The ad is a kind of motivation for the people to raise its voice for one’s own right. From the analysis of this ad it can be concluded that cultural knowledge is necessary for the interpretation of the ads. The third ad says “I ‘m one of the American’s 45 Million Smokers. I’m not a moaner or a whiner. But I am getting fed up. I’d like to get the government off my back”. This ad is awareness for the people that are habitual of smoking. The ad tells a story of a person who has being smoking for so many years. It defines the issues of health problems that can affect a person’s fitness and health. It is also a motivation for the people to work out the problem and overcome the habit that can destroy their health and end up their life. The ad line states “I am one of the American’s 45million Smokers” which gives the information about the fact that the Americans are indulged in smoking in a large ratio. Thus, to conclude it can be said that Advertising has negative and positive impacts on the culture and society. for the analysis and interpretation of advertisements contextual and semiotic knowledge is necessary to understand the ads effectively. References Top of Form Top of Form Dutta, Antora. "Advertising- Its Impact on Society." The CEO Insights.Business and Strategy Online Journal, n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2013. . Frith, Katherine T, and Barbara Mueller. Advertising and Societies: Global Issues. New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2010. Print. Gilbody, S., P. Wilson, and I. Watt. "Benefits and harms of direct to consumer advertising: a systematic review." Quality and Safety in Health Care 14.4 (2005): 246-250. Jernigan, David H., and Craig Ross. "Monitoring youth exposure to advertising on television: the devil is in the details." Journal of Public Affairs 10.1‐2 (2010): 36-49. Mohanram, Arvind. "Positive influence of advertisement in our society."Research/Argumentatve Writing.N.p., 12 Oct. 2010. Web. 23 Apr. 2013. . OGuinn, Thomas C, Chris T. Allen, and Richard J. Semenik. Advertising and Integrated Brand Promotion. Mason, Ohio: South-Western/Cengage Learning, 2009. Print. Yagnik, ArpanShailesh. "Construction of Negative Images of Menstruation in Indian TV Commercials." Health Care for Women International 33.8 (2012): 756-771. Jernigan, David H., and Craig Ross. "Monitoring youth exposure to advertising on television: the devil is in the details." Journal of Public Affairs 10.1‐2 (2010): 36-49. Bottom of Form Bottom of Form Read More