The Effectiveness of Advertising - Essay Example

Every advertiser or company must do more than just make a product, give it an attractive price, and offer it to the consumer. They have to also communicate and promote it to their current and future customers; they have to advertise it. Advertisers appeal to the lusts, desires, and wants of the target market or potential customer. "Target market is the market segment to which a particular product is marketed. It is often defined by age, gender and/or socio-economic grouping," states Wikipedia encyclopedia (2006).

As previously stated, an increasing number of advertisers, retailers, and wholesalers appeal to the target market's emotions, lusts, desires, wants, and needs. They want to pull at the heart strings in order to persuade, or get others to believe and create some action. Perhaps some of the best examples of these advertisements use sex to sell everything from beer to necessities such as toothpaste. The word lust is not often used in our society today so the meaning may be obscure to many Americans.

(Advertisers Lure Customers with Worldly Lusts, n.d.) This may seem devastating but without advertising, many people would be out of jobs and many would lack product and service knowledge and opportunities to purchase what they want and need. For example, without advertising (whether it is on a billboard, on the Internet, or through a salesman), people would not be as informed and the opportunities for buying and sales would decrease. Advertising increases competition, competition encourages innovation which leads to more jobs.

Burton (2005) reports, "The goal of the competition is to improve economic developmentand hopefully, will result in job opportunities."Although advertising can be found everywhere even to the point that we are used to it, advertising is truly misunderstood. It can even be found on toys, at the movies, and while you are waiting. Some shows and movies are entire advertisements for other products and services. Ference (2004) reports, "They even advertise when we're waiting. Ever sit through The 2wenty The 2wenty, so named for the advertainment it provides in the 20 minutes before your movie starts (quasi-phonetic numerical substitution is, of course, sic), replaces the slide-show ads of yesteryear with "programming" that hypes a movie, TV show, or musician - and interstitial "commercials" for Advertising 4hilariously "local" products.

(The pert Tel-Aviv car service receptionist and DJ school started by Jam Master Jay, being excellent instantiations here.) As quaint as this all seems, this type of captive cinema advertising is a $315.1 million business." Let us not forget to mention the usage of the Internet and technology for advertising. Some even say that is a necessary evil. Advertising is necessary when the new product is introduced on the market to create a demand for it, or when there are