A Holistic Examination on the Impact of Advertising (Final Draft # 2)

Jeremy Hine

April,1, 2011

Final Draft #2

Every day we are bombarded with a plethora of advertisements, be it from our newspapers, televisions, smart phones, or on the internet.  Advertisements work tirelessly to coerce and manipulate us in sometimes nefarious ways, to buy products we don’t always need.  [Thesis] However, to think that advertisements are negatively impacting our lives is a misplaced sentiment towards this essential tool of communication in our capitalistic and materialistic society, providing us with a flourishing and comfortable lifestyle like no other time in human history. [Thesis]

When one looks at the advertisements of today it is easy to spot many logical fallacies that advertisers diligently use to ply their products.  The most common of these fallacies seems to be the false use of authority, where celebrities or experts are used sell products in which they hold no expertise. In a recent television commercial, Justin Timberlake and Peyton Manning are used to sell Sony cameras and camcorders. The commercial opens with a couple and their child in a Bestbuy-like store. She makes a statement, on how the stores selection of cameras is all the same, to the sales representative. The wall then opens up revealing a panel of celebrities including Justin Timberlake and Peyton Manning. The celebrities then extol the qualities of Sony cameras and how they are the only option. When the woman then asks how they know about cameras and camcorders, paparazzi and fans jump up around the couple in the store and start taking pictures of the celebrities on the panel. This advertisement uses the false use of authority to imply that the celebrities in the panel are experts on cameras because the paparazzi take pictures of them. This is a fallacy because having someone take a picture of you does not make you an expert on the technology or functionality of a camera. I am sure if you sat Peyton Manning or Justin Timberlake down, and asked them to explain the technological differences between a Sony and Canon camera, they would have no idea what to say. 

True, this commercial, and many like it use multiple compilations of fallacies to sell products. These ads can be coercive and misleading and seem to be the main argument towards the statement that ads are negatively impacting our lives. However, are the fallacies and emotional appeals of advertising truly impacting our lives in a negative way? I beg to differ. Do celebrities in advertisements really make our lives worse off, or are they just a tool in a machine, that provides the flourishing and comfortable lifestyles we enjoy in our western societies today. 

Ultimately, advertising is a necessary economic tool of communication between buyer and seller. Without advertising, sellers could not make customers aware of their products or services.  When an entrepreneur comes up with a bright idea or product, they can use advertising to make the masses aware. Advertising is used to stimulate demand and keep our economy and subsequent lifestyle afloat. Advertisements are often accused of misleading consumers and selling shoddy products. While this is sometimes true, advertisements alone cannot develop consumer loyalty. If a product is faulty, or of poor quality, customer experience and word of mouth will eventually destroy the brand no matter how misleading or affective advertising is. A good example of this would be the market domination of Japanese cars over poorer quality American cars. Recently however, the tides are turning, as Japanese auto makers have been plagued with troubling and dangerous problems occurring in their vehicles, resulting in extensive recalls. Needless to say, both American and Japanese firms wage massive advertising campaigns, but ultimately the quality of the product is the deciding factor in the success of a product. 

When reading what my classmates wrote about the effects of advertising many of them focused on the strong impact of advertising. Linc-Alan Medeiros writes “The fact of the matter is; ads influence us, they tell us what we want, and in the end they tell us what to do. Today, the result of an advertisement is no longer about a consumer’s ‘needs’, but rather what a person wants.” True, advertisements influence us, if they didn’t have influence, they would not be a successful advertisement.  However, to indicate that they tell us what we want and also control what we purchase is definitely an error. As Brandi Nakamura eloquently wrote “As human beings, we are influenced by the world that surrounds us.  However, as adults, we are all able to make decisions independently.  So even if a great deal of ads don't express the messages we expect them to, it is also our choice to believe them.”  We ultimately have a choice on what we purchase. This goes back to the consumer-seller relationship. We buy, as adults, what we want to buy. If advertisements had ultimate control, I would be a shake weight shaking, MacDonald eating, Budweiser drinking man; luckily due to the freedom of choice, I am none of these. 

Personally, I think if you want to get at the heart of the argument you need to take a step back and look at our society and lives as a whole. When we do this, we can see if advertisements are truly impacting our lives. Many petty arguments can be waged about the impact of advertising. For example, a commonly noted one is that advertising for alcohol can be linked to underage drinking, an argument which has a tenuous correlation at best.  However, when we look at the bigger picture, with advertising being an essential tool of our capitalistic society, the overall impact on our lives has for the most part been overwhelmingly positive. Since the birth of the industrial revolution and capitalism we have experienced not only the birth of advertising but the birth of prosperity as well. The lives of billions in developed nations have experienced an improvement in their quality of life. This comes with longer life expectancy, less deaths at birth, the eradication of many diseases, and a standard of living like no other time in human history. When one looks at developing nations where capitalism struggles to find fruition, the standard of living alone should make us happy for the economic comfort we have in our society today. 

When we look at this encompassing view, we can no longer question the negative impact of advertising on our lives, but instead embrace it as an essential tool in the society we have today. The contributing role advertising plays in our comfortable lifestyles must also be acknowledged. This being said, we have to remain adults in how we interpret and receive the information that advertisers bombard us with as they ply their trade in the cogs of our modern society. 

Works Cited

Medeiros, Linc-Alan. “Ad Pros and Cons.” Online posting. 11 February 2011. Laulima Discussion. 11 February 2011 [https://laulima.hawaii.edu/portal/site/KAP.XLSENG215js.201130/page/dce5cccd-f9ac-4ad1-8c6b-6896281bf756]

Nakamura, Brandi. “Ad Pros and Cons.” Online posting. 11 February 2011. Laulima Discussion. 11 February 2011 [https://laulima.hawaii.edu/portal/site/KAP.XLSENG215js.201130/page/dce5cccd-f9ac-4ad1-8c6b-6896281bf756]

Log of Completed Activities
 X  Feb. 4- Intro to Paper #2. Read the Guidelines for Paper #2.
 X  Feb. 7- Complete readings for paper #2.
 X  Feb. 11- Laulima Discussion: Ad Pros and Cons
 X   Feb. 18- Laulima Discussion: Logical Fallacies Exercise
 X  Feb. 25- Submit RD2 [50 pts]. Review the guidelines.
 X Feb. 28- Submit three RD2 evaluations [50 pts]. Review the guidelines.
 X  Mar. 2-7 – Submit FD2 [125 pts]. Review the guidelines.