Advertisements are boring, useless and often misleading?
Advertisement is highly developed nowadays. To some extent nature itself advertises her wares, for instance, the colour and smell of flowers is nothing but advertisement to attract the attention of insects and birds and the promise of honey is the gift.
Advertising is one of the media to draw the attention of the public and to educate them regarding a particular product. This is called the psychology of persuasion in converting people to a way of life or thinking. For example, to introduce a new drink, it is not enough if the product is good, the public should be made to realize its existence. The manufacturer adopts subtle ways of advertising. It must appeal visually. Since advertisement has become very important and the methods used are many, it has become a much professionalized trade today. In fact advertising agencies do good business. Since they employ specialists like artists and script writers, the advertiser can have expert service at a price.
There are hundreds of ways of advertising. Generally they may have visual, audio and audiovisual appeal. Leaflets and brochures are produced describing a colorful product. Free samples are given, so that new customers may be found. Calendars are quite common and there are very plain ones to pictureque ones. Some fine calendars are being preserved. So calendar manufacturing during the end of the year season is a big business.
Perhaps one of the most popular medium of advertisements is the newspaper, since they reach a very wide section of the public. Some products are advertised throughout the year and they generate a source of income for the newspaper. Here the picture and the script play a very important part. Nowadays small gifts like key chains, purses, table wares and so on are used to advertise.
If the same advertisements are issued for too long they become boring. The advertiser knows this, so he changes the mode of advertisement from time to time. Either the pictures may be changed or the script. Sometimes subtle sex appeal is thrown in by advertising agencies. Whether this is ethically correct is a debatable point.
Any advertisement cannot be useless. It has got a purpose. An advertiser can use a ton of paper for printing his advertisement and distributing it to various houses to get the message of his product across. Throwing to the public just like throwing some mud on the wall, some of it is sure to stick. So too with advertisement which brings the prospective buyer and the product man nearer. With a complex market with dozens of products competing, advertisement is one of the ways of winning the market.
Of course there are advertisements which are really misleading. Some medicines that are advertised claim to be panacea for all bodily ills but very few products claim that honor. Some of the products are not of that high quality as claimed by the advertisement. Take for instance, some of the advertisements for toothpaste. They claim to give all protection to the teeth but they are proven otherwise. In USA this subtle way of persuading the public has been questioned and number of products advertised did not stand the test of proof.
We can conclude here that in spite of its limitations, advertisement is a powerful media that has come to stay.
