Advertisement Is Manipulation

Advertising is a way of getting a product or an idea to the general public to advertise the positive aspects of it. Advertising is a good way of persuading the people to purchase a product or believe in an idea that the advertisement presents. Advertising has many forms. They come in propaganda or in mass media. Traditional advertising is meant for persuasion and is made to give off positive aspects (information) about a object or specifically a product to make them purchase or believe in the ideas that the advertisement provides.

This is not true present day. The present day advertisement evolved and now brainwashes the people to buy or believe in the things in the advertisement. Advertisement is made for persuasion but people have used this tool to actually control the thoughts of many people. For example, subliminal messages are contained in many different advertisements available today. Subliminal messages are very unethical. These messages are hidden in words or drawings to control the people. Subliminal messaging is one unethical way of advertising.

Following ethics decides whether the ad is made for information or manipulation. If the ad contains unethical ways of persuasion then it is made for manipulation. The quote “if we follow ethics we face negative consequences” explains the ads that are available today. Many companies threw ethics out of the window. following ethics means less sales and less effectiveness. For the huge benefit they crave, they threw ethics and joined the dark side. Now advertisement are solely made to persuade people to pay more money than the actual cost of the product or an idea.

These ads (most of them today) are mainly legal scams pasted in the window of your nearby super market. Is advertising the definitive way to make us informed in our daily decision making or is it just an exceptionally authoritative kind of mass deception that companies use to persuade their consumers and prospects into buying their services or products that they (buyers) do not need? In the global market, consumers have been exposed to ever ever-increasing amounts of advertising message.

Consequently, the openings geared towards advertisement by firms have been on the rise to make sure that the buyers get the information. The paper presented here will carefully examine whether advertising is aimed at provision of information to the general  public and passing useful information to the customers or just to manipulate them and lure them into buying. Advertising can be used interchangeably with the word marketing. Talking of marketing draws our minds initially to money, services, goods and more importantly consumers.

The role of advertising should be to help the society and the public at large through adequately correctly providing information concerning services and products that are produced. Advertising is a kind of communication that is untended to persuade people; readers, viewers and listeners to take some action. Another definition of advertisement as described by various researchers is; the non- personal communication of information concerning products, ideas or services in a normally persuasive way which is paid for by the sponsors and passed on through various mass media.

On the other hand, the term manipulation has a meaning of giving malicious/ false information on a particular issue with an intention of achieving ones objectives. Manipulation basically makes use of lies to bring about benefits. There is a risk here though as if all the companies engage in spreading lies or false information about there products, the consumers will discover the truth and eventually the companies’ integrity in the eyes of the people will be lost, a fact that makes them to be extra smart in their manipulation undertakings.

Advertising can be categorized into two throughout this research. One category is the innocent way of giving information to customers concerning a given product or service while facing them. There is a second category of that has a manipulative outcome on people. In all circumstances, people exposed to one or another kind of advertisement are driven in to purchasing products purchasing they may not really have needed. This is the image of manipulation in advertisement that makes consumers more commodity fetishists.