There are several different techniques of hailing people to
consume products but none of them seem to reflect well on the consumer. These
techniques seemingly bank on the sheep-like nature of the consumer, suggesting
that we as consumers will buy anything that is labelled trendy. As far as I am
concerned, the way that these advertisers attempt to hail us speaks to our
current social nature and there is nothing positive about it.
Apart from a handful of
campaigns, advertisers rarely highlight the good in people; they go to great
lengths to highlight the bad and offer a product to ‘fix’ what is deemed to be the
problem. Advertising aimed at women is the biggest culprit of this, and
statements like “women nowadays are not use to being told they are beautiful by
advertising1” do not seem unusual. Advertisers seemingly seek to
create insecure consumers in order to sell them products which will ultimately
offer them the security they once had. This may explain, at least to some degree,
the mental health problems that are present today and the overall lack of
self-esteem that is seen more often now, especially in females.
Advertisers and media do not
always seek to diminish everyone’s self-esteem; sometimes it is only a select
few that they target. Historically, light skinned people have been labelled
better than those with dark skin; slavery is the most extreme example of this
but hints of this ideal are still present today. Television programs and
advertisements are a main source of this thought, leading people to “believe that fair skinned is beautiful since ‘the
television programs focus on individual starts and personalities’ who are
mostly light skinned.2” It can be argued that there are
subtle or blatant hints of racism present in media, advertising and ultimately
the world, but it cannot be argued that people are being degraded in
advertisements.
When advertisers are not
targeting consumer’s individual sense of self-esteem, they use the social
setting to try to coerce the public to consume their product. Quite often the
idea of being left out of social circles is used to gather support for a
product which leads to social groups built on what products its members
consume. Advertisers assume that these group settings have immense control over
people, particularly young people, and lead to advertisements that say things
like “my skin is softer right away, even my friends notice.3”
Setting up these little social groups based on product consumption is creating
more blind consumers because they become accustomed to buying things simply to
conform to the group expectations.
As evidenced above, advertiser’s
view of their consumers, particularly young people, is quite negative. Various
ads show that consumers are viewed as shallow and insecure in that they can be
swayed into buying products by commercials and ad campaigns that create
problems that can only be fixed by a certain product as well as coerce
consumers into buying a certain product by suggesting that we will be
ostracized from social groups without it. Personally, I feel these are horrible
representations that sadly are at least somewhat accurate; a majority of my
peers seem content in simply following trends.
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