The Reality of Advertisements

Popular culture would not be the way it is now without commercials and the advertisement industry. Let’s face it, the advertisement industry is huge, and it makes its money off of the beliefs and values that are established as valuable by popular culture. Advertisements and advertisers have had a trend toward making the consumer not have as much control on their privacy, especially while being online. In the article, “Advertising Gets Personal,” the author, Samuel Greengard, makes it a point to show how exposed consumers really are when they go looking online at different websites. He does this by introducing a very intrusive thing called a “cookie.” Since most websites now have cookies to gather information about the person, advertisers have the potential to make much more money because they will have tailored their advertising to the right consumer. But that is not all, advertisers for products do not just simply say, “This product is good because it works better than all the other products,” or anything rational along those lines. Instead advertisers decide to focus on showing images that are not necessarily accurate of how a product will make you feel. For example, Coca Cola commercials always show that people are happy and friendlier when they drink Coca Cola. Is this really true? Obviously not, to be happy and friendly is an individual’s choice, not an influence of a very fizzy, dark colored beverage. But this shows how advertisers use ideas, beliefs, or notions of pleasure to sell us on the product. In some ways we become mentally dependent on the product to make us feel a certain way because we now have that product. This is a very harmful way to go about reinforcing stereotypes and status quos. I do not think there is ever a time when a person can look at an advertisement and that advertisement is not selling notions with their product.