Advertising Case

It is irrefutable that nowadays advertisements can be seen everywhere, such as on television, newspaper and radio. There are too many of them that we have to live with whether we like it or not. While there are good arguments against advertising, I would suggest that it is better to regulate advertising than to criticise or ban this kind of practice.

On the one hand, many people believe that advertising can cause many bad impacts on life. First of all, it manipulates people. Advertising aims to persuade us that buying a product can make us happier. Advertisers focus on selling a brand image and they often use glamorous and successful people to promote a product. It is felt that we now live in a consumer culture and we are persuaded to follow the latest trend eventhough often the stuff we bought are expensive and it is not like we can not live without them. Secondly, advertisers usually aim their marketing at children. Young minds are easily influenced by advertisements and can put pressure on their parents to buy them many things. For example, few years ago, there was a commercial advert on television in Vietnam which was to promote an ice-cream brand called "Wall". Children were told that they would be the winner of a summer hat, a watch, and even a mountain bike if they could collect enough ice-cream sticks which had the images of these items on them. Because of this advertisement, many young children asked their parents for money to buy a lot of this brand ice-cream which they could not eat all; they let them melted just to collect the sticks. This was such a waste of money and many parents were irritated.

On the other hand, I think advertising should be viewed as a key part of modern business and it can bring great benefits to many of us. Businesses need to tell customers about their products or services. Advertising not only inform consumers the choices they have, but also it is a creative industry which employs many people. Thus, without advertising we would have less choice and there would be higher unemployment. In addition, nowadays advertising is seen as a form of modern art and there are many people who enjoy it. Funny commercial adverts on television can help us to relax after a long day of work and some people can even have a good sense of humour just by watching them.

To sum up, in my own view advertising should be controlled by laws. Advertisements which aim at children should be heavilly regulated or even banned if it is needed. However, advertising is necessary in the free market economies as it creates demand for products and services.