Is Advertising Good for Society?

Mass 101

Ta Ya

Instructor: Lori A. Smith

Is advertising good for society

The initial advertising evidence we can track was in 3000B.C.E in ancient Babylon. The first advertising came into public was in 1472, in order to sell prayer books. The first newspaper advertising in colonial America was in 1704 (.) “Advertising is a form of marketing communication used to persuade an audience to take or continue some action, usually with respect to a commercial offering, or political or ideological support.” () Along with the development of society, advertising is more and more popular in people’s life, and we can see advertising in anywhere, such as, newspaper, TV, Internet, and even when you walking you can see advertising on the road. There is no doubt that advertising has giant effects on our society, and advertising is become the one of the most debate topic now. Is advertising good for society? Same as every other debate topics, it positive sides as well have negative sides.

Nowadays, people always focus on bad side when they talk about advertising in society, but it is really important to let public to realize that advertising does have its good side, and it brings people a lot of benefits. First of all, advertising is necessary for society. Advertising can provide a lot of information about products, such as what is look like and what it use for. People can simply get much information through advertising, and if advertising can provide correct information about products, so people don’t need to waste time for doing research. Most of people cannot go shopping everyday, and they have difficult to find what products is best option. People can stay in their house and to see a lot of interesting advertising through different forms, such as TV, Internet, and newspapers. Based on the information advertising provide, people can write down a shopping list, and they can calculate the money they will take before they go to the market. Today, a lot of women buying newspaper and magazines just for plan their shopping.

Second, advertising can bring to people a better life, and a good environment for society. A great example for this aspect is public service advertising. Public service advertising is designed to inform the public on issues that are frequently considered to be in the general best interests of the community at large (Chron.) When people talking about the positive side of advertising for society, the one thing they must think about is public service advertising. We can see public service advertising often on TV, but also on newspapers and magazines. The purpose for this kind of advertising is raising awareness about some particular issues. Healthy, environment, and safety always are main themes in most of public service advertising. For example, drunk driving now become to a crime for people, and the whole society are all against this bad behavior. Instead to telling people do not driving after they get drunk, the state and local highway safety choose use public service advertising to telling public drink responsibly. “This is very smart strategy, recognizing that you are never going to get everyone in society to change their behavior, so pick the low hanging fruit and let change happen over time” (.)

The benefits advertising brings to society not just it is necessary and it makes our society in a better environment, but it also has benefits on economic aspects. Based on research from the international Advertising Association, advertising can inspire companies to compete each other and let them continue provide new products. This phenomenon encourages a lot of consumers to buy products because of these advertising and products satisfied their desirableness. Therefore, advertising brings advantages to economy. Also, advertising has created more jobs for public. Because the requirement for goods and service rising because of advertising, manufacture, factory, and farm now are need more people for help. For this reason, advertising also helped society reducing the burden (Chron.)

There are also a lot of different voices to complain that advertising is causing negative impact on society. Although advertising already bring a lot of benefits to us, but these benefits cannot cover its bad side. First, advertising raise stereotypy issues. “Stereotype is a thought that can be adopted about specific types of individuals or certain ways of doing things” (Stereotype.) When we mention stereotype in advertising female always be targeted, but male also have stereotype in advertising. Female are more general showed in advertising because they are seem to responsible for to do everyday purchases for their family. Male always presented with cars, cigarettes, or business products, but female are always presented with cosmetics and housekeeping. Female also more generally showed in home environment, not like men, who are always showed in outdoor and business. Stereotype also can happen in children’s life. For example, boys are always showed as tough or ambitions, while girls are showed as more elegant or feminine (.) “The Socjournal website points out a print advertisement where a boy is standing inside a gray pop-up castle, taking on a posture of power and dominance. A girl is shown cowering in fear outside the castle as if afraid to enter. A pink version of the castle is shown in a corner of the ad, indicating that the gray one is for boys while the pink one is for girls” (.) Not only the gender stereotype in advertising, but also we can see a lot of different types of stereotype, such as, “athletic blacks, feeble seniors, sexy Italians, smart Asians” (.) This issue of stereotype raises another issues, which is sex appeals and body image. Because of stereotype of women and men, some of advertisers that portray them as sex objects to appeal customers, such as Victoria’s Secret (.) The main purpose of media is to fit in everyone, and get more audience, and TV become to a mirror of the society. Because issue of stereotype presented in commercial showed the traditional definition of gender, it could have big effect on what is healthy self-image and often let teenager misunderstand what is beauty (Wolska.)