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| No | 18% | 71 votes | Total: 391 votes | |
| Yes | 82% | 320 votes |
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Add to FavoritesAdvertising has a habit of getting a bad rap (sometimes deservedly). The big issue are two-fold: true and substance.
The quality of the claims that an advertisement makes does give many in an audience healthy skepticism but there is often also a willingness to test those claims. This is what makes such advertisement worthwhile to the maker.
The substance of an ad is truly what reaches the audience. If the audience is entertained by the ad, then the claims made tend to be secondary. We note and recognize the product or service being presented which is the goal. We remember when Mean Joe Green gave his shirt to the boy, it was because the boy gave Green a Coke. We how to solve ring around the collar. We even know how to make our room smell fresh, keep our food from going bad and the seven or eight stores to buy the coolest clothes.
Of course, these are real ads. While they may inflate the effectiveness of the product, we continue believe in at least a kernel of truth in advertising.
It is that belief that is preyed upon by false advertising. In the 2004 election, we saw how false claims could bring down a presidential candidate. People visit adult sites, get "virus protection" and fall for claims to enlarge parts of their anatomy every day. They respond to the calls to invest in companies only to lose money after the scheme falls through. Not many have strong effects but enough do to make it profitable for the advertisers.
If we had become jaded as a society, it wouldn't work. We would have lost that belief in even that kernel of truth. Instead, even with our skepticism strengthened, our faith in the truth of advertising remains.
Learn more about this author, Steven Laskoske.
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Yes
I work in advertising and find myself selling endlessly and conning humanity out of all the money they spend, and yet I have absolutely no doubt that people have been eroded spiritually, morally and often intellectually - all because of how well advertising has evolved in the last few decades - during the bulk of my life in fact.
In the city where I live, jobs involving selling now dominate the entire commercial world. People are best paid if their job involves making a sale, people dress smartest when that's their job, eat best, live most visibly well. Their lives may largely be full of bile, but even so, on the surface they rule the whole city, and I live in London, so in essence that means they rule the whole world, since everyone copies us (out of love or hate, but they all copy us).
People are much more likely than 10 years ago to do many immoral and nasty things - or just morally redundant/vacant things - they live more and more on their own or in octopus-like groups - they steer clear of family values and tend toward mob-rule anarchic pecuniary feudalism.
People work from dawn till late to save up for cosmetics, mp3 players, clothes, fashion statements, cars, gadgets, things to give pleasure, things to impress, things to overfill. Those who simply want to live a tranquil life and eat and drink what is sufficient and not overdo it have fewer and fewer friends in the modern world.
Since I have been intelligent enough to cash in bigtime on the advertising age (it's more advanced than the space age) I guess I deserve the punishment I get - which is to feel ever more solitary the further along the road to success in this field and for this field I achieve.
Even I am jaded and I accept it. I have, through watching the back-end of online marketing channels, ascertained that many modern men and women ask search engines things like "how do I attract someone who is married". I checked and both genders do it - maybe other genders too. The extent of porn surfing doesn't shock me, it's these things, the duplicitous things that always make me feel like I am, by serving this industry, playing an (at least overtly) evil role in society.
Perhaps when I rant I am drifting away from the smooth succinct attractive style of information exchange which has put a lot of cash my way, perhaps my so-called oratory (for example herein) is so at odds with that other communicative approach that it is different, somewhere I can retain my honesty... or perhaps, in fact, it is just another device, used by author to gain the approval of the selected audience.
Learn more about this author, Two one three four six six.
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