Functions of advertising
-- selling a product
-- educating people about new
products
-- part of economic process, allowing
new products to enter market, old products to reposition themselves in market
-- social function
-- offers opportunities
-- reflects values
-- informs
-- provides major support for media industries
Criticisms of advertising
Before going any further, we should
note some of the most common criticisms of advertising. These criticisms have
some validity, but they also have some answers. I'll present the criticisms and
leave it to you to formulate some of the answers.
• Advertising
adds to the cost of products. Part of what we pay for when we buy a bar of soap or a new
car is the advertising for that product. What if General Motors stopped
spending $2.9 billion a year on advertising and reduced the cost of its
vehicles.
• Advertising helps sell inferior
products. When you get down to it, this criticism says that advertising
lies. It convinces us that products are good when they aren’t. It convinces us
to buy an inferior product over a quality product because the inferior product
has been advertised more.
• Advertising creates needs and
desires that we would not have otherwise. We MUST have certain products that
our parents were perfectly happy living without. Advertising, it is argued,
often creates these "needs," which aren’t really needs at all.
• Advertising is intrusive. More and more it's getting so that
everything has an ad on it – or everything is an advertisement.
-- sports stadiums
-- digital placements
-- movie placements
• Much advertising information is
false. Sometimes they are outright lies, sometimes exaggerations,
sometimes they leave false impressions, sometimes they don't have anything to do
with the product.
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