Introduction
In recent years, one of the signature strengths of the advertising industry has been its unfaltering capacity to transform ostensibly mundane objects into extremely enviable products (Trampe et al., 2009). But as products transform into entities of desire once placed in advertisements, they trigger important self-processes and different meanings to the target audience, some of which are positive while others negative.
Interestingly, a wealth of literature demonstrates that the goal of advertising has shifted from the creation of empowerment and consumer fulfillment to premeditated creation of a mood of restless dissatisfaction with what people have and what they are so that they go out and purchase more (Gannon & Lawson, n.d.; Harris et al., 2009). Using the recently released advertisement on Budweiser’s beer brands, the present paper purposes to discuss the effects of advertisements on people.
Description of Budweiser Beer Advertisement
Early this year, Anheuser-Busch InBev, the company that makes Budweiser beer brands, created a series of advertisements to coincide with the official launch of the 2013 American Super Bowl. One particular advertisement for a Budweiser beer brand chronicles a seemingly close bond a Clydesdale foul shares with his trainer, eliciting deep sentiments of brotherhood, luck, superstition, traditions and rituals (Rotunno, 2013).
The advertisement features slim women serving beer in sexy and cool environments, while the Clydesdale trainer demonstrates a high level of cool demeanor and strong physical configuration. It is important to note that the trainer used in the ad happens to be a renowned personality who has acted in the movie “Transformers” (Just Jared, Inc., 2013).
One particular executive of the beer making company suggests that the American Super Bowl is the ultimate beer occasion and that watching football is one of the most essential beer drinking occasions, hence fans must drink beer to be associated with the game that is the icon of beer drinking occasions in the United States (Rotunno, 2013).
Effects of Advertising on People: From Opinion to Evidence
Advertising has been defined in the literature as a form of communication employed to promote products and services of an organization “primarily to generate sales and secondary to create a brand identity, introduce new products and services, communicating a change in the existing product line and helps in communicating social messages to the masses” (Kumar, 2012 p. 22). These are noble objectives by any standards, but it is evident that contemporary advertising goes beyond these objectives into other inconceivable intentions.
Modern-day advertising, in my view, affects people more negatively than positively. From the example of the Budweiser beer advertisement, it is clear that those who were behind this advertisement wanted people to not only view beer drinking as a valuable experience that can be equated to the American Super Bowl, but to also think that alcoholism is linked to cherished personal characteristics such as establishment of close bonds, sociability, elegance, and physical attractiveness.
The framers of these advertisement also wanted the target audience to internalize the misplaced belief that drinking beer is associated with cool sporting events such as the Super Bowl, and is also a spring board to a wide range of attributes that are so much cherished by young people, among them success, relaxation, cool demeanor, popularity, romance, and adventure.
More importantly, the framers of the advertisement used a popular celebrity to demonstrate to the audience that their beer brands are for people who want to make it in life. Such misplaced perceptions contained in the beer advertisement, in my view, have only served to brainwash the masses into reinforcing drinking behavior and internalizing other social vices such as crime, hooliganism, irresponsibility, family breakdowns and poverty.
Numerous studies have been conducted to demonstrate the effects of advertisements on people. The first of these effects is encouragement and reinforcement of undesirable behavior and consumption patterns.
In their seminal article about the effects of alcohol advertising on young people, Smith and Foxcroft (2009) acknowledge that “healthcare researchers and workers have shown associations between exposure to alcohol advertising and drinking behavior in cross-sectional surveys” (p. 4). This particular study found that onset of alcohol consumption in adolescent non-drinkers at baseline was substantially associated with exposure to alcohol advertisements in traditional, print and electronic media.
Within the food sector, a number of reviews have investigated research studies on advertising to young people and came to a conclusion that food advertising triggers immense preferences and purchase intentions of the food items being advertised (Harris et al., 2009). Health officials in the United States, for example, are of the opinion that obesity among young people is on the increase due to exposure to intense advertisements for calorie-dense low-nutrient foods.
The second negative effect of advertising is that it sows among us seeds of unhappiness and discord (Gannon & Lawson, n.d). As a matter of fact, the advertising industry has received widespread criticism “for bringing materialism to its height; for replacing inner happiness and intrinsic motivation with the drive to be productive in society only in order to consume and buy happiness” (Hayko, 2010 p. 80).
The beer advertisement discussed in this paper, for example, works in principle by making the target audience believe that their lives will forever be empty unless they align themselves with the ‘next big thing’, which undoubtedly is the consumption of alcohol on the sidelines of a big Super Bowl Match.
Additionally, extant literature demonstrates that people who fail to achieve the desired body image as is transmitted in a particular advertisement often develop disturbed mood swings as well as low self-esteem and self-image ratings (Joshi et al., 2004). Such attributes, in my view, only serve to sow amongst us seeds of unhappiness and discord, not mentioning that they prevent us from achieving our full potential.
Third, advertisements have come under constant criticism for increasingly consumer debt due to increasingly lavish consumer lifestyle (Gannon & Lawson, n.d.). When advertisers use sleek beautiful girls to advertise a particular line of clothes on the television, a sizeable number of consumers are overtaken by raw desires and sublime stimulation to have such clothes and would rather creep into greater debt to ensure they have the clothes in their possession.
Many music icons have experienced bankruptcy due to lavish spending habits reinforced by exposure to advertisements. Additionally, consumer debt due to lavish spending is a predictor to family breakdowns and irresponsible behavior (Trampe et al., 2009).
The fourth effect of advertisements on the people is that they perpetuate a life that is filled with lies and deceptions as most ads are not representations of truth.
While it is obvious that the methods in which situations are availed to the target audience through advertisements are not realistic, organizations want people to believe that they should live the life that they avail to them on screen (Hayko, 2010). Such a trend is worrying as it takes away people’s inherent right to make independent decisions by substituting their most intimate thoughts with the advertiser’s own ideas and conceptions of what should be.
Lastly, advertisements have been blamed for perpetuating a life of impulsivity and sensitivity to pleasure and reward, particularly among young people. Extant literature demonstrates that “young people who already have problems related to alcohol are likely to be particularly vulnerable to alcohol advertising, with the vulnerability increasing with increasing alcohol consumption” (Anderson, 2007 p. 10).
Indeed, it has been mentioned in the literature that advertising manipulates the vulnerability among young people by shaping their attitudes, value systems, perceptions and expectations of the product being advertised, which then influence the decisions they make regarding the use of the product (Gordon et al., 2010; Joshi et al., 2004).
Many young girls, for example, have ended up in hospital with disfigured faces after trying out some cosmetics they saw on television commercials. Instead of seeking for more information regarding such creams, young people respond to their impulsivity and sensitivity to pleasure and reward by trying out the creams with the view to look similar to the sleek images appearing on the advertisement.
A Comparison of Advertising Effects in the United States & the Arab World
The effects of advertising on people are influenced by a multiplicity of variables such as culture, traditions, beliefs, values and expectations (Kalliny, 2010).
Extant literature demonstrates that loosely aggregated societies are more likely to be influenced by advertisements than communal societies owing to the fact that they do not subscribe to the same traditions, values and culture (Al-Olayen & Karande, 2000). In this respect, it can be argued that people in the United States are more likely to be responsive to advertisements than people in the Arab world owing to the fact that they subscribe to diverse cultural values, beliefs and backgrounds.
Conversely, people in the Arab world are likely to first evaluate the advertising against what is provided for by the strict Islamic culture before deciding to internalize or discard the message being advertised. This exploration implies that the social fabric and societal cohesion to a large extent determines the effects advertisements have on people.
Conclusion & Recommendations
Drawing from the above discussion, it can be concluded that although advertisements have positive impacts on people, they also posses negative ramifications in terms of encouraging and reinforcing undesirable behavior and consumption patterns, sowing among us seeds of unhappiness and discord, increasing consumer debt due to lavish consumer lifestyles, perpetuating a life full of lies and deceptions, and providing support to a life of impulsivity and sensitivity to pleasure and reward.
The negative effects, it seems, continue to eclipse the benefits of advertising. More poignantly, it has been demonstrated that these effects affect young people and vulnerable groups within the population. This is a dangerous precedent by any standards because the young people are the future of tomorrow.
Owing to these negative effects, governments should attempt to regulate advertising, particularly when it is targeted at young people. Today, more than ever before, it is clear that most advertising executives will stop at nothing to create advertisements that make their products and services sell, even if such efforts mean circumventing ethical and moral benchmarks. In such a situation, government regulation is the only viable option.
Still, the government and other interested stakeholders such as local and municipal authorities could consider banning advertising in public places. Such a ban would ensure that people are less exposed to harmful content contained in the advertisements. Another set of recommendations include controlling advertising on the Internet to protect vulnerable groups of the population, introducing taxes on advertisements to discourage usage, and encouraging self-regulation among players in a bid to stamp out negative advertising.
References
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