Ads Fads and Consumer Culture

1. Select a brief passage from the reading and post it on your blog. Explain why you thought it was interesting.

The devaluation of the power of advertising by advertising agencies and by businesses that use advertising is generally an attempt to escape from regulation by governmental agencies, and to escape from criticisms of being manipulative and, in some cases, antisocial, by consumer groups and other interested parties.

This passage is interesting because I feel like advertising is manipulative, without a doubt. It's just a matter of looking at the right examples. Advertising agencies know the power they have over human thoughts and behavior, and in many instances, the effect is not a positive one. Take any sort of commercial with alcohol or sex--they always seem to encourage this idea that if you buy this product or that product, then you can look like this, have friends like this, or you'll be infinitely more desirable to the opposite sex. It's not a secret that sex sells, and advertising agencies use this knowledge to manipulate their viewers. They know their audience, and they know them very well; it's great for them when they want to market a product, and the impact they have on consumer culture is immense.

2. What do you think were the author's key points?

-Advertising agencies, and those who try to analyze the effects of advertising in consumer culture, all agree that it does have a powerful influence in the world. It can, at times, though not always, have an effect on human behavior.
-Advertising plays a critical, and not to mention huge, role in our economy--in more recent years it has greatly affected the political sphere.
-Advertising agencies usually attract people from the ages of 18 to 49, give or take a few years on each end. And it is used by nearly everyone: charities, labor unions, organizations. The Internet has become a popular way to market things as well.
-Advertising also has a reflective aspect to it. When we look at certain images, we recall certain events and times in our past. We react to what we see in certain ways, and in this way it's also visceral. That natural, instantaneous reaction to something we witness.
-Advertising is a social and cultural phenomenon. When we try to decipher its effect on individuals or small groups of people, we don't get the kind of result that we get when we try to decipher its effect on consumer culture, in a larger sense.

3. Why is it important to have a psychological understanding when it comes to advertising.

It's important to be aware of how advertising effects you on a personal level, and to just be aware that it often does have the power to effect human behavior in some capacity. It can play a role in our decision making, which we should recognize so as not to let ourselves be manipulated by advertisements. We let advertisement effect us in same ways, maybe subconsciously for the most part, in terms of how we think about things. It may change our perception of how we want others to perceive us, or how we perceive others who use or consume certain products.