Advertising: an Exploit of Values and Beliefs

Media has become an integral part of human life. Humans use and rely on the media daily to obtain and communicate information with each other. One big part of the media is advertising. Advertising is how companies introduce their products to the general public. Advertising has become a huge part in how companies can sell their product to the public. It has also become a huge part of economy stimulation by creating thousands of jobs. Because advertising has become such a huge industry, it has the power to influence and change many people’s perspectives. Advertisements use family values such as picking a house to raise offspring and women’s desires to look young and beautiful and exploits these beliefs to get consumers to buy the companies’ products.
The first advertisement shows a family of three in front a suburban house, indicating that this house can possibly be their new home. Although this advertisement is selling the services of the real estate company Better Homes and Gardens, the central image of this advertisement revolves around the family and the house. Only their backs are shown, which can indicate that Better Homes and Gardens does not want to target a specific audience group, but rather towards the general public. The use of only showing the family’s backs and not their faces is a clever way of advertising, as it preserves anonymity and prevents targeting a specific audience group. This anonymity prevents the audience to jump to conclusions about the real estate company’s clienteles. For example, if the advertisement showed the family’s faces and they turned out to be a white family, then the audience might jump to the conclusion that Better Homes and Gardens only sells houses to white families and that this real estate company does not think that other non-white families can afford such suburban homes. This can then lead to an impact and a decline on the company’s sales rather than boosting it, only because the advertisement showed the family’s