Advertising: Information or Manipulation

Advertising, also known as a part of the marketing process, has a rich background. When we talk about marketing the first things that come to our mind are high profit, goods and services and of course consumers. Advertising’s role should only exist in order to help society by real information about products and services. Moreover, it helps consumers decide what to purchase according their actual needs. Advertisements are located everywhere and no one can avoid seeing them. Thus, every individual in exposed to seeing at least one advertisement. Advertising is a form of mass communication with the public. It is a form of communication that typically attempts to persuade the potential customers to purchase or consume more of a particular brand of product/services. We could separate advertising in two categories. Giving information through advertising about a product is the first category that is innocent when facing the costumers. The second category has a manipulative effect on people. Thus, People exposed to specific advertisements are led to buy goods and services or do things that don’t actually want to do. And in order to attract audiences, some advertisers use different extreme technique that does more damage on the consumer’s life then with helping him. Therefore, we can say that advertising is based on manipulation and thus should be limited because it harmful.

To start with, advertising reaches the mind of people and is dangerous when it is not real especially on children and youth. By unreal advertising we mean a shallow advertising that focuses on the desire and wants of people so the firms producing this product achieves sales and high profits. Young children are unable to understand advertising messages and the information given by these advertisements, therefore, children may consider these advertisements as the truth and the real world thus it will affect their behavior. According to the Washington post and their researches, “Federal regulators