Advertising Is Legalized Lying. Advertising Essay

Advertising Essay
In today’s society, everyone is being constantly bombarded by commercials. The average person sees 3,000 to 20,000 ads in one normal day. All advertisements may seem clever but will never let the product shown live up to its full expectations. Such advertisements such as weight loss food which lets someone ‘eat as much food as they want and lose weight’, is just not that effective. H.G Wells quoted:
“Advertising is legalized lying”
In modern society, advertisers find new and more creative ways to advertise to their target audiences. Advertisers will spend hundreds of billions of dollars encouraging, persuading, and manipulating people to buy their product to make a profit by stretching the truth. Children are a vulnerable target audience to be taken advantage by advertisers as they are easy to influence. For children, they will not know right from wrong and can easily believe anything. In the poem of ‘Breakthrough’ by Bruce Dawe which criticizes modern society. This is a satire on what ‘breakthrough’ actually means, as defined by Dictionary.com, “a sudden, dramatic, and important discover or development especially in science”. A certain advertisement for a breakfast food which is full of lies is Nutella ads.

The poem of breakthrough also allows the reader to see how the media has successfully dominated us. The little girl in the poem would rather sing a jingle from a breakfast food advertisement or a toilet tissue ad. In lines 5 to 7, it states; “Singing the delights still to be found, in breakfast food or toilet tissue, she with all the sales appeal of infancy.” For someone that is in a hospital, they would turn to religion or god for comfort but in this the little girl would rather sing a song from an advertisement that was only made to let a company make a profit. Bruce Dawe also states on line 13 “Angels, backed up by guitars.” This means that the meaning of life is advertised by the media. The little girl’s death can then be exploited and advertised after death.

A spread like Nutella is very appealing to children because it is a chocolaty spread chocolatier than chocolate. Nutella is only targeted at people aged 5 to 14 years old mostly. The majority of cereal advertisements are fuelling childhood obesity throughout the Western World. The average pre-schooler will see 642 breakfast food ads which will show sugary, unhealthy food, according to ABC7 America. Cereals such as Milo cereal, Fruit Loops, Nutri-Grain, Coco-Pops, and Cap N’ Crunch is very appealing to children because they are sweet from all the sugar they contain. A cereal which is considered healthy is Cheerios because it contains 1 gram of sugar per 28 gram serving which is very healthy but is less appealing due to its lack of sweetness. Even though it contains less sugar than most cereals, a lot of kids are going to end up sprinkling sugar over their Cheerios.

Nutella spread has to be one of the unhealthiest types of spreads to eat with breakfast. It contains nearly NO protein but has more than enough sugar and fat. Even if peanut butter has more calories than Nutella, the peanut butter will still be healthier due to the fact that it has higher protein content than Nutella. If someone was to let a child to choose between either Nutella or peanut butter to put on toast, they would rather put on Nutella and spread it on thick. Nutella is not disgusting at all; it is delicious because of how fat and sugary it is. In one tablespoon of Nutella, there are 200 calories which contains 11.6 g of fat, 3.6 grams of protein, 32.6 grams of sugar and . That teaspoon of Nutella is should be enough to spread on one piece of toast. Foods like Nutella are fattening the entire Western world for all of its unhealthy nutritional values targeted at children. Some people are stupid enough to believe that Nutella advertisements are stating that Nutella is “healthy”. In April 2012, the makers of Nutella Ferrero Inc. were sued 2.5 million dollars by a woman who though Nutella was “healthy”. It was also stated that if Nutella had clearly mentioned that Nutella was an unhealthy product, she would have never bought the spread for her family.

Children are very east to manipulate as on Line 9; “the little mind, so lately roused, subsides”. If there was a family who had just arrived into a Western country and were having difficulties learning English, they would not understand fully about the products they see advertised. This could end up having young foreign children persuading their parents to buy this “healthy” spread which contains the nutritional values of a candy bar. All of the Nutella ads can show children what Nutella looks like which is chocolate. They can show their parents then beg them to purchase it for them. In the Nutella commercials, they always show a mother giving toast with a thick spread of Nutella on it also with fruit, juices and milk around near the food which makes it look very healthy. This only disguises Nutella as being extremely unhealthy.
Line 15 also states about advertised products; “commercial products are plugged by pain.” A product like Nutella can cause pain from consuming this regularly such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease and other serious health problems.

Does Nutella live up to its expectations? It never will as it is an unhealthy, fattening chocolate spread. It does contain a lot of energy but it is just from the sugar which consumed in large amounts will end up giving a sugar crash. In all of the Nutella advertisements, they always state and show hazelnuts, cocoa and skim milk as the main ingredients. The 2 main ingredients are actually sugar and modified palm olive oil which is shown in small print in the ingredients list which is easy to miss. Advertisements like this just clearly show that advertising is legalized lying.