Tuesday 29 November 2011

Advertising


We live in a world now where we cannot go anywhere nor do anything without a constant barrage of advertisements.

We live in an age of communication, making it ridiculously easy for businesses to fill our minds with ideas and hints usually relating to a product they are trying to sell us.

This is simply the way the world as we know it works and certainly will not be changing anytime soon, but some things do annoy me.

First of all... when are they going to make a cleaning product that kills that extra 0.1% that all the others seem to have a problem with...?

I picked up a leaflet about virgin media the other day which actually says that for an extra £3 a month you can have free TiVo activation.

This blatantly this not free. The activation of the box may be free but the product itself is not. Adverts know all too well what words trigger certain thoughts in our mind. Always be careful of something advertised as free. This simply is not true; the money for the product is coming from somewhere else, possibly something else they are trying to sell you.

The same thing applies with the print press. Journalists are very good at using buzz words that influence an emotional response in you. As long as people are cautious about this and think about what they read it is fine. It's when people believe everything they read or see that problems begin. This relates a lot to my previous post about prejudices. Often it’s through these careful uses of language that prejudices can emerge.

DFTBA

2 comments:

  1. Can I just point out that the 0.1% of bacteria that cleaning agents don't kill are partially made up of good bacteria (bearing in mind that excessive cleaning agents are part of the reason why children get sick so easily these days, they're underexposed) and those that are difficult to quantify, plus an added bit of companies keeping themselves safe. :P

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  2. Haha yes I know I was just being daft. Your quite right about children being underexposed, best thing to do for your kids is let them get alittle ill, obviously in moderation, don't set out to give your kids smallpox or anything!

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