Some critics believe that advertising is a menace because of the cultural and social influence it has on individuals.
Emerging research suggests that purchasing decisions and brand loyalty may be influenced by actual changes in the brain. This could explain why "information processing" from Module 5 happens for some products but not for other.
"The ardor of the ad business to adopt the technical tools of biometrics - measuring brain waves, galvanic skin response, eye movements, pulse rates and the like - is increasing as consumer spending, the engine of the American economy slows.
In other words, in hard times ads must work harder to move the merchandise."
Some critics believe that advertising is a menace because of the cultural and social influence it has on individuals.
Some critics call for the strict regulation of all advertisement, the limitation of advertisement to price points only, or the total elimination of advertisement.
"Advertising corrupts us and ... exploits trauma and can lead to addiction."
The ad below, from the organization "Adbusters", expresses the belief that America over consumes.
Advertising can also be used as a force to promote the social good, as the public service announcement below and the French AIDS awareness ad on the right demonstrate.
The advertising industry understands there's truth in both statements.
Click here to read "Inventing the Commercial". Print a copy and read it carefully. This article, about the birth of television advertising, helps explain the nature of contemporary television and helps explain why the contemporary advertising business looks the way it does.
Then click here to read "The Cunning of the Hand, the Weakness of the Heart." Print a copy and read it carefully. This article takes the extensive writings of advertising professionals along with extensive interviews and outlines the general theories behind advertising.
"My anxiety about advertising before reading this material was centered on trickery, deceit, manipulation. It is clear to me now that almost no individual ad deceives, though advertising as such is deceptive, and that individual ads don't operate by manipulation as much as by knowledge."
Of course, the author was not referring to "political" ads.
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Florida Gulf Coast University is an equal opportunity/affirmative action institution.
