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Advertisers Have a Responsibility to Society

Advertisers have a responsibility to society because sometimes advertisements can lead people into making the wrong choices. For example if cigarette ads were aimed at children the children of our society would think it is ok or even cool to smoke. This would in turn lead to more health issues in our society. According to Sheehan (2004), Young adults and children see smoking and drinking as a way to develop their own identity, in that these behaviors can be seen as a sign of maturity, discernment, and independence. If children already have those views about these types of behaviors imagine the impact of enhancing those views through ads. Advertisements can affect children and teenagers by leading them into making the wrong decisions.

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Testimonial Advertising

Testimonial advertising is when a satisfied customer talks about the product or service that he or she has used. Sometimes testimonial advertising can be very effective in promoting a brand or product but other times it can seem false and even over exaggerated. This type of advertising is commonly used on television commercials promoting weight loss equipment such as the elliptical trainers, vibration machines, the stair stepper and many others. There are some regulations on testimonial advertising by the Federal Trade Commission that help guide this type of advertising. The International Charter also has some principles for testimonial advertising.

The IC is an organization dedicated to the promotion of business that provides assistance and governance for businesses across the world helping to raise trust and guiding standards. An example of an ethical standard of testimonial advertising is that the testimony should be genuine, verifiable, relevant and based on personal experience or knowledge (International Charter). The most recent guidelines supplied by the FTC regarding testimonials are summed up as follows; Testimonies must be truthful and reflect the honest opinion of the quoted source. Celebrities are not required to say they have been paid but if they are interested in ownership of the product they are responsible to check claims. Expert endorsers should really have expertise in the area. The advertiser cannot use testimonies of people who did not give them (Nanton). 

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Persuasive Essay

 Representation of Ideal Female Beauty in Ads Negatively Affect Women

The representation of beautiful women in advertisements make some women feel unhappy with their body image. The media portrays beautiful women as thin, light skinned, with beautiful hair and flawless skin. For example in the film Killing Us Softly, Kilbourne stated that there has been a dramatic increase in recent years in the amount of cosmetic procedures and that 91% of all cosmetic procedures are performed on women. When women view ads that show the ideal female beauty, they feel the need to look like those women and are willing to go through surgery to achieve that look.

Large female bodies are not usually seen in advertisements. Women who are not thin are viewed negatively in our culture. According to Sheehan, advertisements often present large women as having bad bodies that limit both their wardrobes and their social engagements (p 98). The media has made women fear being “big” by convincing them that they will not be accepted by society if they look that way.

Thin women in advertisements are almost always photo shopped. There is no way that the beautiful women portrayed in ads are picture perfect, they have flaws too. As Kilbourne stated, “The bodies that we see in advertisements as acceptable or desirable is one that fewer than 5% of American women have. Most women in America are not as thin as the ads portray them to be, yet many women feel the need to resemble those women in order to be liked.

Some people say that women are not affected by the representation of beautiful women in advertisements because beliefs and character are learned at home and not through the media. But even when we are at home we are constantly watching television, looking at magazines or newspapers where these types of women are portrayed. Others might say that the reason women are represented that way by the media is because consumers will purchase products that feature attractive people in ads. This technique feeds the societal belief that pretty things are wanted which relates to the idea that women must be beautiful like the ones portrayed in ads.

It may be true that character and beliefs are learned at home, but we must also take into consideration that the media has become part of our home. Almost everyone at least in the U.S has a television and internet and is exposed to ads. Anne Becker’s famous study found a sharp rise in eating disorders among young women in Fiji soon after the introduction of television to the culture. Even when young women were taught to accept themselves the way they were throughout their childhood, once they had TV everything changed. This shows that women can be affected by the media regardless of how they were raised. People say that they use attractive people in their ads to sell their products and not to affect women’s self-esteem. However, numerous studies connect exposure to beautiful, thin models with negative self-esteem among women. The more women are exposed to these ads the more they feel that they are not beautiful or thin enough.

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Reflection Assignment Adv 475 by Mayra Sustaita

1)      Marketing research can be invasive when it comes to doing research on children (claim). For example marketers have gone to the extent of going into children’s home following and recording them while they are using the bathroom or taking a bath (data/ example). Research is a great way to find as much information as possible from a target audience, but it should also have a limit and be ethical. Marketers are invading children’s privacy by following them into places where it is not appropriate (warrant).

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Killing Us Softly

Kilbourne argues that there is objectification of women in advertising. Objectification is when a person is treated as an object. Women are expected to look and act a certain way in order to be beautiful and this idea is portrayed in advertising very often. Kilbourne had strong general reasoning to make this argument as well as strong concrete support. She mentioned that in our culture a women is considered beautiful if she is light skinned, thin, has straight hair and Caucasian features. However, this ideal beauty that advertisers portray is impossible to achieve in real life because most woman’s real size is bigger than those portrayed in ads. In most ads women are created to resemble this beauty, they are made to look thinner than what they really are, if they are dark their skin is lightened, if they have blemishes they erase them and much more retouching is done. The women in these ads are created through airbrushing, cosmetics, and computer retouching. Also in many ads woman’s bodies are dismembered, and according to Kilbourne objectification creates an environment where there is widespread violence against women. Women who see this ideal beauty in the media want to resemble it and often feel ashamed or uncomfortable by the way they look. There has been dramatic increase in recent years in the amount of cosmetic procedures.

There is also a cult of thinness in advertising. Kilborne had strong general reasoning in this realm but not too much concrete support for it. It is true that women in advertisements are very thin, you hardly ever see thicker girls in ads. A lot of the times the women in these ads are not that thin but photoshop is used to make them look that way. Sometimes their body size is reduced 2 or 3 times from their real size. The body type that we see in advertisements as acceptable or desirable is one that fewer than 5% of American women have. The media has made women believe that being big is not pretty. It has ridiculed and judged celebrities that have gained weight or that are not skinny enough. Women have been made to feel ashamed and guilty of eating because of what they see in the media. Anne Becker’s famous study found a sharp rise in eating disorders among young women in Fiji soon after the introduction of television to the culture. 

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Stereotypes ADV 475

People often get judged by their appearance and are categorized that way. Stereotypes have been around for as long as we know and the media, especially in the past, has helped publicize them. Stereotypes used to be very common in cartoons, TV shows and movies but with time the media has become more careful in the way they portray characters. However typical stereotypes are still seen on television today. It is not good to “judge a book by its cover” because everyone is different, not because someone looks a certain way means that they are or act a certain way. There are some people who may take stereotypes offensive and there are others who are very insensitive about them.