By M L Satyan
Bengaluru, Nov 17, 2023: The commercial advertisements that I see in the TV have always intrigued and worried me. A few examples: A school boy expresses his happiness in the classroom. His teacher asks him the secret for his happiness. He says that he uses Cycle brand incense sticks that brings health, happiness, and prosperity to the users.
Another ad shows a man jumping from one building to another building doing high and long jumps. He snatches a bouquet from a man and offers it to his girlfriend. This ad is for men’s innerwear that gives him such a strength. In a few minutes we see ads for half a dozen bathing soaps. Every soap makes a claim that it beautifies a person who uses it.
The ads of different categories make the viewers think that every advertised product works wonders. We are indeed fooled by every commercial ad and hence I am doing this writeup to sensitize the readers.
Advertisements, in general, are the most basic mode of communication between manufacturers and consumers. Advertisements create a mass reach to people over a vast geographical area. It is an age-old technique that is utilized in every culture to instil specific thoughts in the minds of viewers to encourage them to buy a product or use a service.
Print media such as newspapers, magazines, books, posters, and hoardings, as well as broadcast media such as radios and televisions, and internet media such as social media and websites, are all used to communicate these messages.
Advertisements have become an integral and unavoidable part of our social living. They catch our attention unasked and lead us to believe that we are in urgent need of the product on display even if we do not really need it. On the other hand, to sell something the advertiser displays it so we cannot be against the advertisement system completely.
What is really disturbing is the misleading and intimidating information they telecast while advertising for a simple product. Once we have laid hands on the actual product, we can see that the whole thing was mere bluff and we got ourselves voluntarily cheated. We cannot complain for they will not listen and we cannot throw it back because we paid for it.
Advertisers and television producers spend their days coming up with ways to manipulate our behaviour to buy their products and keep us watching their programs. They appeal to all of our senses to do this. They painstakingly select images and scenes that will associate their products and programs with desired, pleasurable and optimum outcomes.
Then they carefully select words that will provoke our emotions and behaviour in the direction they want – toward buying their product or staying tuned to their program. They meticulously select moving or well-known songs to play alongside the pictures and words so that our emotions are stirred even further. Advertisers create ads that put their products in the most ideal environments and situations possible – a fantasy land.
Ads are designed to cheat:
1) Advertisements are misleading in more than one way. They are aimed to make us believe that our dreams are going to come true with that product. Fairness creams they say can turn a person from dusky to flawlessly white, which is scientifically impossible. Technically if these advertisements are to be believed, all black people would have become extinct by now.
2) The biggest of all the cheating strategies adopted by advertisement companies is to provide discounts and offers. What consumers fail to see is that the product under discount scheme has the price tag of raised value which eventually misleads consumers to buy more than one product. We unknowingly get into the lure of buying things at cheaper price and end up spending more than what our budget permits.
3) Sexual content used to advertise simple products is quite misleading, especially for children who begin associating the product with the act they view on advertisements. Deodorants, liquors and even some edible products are made to look sensuous, which by all means is misleading. Materialism is conveyed through some ads that undermine values and ethics.
4) It is to be noted that overtly glorified ads just trigger the sense of wanting what is available and feeling that it could make us happy. Shopaholics can never stop even if they are down to five feet below the ground on debt because it makes them unhappy and even depressed to see that they do not possess something that they would love to have.
5) Sensible shopping is a vague term and none can deny how they make us fall into the trap of “buy one-get one free” without noticing that the actual price was already increased and perhaps quality compromised.
6) Mouth-watering junk food advertised with catchy images and videos increase our cravings for unhealthy food. Even adults are not so immune to the lure these chocolates and chips create and children are mostly affected by the ill effects of consuming junk food. High risks of obesity, diabetes and hypertension is associated with junk food that misleads with claims of being healthy.
7) Youth, these days are attracted by technology. Every month, there is a new launch of a smartphone with slight changes like an increase in performance, the addition of curves in the body of phones making it easy to handle. Hidden fees, like delivery and activation charges, are not included in the listed price of the cell phone. So, the buyers are misled.
8) Many colleges and coaching centres advertise attractive placement records and selection promises. There have been several instances where educational institutions have advertised their false connection and recognition. Coaching centres make huge business by collecting fee on a non-refund basis. They claim records of students getting admissions in top-tier colleges without any verification by the organization.
Today we live in a world of consumerism that is fuelled by commercial advertisements. Sadly, we are misled by our greed. Our needs get multiplied and we keep falling into debt-trap again and again unable to come out it. It is time for us to stop, examine our false lifestyle and change it without any delay.