YOMAG - Advertising

Rating: (5)

Author: Zuzana Blažková, MG Příbor, Czech Republic

Flyers

Příbor 8. 01. 2010

\"Advertising may be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it\". Stephen Leacock

Advertisements are everywhere around us: on TV, on the radio and they even welcome us every day when opening our mailboxes - without any doubt advertising leaflets will be found there. Most families have had the same experience with flyers. Your mailbox is only seldom empty; a heap of these leaflets from various supermarkets falls out when you unlock it. That's why I would like to focus on this kind of advertising.

Some people find them useful as they tell you about discounts or offers. However, personally speaking, as a consumer I can see the negatives of flyers. Firstly, I consider the aim of those flyers is to win customers. Supermarkets want to sell their goods. That is why they have sales and discounts and distribute flyers to customers. Some people think that it is a very good offer and you can get a bargain but that' s not always the truth. It often happens that you spend more money than you save because, as well as the items on offer, other goods are displayed which don't belong to the cheapest ones. In addition to that things you often buy things you don't need at the time but you usually take them anyway because of the good price. And that's how the shops and supermarkets get you to buy more things, so even though you think you are saving money you are actually spending more.

The quotation by Stephen Leacock at the beginning of the article is funny because it's true. Advertising works and advertisers are able to manipulate you and influence your decisions. It's also true that advertising is a science, or pseudo-science, because there are thousands of experts who can predict what will happen when they run an advertising campaign, and they get paid millions of pounds by companies to acheive these results. And, as Leacock, suggests advertising doesn't work in a logical way. It has to 'arrest our intelligence' and appeal to our emotions and our feelings. Like scientists advertisers are trying to create an end-product and their end-product is desire: advertisers manipulate you so that you think you want their product rather than another company's product.

And the ways in which advertisers 'arrest the human intelligence' illustrate the different kinds of advertising you see around you. Flyers are the most simple kind of advertising, because they provide you with basic information about the product, but TV commercials and glamorous ads in magazines are more sophisticated, and try to persuade you that by buying this item you will be as rich, as successful, as beautiful and as happy as the people you see in the adverts. They try to make you feel that you need their product to be happy, and that's why they have to make you feel that other people's lives are more desirable than yours.

There is one more thing which bothers me, personally, about these leaflets and that's the huge consumption of paper. On the one hand, you constantly hear appeals to protect the environment but , on the other hand, you can't help about how many trees have had to be cut down to produce such a large amount of paper for these flyers.

Lastly, and this point relates to my early point about generating desire in the consumer, these leaflets try to confuse us about the seasons of the year. I have to smile when I get a leaflet with discounts for Christmas goods at the end of October. Similarly clothes shops and magazines often advertise their spring/summer collections in the middle of winter. However, the advertisers know what they are doing: the more time they spend promoting Christmas or Easter or summer holidays, the more people will feel that they need to spend more to enjoy it.

In conclusion, I would like to say that there are some positives relating to advertising leaflets, because you can save plenty of money but, as Leacock says, you have to use your intelligence.