Monologue on Advertising. Добрышин М. 4851001/20002 Active Vocabulary: 27, Grammar Structures: 4, Linkers: 18. Total: 745 words. Stephen Leacock, a well-known Canadian writer and economist, believed that advertising might be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it. I cannot but agree with this statement since it is not a secret to anyone that advertising managers manipulate consumers' minds and encourage them to go and buy a product. And yet, advertising attracts one's attention easily, sometimes offering us really original things. So what is advertising: pure evil, or a way to introduce people to something worthy? The truth, as always, is somewhere in between. To continue, let’s discuss the main points regarding advertisement. First of all, what is advertising? Advertising is a direction in marketing communications, within which information is disseminated to attract attention to the object of advertising, in order to form or maintain interest in it. As a matter of fact, many companies can have an instantly recognizable logo because of successful advertising, not to mention the fact that customers often identify some special symbol with the company (like Christmas and The Coca-Cola Company). As for me, I am quite wary of advertising because of the headphones I bought once because of advertising, which turned out to be junk. The advertisement was attention-grabbing and very persuasive but the product – absolutely unacceptable. Still, what makes an advert good? A good advert is able to put even the most underrated company on the map, therefore, this requires a qualified specialist with extensive experience. For instance, a recognizable logo and a jamming slogan is a key to be a good advertising. In addition, many successful ads promise customers escaping from reality and taking away the ordinariness of everyday life, which is, almost all the time, a lie. So, one of the best examples of powerful advertising is the Red Bull company and their video with a jump from the stratosphere which gone viral, and the drink began to spread with incredible speed. However, as I earlier mentioned, sometimes ads are built on lies and they cause a great deal of controversy. To begin with, in Western society, it is considered that advertising designers make their models look more physically perfect, what promotes an unrealistic and distorted image. This is obviously caused by the fact that most people want to see the perfect picture on TV screens and on billboards, trying to encourage themselves with a bright future, while marketers use it. In general, the selling point is often the belief that "your life will definitely change after buying our useless product!”. So, if we look at advertising from this side, people are deceiving themselves. Nevertheless, manipulating images is not always a bad thing. Sometimes, a really worthwhile product is advertised in this way, and this helps it in promotion. Moreover, if the product is still of poor quality, it will help people to use their critical skills. In contrast, many people really fall for the bait of manipulating images, spending money on things that they will later be disappointed in. Me - I am quite calm about this, since I almost do not pay attention to advertising and rarely buy something expensive. At the same time, there is a really vulnerable group for advertising - children. It is widely known that children and young people are tend to be less critical then adults, therefore, they are an attractive target for advertising executives. TV commercials become louder than the programmes, forcing children to beg for money from their parents for useless, unnecessary things. Futhermore, fast-food advertising is causing considerable harm, provoking an increase in obesity among the young population. As a result - advertising is more harmful to children and young people than useful. In this way, in spite of sales growth, advertising aimed on kids and youth must have strict legal controls. It is strongly recommended to impose controls on advertising by government or fully ban advertising aimed on kids on TV and in the Internet. In addition, parents should develop their kids’ ability to think critically. To sum up, it can be concluded that advertising is a really useful element of marketing that allows you to promote high-quality, and sometimes low-quality, products. In the field of advertising, there is a lot of deception and pretense used to promote products. Last but not least, perhaps we should limit advertising for children, since in most cases it has a destructive effect on them. And perhaps the marketing world should abandon the “It pays to advertise” principle.
