How Advertisement Shapes American Society’s Perception

Introduction

Although advertisement is objectively designed to boost marketing strategies in the purchase of goods, services, and ideas, it is always considered much deeper than that since it twists and manipulates the mentalities of those exposed and subjected to it. An advertisement is said to be the process of conducting product promotion with the objective of making sales through the application of impersonal media. An advertisement is one of the most important aspects of the social phenomenon across America as it stimulates economic activities, value orientation, and certain lifestyles. Therefore, an advertisement is not considered to shape the personal values of society only, but it can distort them completely until society strays away from its principles. This shows that unless the advertisement is majorly rooted within high standards of ethics, it will continue to destroy society’s concepts and the existing common morals as well as the deep bonding. However, society also takes part in shaping advertisement stereotypes based on its values and beliefs. All in all, the advertisement aspect has shaped American society's perspective.

How Advertisement Shapes American Society’s Perception

Consumers are heavily confronted by the substantial outlets and doses of advertisement messages daily across the available multi-media since advertisement is not selecting the indented target segmentation (Pope, 2019, p. 4). Based on the perpetual operations of the marketing media bombardment, the majority of researchers argue that society's perceptions, as well as individualism, are affected wholly. This is because the minds of potential consumers targeted by this advertisement are changed and their opinions molded. Unfortunately, attitudes regarding a commercial purchase are not changed immediately but rather take a longer time for manipulation to attain its considerable effect. This is why commercial advertisement usually targets the potential audience or consumers through the presentation of products in special ways. The aim of doing this is to appeal to the desires of the consumers to present and create the product's desire. Therefore, advertisement marks, names, and reminds potential customers that they are facing an inescapable thing within their lives, which often reflects society’s desires and can serve as a way of manipulating perceptions within society.

Furthermore, the advertisement philosophy regarding what effective advertisement entails has been changing over time. The philosophy’s perceptions based on its target audience’s interests and needs have changed. According to many researchers, advertisement currently is said to be primarily designed to pass information by evoking and provoking the entire feelings of the potential audience. It also associates their desires and expectations (both psychological and material) in some way with the underlying product. This shows that when it comes to society’s perception and the larger picture, generally advertisement is not pretty good. An advertisement has to be considered one of the detrimental influence attributes and be regulated accordingly. Consumers may be influenced to buy or not buy a product if the product’s advertisement did or did not persuade them.

Impact on Values and Society

Moreover, advertisement impacts the values of society and many scholars and researchers suggest that it is harmful to society. With advertisement outlets reflecting society to a certain level, it has the presumed effect of normalizing behaviors and values too. Across America, an average of five hundred to one thousand commercial messages are exposed to Americans daily. These messages wield considerable power over what is being considered normal within the culture. For instance, the advertisement idea concerning men's cosmetics raised some questions based on the values portrayed by the ads in the product. This is an indication that advertisement promotes extensively the extrinsic values (values relying on admirations and opinions of others) as compared to the intrinsic values (values relying on family belonging sense and self-development) (Hayko, 2020, p. 80). By placing more importance on the extrinsic values, society becomes worried. This is because it is associated with greater prejudice levels, less environmental concern, and weak human rights concern. Individuals who attach more importance to extrinsic values usually report lower personal well-being levels.

Moreover, advertisement sometimes impacts society negatively. For instance, inappropriate exposure of women through advertisement negatively impacts the perception of society. This is why there have been numerous debates opposing some forms of advertisement. It plays with the general public's emotions and at the same time encourages them to see buying and depleting as sole life activities. Materialism is much emphasized through advertisements leading to dangerous consequences within society (Hayko, 2020, p. 80). The reason is that society is ignoring social issues due to the underlying obsession in the process of satisfying the new needs created by the media.

Cultural Indicators and Gender Stereotyping

Advertisement ads are perceived as cultural indicators but in distorted ways, as they suggest both the aspirations and ambitions of the individuals involved (Pope, 2019, p. 7). Advertisements stereotyping men’s images majorly influence the gender function attitudes that are expressed by men immediately they are exposed to these images. For instance, men are always seeing magazine advertisements with men's images varied based on traditionally masculine aspects versus how androgynous they were. Men who initially were considered less traditional indicated extra traditional attitudes. This can be compared to any other exposure group to the traditionally masculine models even though they still portrayed non-traditional views. In turn, this forces men to make impaired conclusions that non-traditional men’s views of gender roles are rather susceptible and unstable to the existing momentary manipulations like those seen within advertising reels.

Also, whether advertising is bad or good for the entire American society, unless someone remains a hermit and fails to watch movies, televisions, magazines, newspapers, journals, and web surfing, they will eventually be affected by advertisement ads. This is because individuals are subliminally stimulated making them think and perceive in a manner that is almost under media control. Besides, a regulatory agency like the Federal Trade Commission has argued that the majority of the adverts are targeting and preying on the young population or children in making easy bucks. However, argumentative debating has risen regarding these agencies' views with some experts opposing while others are supporting it. Even though advertisement has succeeded for many years within America, it is clear that it takes part in manipulating society's perception.

The Art of Advertising

Meanwhile, the art of advertising is considered by many academic articles to be a lie to the public. For instance, the methods by which the advertisement situations are presented to society are not realistic to a greater extent. This is because business enterprises want society to believe and live the type of life presented by the adverts through their products. Through these advertisements, society fails to stand with its ways of perceiving things naturally. Advertisement plays a role in substituting society's intimate perception thoughts with the ideas of these ads articulated to the adverts. With no doubt, advertisement greatly influences the surrounding cultural aspects which in turn shape our perceptions as a society. The sole purpose of advertisements is to attract attention, change attitudes, and command behaviors thereby advertisement presents information capable of idealizing certain life circumstances.

Additionally, advertisement is receiving much criticism due to its impact on distorting perceptions concerning the moral health of the body image (Hayko, 2020, p. 80). Women are mostly used for advertisements since they make most of these purchases. The majority of the advertisement streams are presenting unrealistic female beauty and thinness standards that are projected to be normal. For example, whenever young women see these sorts of advertisements and realize that their outward natural look is not complementing what they have seen, they end up believing the best way to match with the projected image is by buying the product. However, this is always the company’s objective. This ability of the multi-media in shaping self-images is a detrimental one since it has led to many eating disorders, dissatisfaction with one’s self, and depression.

Conclusion

In conclusion, advertisement shapes society's choices as well as spending habits. An advertisement is not wholly bad, but they continually employ manipulative tactics and measures that are quite influential in ways the society can’t even realize. The main aim of advertisement is to successfully persuade potential consumers to purchase particular products, but the communication essentialities are useful to the consumer. Advertisement reflects societal tastes, norms, and beliefs through the evolving advertisement messages created for similar products. Commercials are ways of portraying how gender roles are being displayed across society, and basically, this triggers many perceptions from the public. Generally, advertisement makes many come up with conclusions that there is a bias within the society based on the manner women and men are presented by the media. This is how powerful the media can mold culture as individuals learn appropriate beliefs and roles through observing the way other individuals are portrayed across advertisements. Across modern America, the multi-media outlets have dictated the society's opinion from the cosmetic surgery industry to the clothes worn.