The Role of Advertising in Making America a Consumer Culture

I would like to start with my story and experience. When I was planning to apply abroad for my undergraduate program in 2016, 9 out of 10 suggested me to apply for the United states now the question comes why they said the united states only? Well it has a very simple answer that the United States invest large amount of capital in advertisement and if I say United states its self a brand “the land of opportunities”, so it wouldn’t be wrong at all. American culture derived through advertisement and its keeps on progressing.

Today the United states media industry generates billions of dollars where cooperates and groups invest in large amount to attract consumers. This competition has become more fascinating soon after the inception of digital evolution where the internet has changed the old model of culture in advertisement and cooperates like Google and Facebook took over and introduced the new structure of advertisement. The model of advertisement in the united states become more commercialize and we see advertise almost everywhere from school to hospitals, in smartphones and so on the street the digital billboard. The history of American advertisement is old and with time it has changed its ways and techniques to attract the consumers for an example in 1950’s there were only five channels and two newspapers, but today there are thousands of channels and thousands of online platforms and hundreds of newspapers that are heavenly filled with advertisements and promote businesses every single day. Louise story in New York times argues “anywhere the eye can see, it’s likely to see an ad” (Louise story/2007).

Rob fields an award-winning marketer in Forbes define culture as “The world happening outside the company's walls. It's the thing defines as the way of life for an entire society, including codes of manners, dress, language, religion, rituals, norms of behavior and systems of belief. It's how we make deep and lasting meaning” (Rob fields/2014). Now the question is how the united states intelligently picked the mind set of American people regarding their right taste? Despite knowing that American society is much diverse in terms of language, culture and faith. Well to understand this concept we get to know first about what advertisement is.

In 2002, Richards and Curran give us a vivid view in defining advertising. “advertising is a paid, mediated form of communication from an identifiable source, designed to persuade the receiver to take some action, now or in the future”. According to this definition the very purpose of advertisement is to make people say yes in other word it is also called persuasiveness. Now to attract audience is the most critical challenge for media agencies, so here’s the question comes how they make people say yes? In America, media agencies use different procedures to attract audiences as discussed in book. The market research team which work on surveys on different set of groups, creative department which work on creativity that how impactful the message will be, media coordination refers to how they want to project in media and client management refers to how well they grab the idea. Those are four basic pillars for determining whether a message is delivering the way audience want. So, to answer my question that how the United States has structured the idea about the right taste is by conducting research and by promotion of a centralize source of culture.

The more advertisement will culturally strong the more it will attract to audiences. Advertisement is a way of communication, and it travel from a source (i.e., the advertiser) through a medium. The economist magazine argues in an article published in 2015 “A brand new game. Today people spend more time on social media gives advertisers an opportunity to follow them. So, what is the purpose of following the audience? Well the answer is to study what they are thinking of. Social media has changed all paradigms of advertisement what we see today on internet is basically comes out from what we search the most. Paul Jankowski argues that “the role of culture plays a pivotal role in shaping a sound strategy in advertisement”. He also shared some of the insights regarding cultural influence which he found in his research that “cultural influence is rooted in the middle of our country. The New Heartland is home to 60% of consumers living in the Midwest” (Paul Jankowski/2015). Today through cultural marketing, many countless sets of cultural groups gained potential and purchasing power which gives fair impact to the statement that advertisement is playing role in making America a consuming culture. (Paul Jankowski/2015)

To conclude this, I would say Culture contains empathy and purpose and today the major reason of growth in businesses of consumer culture in America is because of the advertisement and in years to come I believe it will soar more and benefit the consumers.