Nowadays, while many people believe that the appearance of advertisements influences our mindset of importance and negatively stifles the society, I think marketing deserves further attentions on its benefits in creating a culture of consumerism and in facilitating a lively community.
On the one hand, untruthful advertising undoubtedly impacts consumers’ behavior in a negative way, specifically convincing them to buy poor quality products. Products’ uses are often exaggerated through advertisements on TV or streaming services in order to persuade customers to purchase them. This contributes to the rising trend of overpricing goods as well as the decrease in consumers’ satisfaction when using the products. A great example for this is expensive beauty products with unreal anti-aging effects being advertised on multiple platforms to convince the public to make the purchase. Hence, advertisements made it very common for people to spend a fortune on poor quality products.
However, genuine marketing content facilitates efficient consumption, along with benefitting a healthy society. As for the former idea, if all necessary features and benefits of the products are provided by advertisements, consumers can easily select suitable ones with compatible uses and affordable prices. In this situation, advertising becomes an assistant tool to support citizens in finding the appropriate necessities, contributing to a healthy culture of consumption. Moreover, most modern advertising campaigns often carry meaningful stories and morals of life. Consumers watching these positive contents can enhance their well-being, leading to a lively community surrounded by good values. This is evident in Dove’s campaign of cherishing “natural beauty” through all of their advertisements on televisions and billboards to spread heart-warming content on women’s true beauty. For such merits, I believe advertisements principally offer benefits to our society.
In conclusion, while I acknowledge the drawbacks of manipulation and overpricing necessities that advertisements bring, I argue in favor of it due to its benefits of creating a healthy consumption culture and spreading positive contents.