A Controversial Issue, Marketing, College Term Papers.com


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A Controversial Issue

A Controversial Issue Is advertising manipulative; can it be controlling, or is it fueling the demand of the American economy? The exhaustive battle of what advertising is and what it’s not is never-ending and both ends of the spectrum can only battle with statistics, words, and opinions on the fact of the matter. Many arguments have arisen since the establishment of the advertising industry and everyone sheds their own light on the subject. In “Beauty and the Beast of Advertising,” Jean Kilbourne argues that the advertising industry portrayal of women is narrow-minded and produces emotional and psychological problems within women in regards with their roles in society, their physical appearance, and sexual attitudes. She also emphasizes how the world of advertising creates artificiality among women. On another note, the author of “What Advertisement Isn’t,” John O’Toole, takes a look at how the government has too much control of and poorly regulates advertising, how it is not deceptive on a subconscious level, and how advertising is a sales tool and should not be evaluated by journalistic or any other standards. These two arguments talk about issues in advertising that interconnect on broader levels but essentially are speaking of two different levels of advertisements. Kilbourne looks at advertising as a guideline that women of today abide by. She argues that women in advertisements are portrayed as a sex object or a housewife. She goes on to say how the advertising housewife is “obsessed with cleanliness and lemon fresh scents”(238). She also states that the sex object “is a mannequin, a shell”(238). Her physical appearance is the only beauty about her. This “conventional beauty” is what all advertisement women are conformed to. Women of today are constantly bombarded with this ideal and feel they have to live up to the norm, and if they don’t then they are undesirable then feel guilty about it. According to Kilbourne advertising creates artificiality in the sense that “beauty comes from without”(238). She supports her argument by stating, “more than one million dollars is spent every hour on cosmetics”(238). She said woman are conditioned to fit this false ideal and are going as far as altering body parts to reach the unreachable norm. She further supports her argument by stating more facts, stats, and surveys. Kilbourne complains that women are “dismembered in commercials, separated into body parts in need of change or improvement”(239). She reiterates that it is to reach this level of beauty and is not viable to maintain. Kilbourne’s last point is that advertising influences sexual attitudes. She points out that “advertising’s approach to sex is pornographic: it reduces people to objects and de-emphasizes human contact and individuality”(239). She argues that the commercial women today are portrayed as independent hardworking women that can do it all. On the contrary she notes this is an illusion that reduces complex sociopolitical problems to mundane personal ones”(239). Kilbourne notes, it is a “real tragedy, that many women internalize these stereotypes and learn their ‘limitations,’ thus establishing a self-fulfilling prophecy”(239). She sums it up emphasizing how influential advertising is in our culture and how women are so unaware of the power and impact it is causing to their self-images. John O’Toole starts out by saying, “advertising . . . is salesmanship functioning in the paid space and time of mass media”(259). He feels that advertising plays a vital role in our economy and those who criticize its nature would be too extreme. O’Toole feels that government regulators and their overseers have a wrong outlook on how to rule and regulate advertisements. He says that the regulators judge advertising by the same standards as journalism, education, entertainment, etc… because it has some of the same characteristics. O’Toole then cites a quasi-law that the Trade Regulation Ruling was recently trying to pass which was to require “an ad or commercial for any product claiming to be nutritious to list all its nutritive elements”(259). He then argues that there are two reasons this could not work. One, adding all these ingredients will bore the audience and is simply not good salesmanship. More obviously, it is impossible, with the time allotted, to be able to list all of the nutritive ingredients. He gives this illustration to prove what happens when regulators try to determine what advertisements need to include. Another complaint O’Toole has is that regulators will sometimes suggest, “advertising should be limited to price and function”(261). He describes this way of thinking, as “Paleolithic” and these thoughts will eliminate important information that is becoming more and more demanded by the consumer. O’Toole reiterates that government regulators just don’t understand what advertising is and what it portrays to consumers. What the regulators of advertising demand is the “kind of product information that characterizes Consumer Reports”(261). Furthermore, “they expect advertising to be journalism, and they evaluate by journalistic standards”(261). Journalism tries to present both sides of a product, the negative and the positive. Conversely, advertising tries to persuade consumers to buy products; therefore they want to present the products “in their most favorable light”(261). Another point that O’Toole touched on was the fact that advertising sends subliminal messages to people in order to subconsciously provoke them to buy certain products. O’Toole asserts, “I must state unequivocally that there is no such thing as subliminal advertising”(262). O’Toole feels that critics are too paranoid in the sense that they feel that advertisements can control them beyond their knowledge. He thinks these regulators feel if they themselves are at risk then the more ignorant consumers are certain to fail at detecting the deceitfulness of advertisements. O’Toole feels that critics are “uncomfortable with information conveyed by means other than words”(262). This is difficult to tend to because television is a visual medium with music and graphics. O’Toole further illustrates that is a more effective sales pitch to show a finished cake on the package rather than merely listing the ingredients of the Betty Crocker Cake Mix. He emphasizes that people are fully capable of making reasonable decisions and that they can do what ever they want with their own money. These two articles contrast on a level that is deeper than the surface. On one hand, Kilbourne, being a female, argues greatly in defense of advertising’s portrayal of women. On the other hand, O’Toole, being an advertiser backs advertising and all that it entails on our society of today. Kilbourne argues that women are considered sex objects and that they are being molded into false standards that can’t be reached. She emphasizes the power and the affect advertising has on our culture. She is looking at advertising from a frustrated woman’s aspect and is trying to bring out awareness of advertising and its manipulative control, so to say. O’Toole looks at advertising as a major fuel for the economy and is frustrated with people criticizing advertising for what it is not. In his argument, O’Toole is not concentrating on the content of the advertising or the images that they portray to particular target segments. A difference between the two arguments is the fact that Kilbourne believes that advertising has a power to influence people to the point of creating norms and ideals, especially in the sense of altering our self-images, whereas, O’Toole is set on advertising not being “witchcraft” and doesn’t have an ego-altering ability to change peoples lives. It is just salesmanship, he emphasizes and reemphasizes. In comparison, they are both looking for evidence of some form of conspiracy to the point of writing heated arguments about the subject In conclusion these two arguments are looking at two different aspects and levels of the advertising industry, and that the main difference in these two arguments is that very fact. This controversial issue has raised many eyebrows and will never be at ease. People have been searching and researching the industry in hopes to find evidence of how effective or affective advertising really is. One can’t tell if advertising is more costly or rewarding to the American economy, society, and culture until it has past, therefore, arguments will never cease and opinionated parties never satisfied. Bibliography:

Word Count: 1407