writes the most important thing to know is that advertising is a business. Johnson continues: It is the business of selling. But what it is in the business of selling is you and your students. You are the product being sold. Who are you being sold to? You're being sold to an advertiser. It is the advertiser who is the consumer in this equation. The advertiser is buying you. The advertiser is buying you from the broadcaster. And why the advertiser is buying you is because he wants you to look at his message; his billboard, his magazine ad, and in this instance, his TV commercial. But in any study of advertising and advertising effects it is difficult to agree on what are clearly examples of advertising and what are clearly not. This is more difficult to do than it seems. Television is an excellent example of why this is so difficult in their attempt to influence purchasing decisions. He writes that the sole purpose of the television programs between the commercials is to act as an attention getting device. The scripts are written to build tension before the commercial to hold the viewer's attention during the commercial. He writes that once they have that attention, ... what is the advertiser trying to sell you? Products? No. He's trying to sell you a religion. What is it? It's the philosophy known as materialism. If you watch television closely, you'll see that there's no real difference between the programs and the commercials. Indeed, if you turn on a television set you often can't tell what it is that you've just turned on. Is it a commercial or a program? Suppose you tune into a Hawaiian beach scene. All right, there's a big hotel in the background and palm trees and there's this brand new car on the beach and this couple strolling across the beach. Now you don't know whether that's going to turn out to be a scene of one of these cops-and-robbers programs or whether it's a commercial. It is even more important to note, however, that...
