Dbq Advertising

William Bernbach once said, "Good advertising does not just circulate information. It penetrates the public mind with desires and belief." Whether or not you believe it, advertising has mass control over what people think that they want or need. Advertisers show people a product and convince them that they can't live without it. Critics of advertising say that its propaganda, while advocates say that it fosters free trade and promotes prosperity.

When you watch television or listen to the radio, there is almost an advertisement. You turn the channel and Red Cross is telling you that "when [you] give blood, [you] help save lives, often the lives of people [you] might never even meet"(Source A). By appealing to your sense of pathos, you hear

They pay for advertising space, which in turn "funds most of what you read in magazines and books, what you hear on the radio, and what you watch on television. It also increasingly pays for the internet" (Source D). So advertising is not just selling you a product but it's also helping pay for your entertainment. Not only that, but it "informs us about candidates running for office...gives us recipes, and demonstrates ways in which we change our homes and places of business"(Source D). So it keeps us up-to-date and gives us ideas on how to make our lives "better". Along with the good things there are bad things, like "it can reinforce racial, cultural, and sexual stereotypes. It can make us unsatisfied with who we are...and oblivious to miseries of millions who haven't a fraction of the comforts we take for granted..."(Source D). So they build you up and break you down at the same time as they are trying to sell you

We all know that “they are not just selling soap or petrol, but a vision, a way of life” (Source F). They show you what you want to see and you buy the product because you want your life to be like what you saw on television. Advertisers pair things together that they know don’t work, but ”rationality is not important, what is important is the emotional impact” (Source F). What is important is how it makes you feel because that is what gets the product sold and that’s what makes the money. Another thing that advertisers know is how to appeal to “consumers of every age, sex, race and religion” (Source D). That helps boost sales and put more money into their