Advertising in America

1189 Words3 Pages

Advertising in America

Most Americans have excessive desire to gain wealth and marketers thrive on this. People dream of making lots of money quickly and without working very hard to get it. Another scenario of people wanting to gain wealth is getting something free. Marketers know that when they advertise getting something for free or getting money quickly, they will gain the consumers attention.

When marketers advertise that there is an amount such as $85 million up for grabs people will easily invest their money no matter what the odds are. People love thinking about becoming a millionaire by spending as little as a dollar. An example of an advertisement that helps feed on the consumer willingness to spend money just for the chance to become a millionaire is the Power Ball commercial. The Power Ball advertisement ran on TV saying, “Add a buck power up,” is reinforcing the idea that playing the lottery gives back. How often does one hear the chances of winning the lottery in the advertisements for the lottery? The fact is that many Americans are brainwashed into believing that risking a dollar does usually give back in huge amounts.

The odds of winning the Power Ball jackpot are 1 in 80,089,128 or .0000012% according to the Pennsylvania Lottery Web Site. Quite a few people spend hundreds of dollars on lottery tickets each year, not realizing how much money they are losing. They just keep

spending their annual dollar a day and do not even think about the amount of money they

have lost over the long period of time. People seem to especially get addicted with

scratch off lottery tickets when they when win five, ten or twenty dollars.

From my experience when the prize money is under twenty dollars involving scratch off lottery tickets they often spend it on buying more lottery tickets. Gambling with money is an addiction that is notacknowledged in America like smoking or drinking

addictions.There is more money obsession in America besides the lottery, take peoplegetting their tax money back quicker. A new advertisement of H&R Block that has comeout recently is aimed toward tax-payers getting their tax refund back more quickly. The commercial shows a man pulling up to an H&R Block office in a minivan with a pregnant woman in labor. Screaming, the woman in labor ask furiously why he stopped

at the H&R Block office, his response was that he needed to get some quick cash.

Open Document