Ad And The Ego Analysis

The Ad and the Ego was a very enlightening documentary for me. I had initially brushed off advertising as a foolish system designed to sell me a specific product, while in reality, advertisements seek to sell me values, images, concepts of sexualality, romance, and success, it tells us who we are and who we should be. The product almost has nothing to do with the message of the commercial. Advertising assumed that people were rational beings and when provided with certain kinds of information, they would draw certain kinds of conclusions. Advertisements prey upon ignorance by forcing listeners to think they have won, while being the actual conquers. Another key concept is that “Advertising isn't just one ad at a time but rather advertising

The reason advertising is so powerful in our society is simply because it is not considered powerful and let through the gates of criticism. This revelation shocked me at how advertising could still be getting to a person who rarely sees commercials like myself, yet I too experience the feelings enforced by the commercials, and unfortunately have been trained to crave material goods. The major dangers of advertisementing appear when the audience begins to treat themselves, the environment, and one another in a degrading way. One of the worst things that advertising does is it turns people into objects and the first step to justifying violence against women is to think of that person as less than human. With the desire for more material wealth, resources must be extracted from the earth by inefficient means and moved for our convenience, which causes seriously detrimental issues for the parts of the world that lose resources. Greed itself is what has caused global warming and a multitude of environmental catastrophes and greedy consumerism is motivated by a driving sense for

We can never be as great and mighty as the images we see of unrealistically happy people doing successful things and so we gain a sense of insecurity. Clearly, advertising is a dangerous practice that must be controlled or it will continue to infect our culture. One statistic that I found to be overwhelming is that “the average American is exposed to over 1500 ads everyday”. I previously tended to think of advertising as exclusively commercials on television or on websites, yet it includes the campaigning on clothing, word from others, and even from ourselves as we repeat the ideas implanted inside us by advertisements. Armed with this knowledge, I know that I must always be on the lookout for sensible manipulation. What I also plan to take away from this video is a stronger understanding of how commercials act on my desires and to acknowledge them so that they have no power over me. Hopefully, by using my new found knowledge, I can break free from this vicious cycle and accept myself, others, and the world for the positions they are in without a sense of