Advertising Age

Leo Burnett, a 20th-century advertising executive, has once upon a time boldly stated, “Good advertising does not just circulate information. It penetrates the public mind with desires and beliefs.” Years ago children had a couple of dolls and a Lego set, and that was all they needed. The children of today, however, are raised differently. Money buys them iPads, laptops, videogames, but somehow, they still want more. In the contemporary world of ever-growing consumerism, people’s needs and wants have started shaping according to the commercial and the cultural environment they are exposed to. The advertising industry takes advantage of people’s constant desire to live a better life and possess nicer things. Production is expanding with high speed due to the same reason. This essay will discuss the basic aim of advertising – to convince customers they not only need but also want a certain product – by comparing and contrasting the opinions of John Kenneth Galbraith, a noted scholar, and F.A. Hayek, a professor and Nobel Laureate in Economics.

Advertising nowadays is a powerful phenomenon; far more powerful than several years ago when social networks and the internet were not a part of everyone’s daily routine. With such a variety of media channels, contemporary marketing has become extremely influential. Not only that, but also the extent to which consumers allow ads to penetrate their minds has been fascinating scholars and psychologists for years now. Numerous studies throughout the academic world are trying to explain the effect which advertising has on consumers – how do they manage to promote their products so successfully; do people really need them? For example, a paper by Melanie Dempsey and Andrew Mitchell on this speci...

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