Negative Impacts of Ads

Hyorim Kim
17 Mar 2010
RD2 (Final)

Negative Impacts of Ads

As a consumer, today we have various choices of a product by the fast development of industry. For instance, if we go to the store to buy a toothbrush, a supermarket provides consumers with many different kinds of toothbrushes. A number of companies have been producing similar goods, competing with one another. The best way of trying to sell their products is by advertising their products through the media. The sole purpose of commercials is to attract people into purchasing a certain product from their company instead of someone else’s company. Some companies gain competitive advantages over their rivals, by advertising illogical slogans, sexual or criminal images to make the ads more alluring. [THESIS] Ads containing illogical and sexual concepts have negative impacts on people. Ads containing excessive sexuality are offensive to women and effect adolescent behaviors. [THESIS]


According to Dr. Turow, a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, advertisers do not focus on all audiences, instead, they narrow down a certain audience group (Goshgarian, and Krueger p.330). The narrowed audience group consists of potential buyers. Commercials are a new way of marketing and reach customers with a special message. However, in order to have a powerful influence, some commercials purposely contain logical errors, called logical fallacies (Goshgarian, and Krueger 48), to manipulate people who are targeted by advertisers. I found advertisements that tend to manipulate people who are possible targets established by advertisers.


For example, in the commercial featuring the Motherly Cubes, a frozen baby food product, the commercial starts with a mother pushing her shopping cart with her baby to the frozen food section. The mother says “all moms want to give their babies the best start in life. That's why I love motherly cubes 100% natural grain.” The commercial contains both the Bandwagon Appeal and Circular Reasoning. The bandwagon is easy to appear in advertisements because it gives people the image that “people are doing this and thinking that.” Bandwagon slogans direct people to act in a certain way. (Goshgarian and Krueger 419-48) The “Motherly Cubes” commercial contains a message that the concerns mothers have for their babies are the reason to buy their product, but it is not; it is a form of bandwagon. All moms want to give their babies the best start and natural foods, which are generally true, however, mothers who are truly concerned for their babies’ life and health would not want to feed them instant frozen food. Therefore, what the actress said is not a general idea accepted by all mothers. Feeding babies frozen food can never be a logical reason for the babies’ best starts in their lives because the commercial slogan does not have evidence to support its claim. Such fallacy is called circular reasoning. (Goshgarian and Krueger 48) Not too many commercials contain such logical fallacy, but commercials containing sexuality also make adolescents and women vulnerable. Remington Taum gives a good example of selling sexuality in TV commercial.


Calvin Klein’s perfume commercial, CK In2u, starts out with one girl and boy meeting each other on the street and smelling each other. The girl keeps teasing the boy and she unfastens his belt and runs away into the elevator. The commercial ends with the girl and boy on a couch touching each other. This commercial definitely denotes sexual contents. Remington Taum also points out that this commercial contains a logical fallacy which is post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc is a wrong cause-and-effect relationship. The main message of this commercial is that if you use CK In2u, the other gender would be attracted you However, such happening in the commercial is impossible in reality by a perfume. CK In2u commercial contains the post hoc, ergo propter.


Portraying sexual concepts in advertisements can be a powerful technique to attract people because sex stimulates people’s curiosity. Although sexual advertisements are hard for audiences to understand what they are advertising, many companies employ sexual concepts to their top selling products, such as Puma’s Kneeling and Carl’s Jr. Hamburgers. The Carl’s Jr. Hamburgers’ commercial is renowned thanks to Paris Hilton’s sexual appeal in the commercial, where she is wearing swim suit and washing the car with her body. In the Puma’s commercial, a school girl is kneeling down in front of a guy. Although the audience cannot see their heads, people can easily imagine the sexual intended content. In addition, the female model in the commercial is a school-looked girl and indeed, most of customers of Puma are teenagers. In other words, these kinds of ads provide a chance to adolescents to imagine the situations what they are watching.


Pediatrics research has shown advertisements’ impact to the adolescents. It has been reported that averagely an adolescent sees about 250 ads per hour. The problem is that they do not have the ability to understand or distinguish the notion of various commercials, which means that they are defenseless. (dfd) According to the research, when adolescents are exposed to media containing sexual concepts, they are more likely attempt sexual intercourse or other activities. In addition, most of the models in the ads are erotic and skinny. Such factors impact on adolescents’ body images. Many of adolescents are eager to be the same as the skinny models’ look. Indeed many teenagers are suffering from eating disorders to reduce their weight.


To make a more powerful sexual commercial than others, some commercials contain even unethical issues, such as rape and murder. These unethical issues influence negative impact on adolescences and women. One of Dolce & Gabbana advertisements in a magazine, there is a topless guy pushing a girl onto the ground and the girl is wearing a sexy dress. She seems to resist the guy and four other guys around them are watching the situation. The commercial situation describes rape and this commercial does not have relationship with fashion. The other example is Jimmy Choo’s advertisement in our text book. In the advertisement, a dead woman is lying in a car truck and a guy is digging the ground with his shovel. This commercial contains murdering and abandoning of a dead body. Both Dolce & Gabbana and Jimmy Choo ads contain criminal-like contents, such as rape and murder, in order to give the audiences strong impressions, which are very offensive to women. These kinds of ads are describing women as victims of crimes. Such unethical commercials have negative influences not only on women but also on the adolescences.


As Jennifer Pescador stated, commercials for movies, special events, and sports provide people with information. In general, however, most of the commercials have negative on towards people. Commercial is a marketing tool to approach its target customers quickly. Each commercial contains messages to manipulate people to act in certain ways. Moreover, nowadays many advertisers employ sex in commercials to sell their products from shoes to hamburger. They want to give a shocking impression on people. However, ads containing illogical messages are misleading and manipulating people’s thoughts.
Moreover, using criminal concepts or excessive sexuality in advertisements is offensive to women and causes significant negative impacts on the adolescents. Especially, adolescents are vulnerable and they do not ready for distinguishing the notion of ads yet. Advertisers are responsible. Therefore, when advertisers consider commercial concepts, they must deliberate ethical issues and further social impacts.



Works Cited

"Children, Adolescents, and Advertising." Pediatrics. 2006. American Academy Pediatrics, Web. 27 Feb 2010.
[http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/reprint/pediatrics;118/6/2563.pdf]


Gifford, Amy. "Sex Sells Best?." Inventorspot (2007): 3-1. Web. 29 Feb 2010.
[http://inventorspot.com/articles/ads_prove_sex_sells_5576]

Goshgarian, Gary, and Kathleen Krueger. Dialogues. 6th ed. 771. Longman Pub Group, 2009. 419-48. Print.

Kilbourne, Jean. “Buy This 24-Year-Old and Get All His Friends Absolutely Free.” Dialogues: An Argument Rhetoric and Reader. 6th edition. Eds. Gary Goshgarian and Kathleen Krueger. New York: Pearson-Longman, 2009.

Pescador, Jennifer. "No, Ads Don’t Have Negative Impact." Online posting. 19 Feb 2010 Laulima discussion. 28 Feb 2010
[https://laulima.hawaii.edu/portal/site/KAP.33517.201030/page/c2a89a6c-a93e-47dd-b419-873ef93bb50f]

Taum, Remington. "Logical Fallacies ." Online posting. 27 Feb 2010 Laulima discussion. 27 Feb 2010
[https://laulima.hawaii.edu/portal/site/KAP.33517.201030/page/c2a89a6c-a93e-47dd-b419-873ef93bb50f]

Log of Completed Activities
_X__ Feb. 9t- Intro to Paper #2. Read the Guidelines for Paper #2. (Confirmation reply required.)
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_X__ Feb. 16t- Complete readings for paper #2. (Confirmation reply required.)
_X__ Feb 19F- Laulima Discussion: Ad Pros and Cons
_X__ Feb 26F- Laulima Discussion: Logical Fallacies Exercise
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