The Power of Advertising

     Do you remember these? Well, as a kid, I remember that I always ask my father to buy me these products whenever I see them in the commercial. As a young consumer, I am easily persuaded to use them because of the cartoon characters in it. Truly, there is no doubt that advertising has a powerful effect in attracting consumers.

     Commercial advertising is defined as communication between a seller and potential buyer that is publicly addressed to a mass audience and is intended to induce members of this audience to buy the seller’s products. Advertising has a powerful ability to penetrate our thoughts and eventually our behaviors. For example a shampoo advertisement that we girls believe (yes, including me) can make our hair incredibly smooth and straight with just one wash. But after several washes, it’s still the same. Another thing is marketers of a car convince us that having a car can make us feel and look prosperous. For this reason, how many people do you know who are driving cars that they cannot really afford because of the image they want to portray? Here’s another one. We all know that the best and natural way of losing weight is by eating the right amount of healthy foods and exercising daily. Yet, we let the advertising industry convince us those medical methods and diet pills is the key to our dream body.

     As a consumer, our minds are bombarded with myriad of advertisements. Some are informative, some are not. Some we entertain while some are unavoidable. The important thing is we should not exchange common sense living for these sugar-coated commercials. We should not exchange our financial health because of impulse buying. We should filter the advertisements that enter our minds and to purge the negative ones. Through that, I can guarantee you that you will be able to buy the better stuff. =)