Easy2learn ESFF

January 13, 2010

Giving advice to a shopaholic

Dear Jennifer,

As you already know, I’m Anita Sousa, a psychologist here in women’s lifestyle magazine. My job is to give advice to people who ask for it, so I’m only helping those who really want to be helped, just like you.
After reading your letter I could understand exactly what your problem was. You may not know, but the fact that you consider yourself a shopaholic is a huge and very important step. In order to give you the right advice, I’m making a list of some vital tips for you to strictly follow, at least on this first phase:
· Hire/ask for someone to manage all your bills – this way you won’t be dealing with money, so you’ll control what you spend better.
· Think before buying, for instance… “Do I need all this stuff?” – probably the answer will be “no”, so you’ll stop buying useless things.
· After paying all your credit card debts cancel them, as well as your debit cards, because using these ways of payment makes you forget that you’re spending real money.
· Talk to your family about this – establishing dialogues with the ones you care about gives you the strength you need to get over all your problems.
If these tips find out to be useless, please write me again or consult a psychiatrist.

Faithfully,

Anita Sousa

(11º4 - 2009/2010)

January 09, 2010

TV Commercial: Vim

Clean advertising

Campaign for Real Beauty

Campaign for real Beauty

Beauty is averageness

She's pretty, isn't she?

Wish you looked like her?

Pity she doesn't exist.

Just like most of the people you see in this magazine.

This girl's face is the compilation of the faces of 64 individual girls.

BEAUTY IS AVERAGENESS!

The only reason you want to look like this...

is because WE TELL YOU THAT YOU DO!

It's an UNREALISTIC and UNACHIEVABLE goal.

Good news is: If you're average looking, you're beautiful already.

January 08, 2010

TV Commercial: Ariston

TV Commercial: Coca-Cola

Body Image & Self Esteem

January 07, 2010

Advertising and its appeal to society

Today we live in a society that is being dominated and confounded by commercials and ads. A new age, which could be referred to as the advertising age where commercials and ads tell us what is a necessity and what isn't.

Advertisements are located everywhere. No one can go anywhere without seeing at least one advertisement. These ads, as they are called, are an essential part of every type of media. They are placed in television, radio, magazines, and can even be seen on billboards by the roadside. Advertisers' main purpose is to influence the consumer to purchase their product. The people that typically fit into this category of consumers are people that buy items to fit in or to impress people. Sometimes ads can be misleading in ways that confuse the consumer to purchase the product for reasons other than the actual product was designed for. Advertisers influence consumers by alluding the consumer into buying this product over a generic product that could perform the same task, directing the advertisement towards a certain audience, and developing the ad where it is visually attractive.

Ads and commercials have flourished everywhere like a virus, once it strikes there is no way we can remove the marks it left behind. It creates this blurry, confusing picture, a "murky picture" as Gossage stated, which most people won't find the genuine truth behind what the product really mean and if its really useful or not. Advertising forces consumers into buying products by manipulation which make the customers buy products they think are good for them when in fact it isn't and they do this by appealing in their innermost desires. Advertisers are aware of the cultural need of acceptance and people's insecurities and takes advantage of these desires to persuade people into buying their products.

www.oppapers.com/essays (abridged and adapted)

Advertising: information or manipulation?

Advertising, a word that is synonym to the word marketing, has a rich back round. When we talk about marketing the first things that come to our mind are money, goods, services, and of course consumers. Advertising’s role should only exist in order to help society by real information about products and services, decide what to purchase according to people’s actual needs. One definition of advertising is: "Advertising is the non-personal communication of information usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature about products, services or ideas by identified sponsors through the various media."(Bovee, 1992, p. 7). We could separate advertising in two categories. Giving information through advertising about a product is the first category that is innocent when facing the costumers. The second category has a manipulative effect on people. People exposed to specific advertisements are led to buy goods and services or do things that don’t actually want to do.

Information is defined as knowledge, facts or news. However, we should bear in mind that one person's information is another person's trick, particularly when advertisers talk about their products. Information comes in many forms. It can be complete or incomplete. It can be biased or misleading. Complete information is telling someone everything there is to know about something: what it is, what it looks like, how it works, what its benefits and drawbacks are. On the other hand, to provide complete information about anything is time consuming and hard. All of this would require a documentary, not a commercial. Complete information is impossible to provide in an advertisement. Thus, for advertising, information must of necessity be incomplete.