Write an essay on the role of advertisements in our life.
Answers
In the competitive and capital-intensive world of television shows, advertising plays an important role by financing many programmes. Unfortunately, sponsorships come more easily for entertainment programmes perceived as ‘popular’ with wide reach. So we have a glut of the same kind of programmes on most channels even as ‘serious’ kind of entertainment— classical music, dance, drama, documentaries—or programmes of socio-economic concerns are minimal because advertisers do not consider these to be widely watched. This approach seriously limits the scope of media in disseminating cultural awareness and values.
Advertising is a way to showcase one’s products or services and offer consumers a vast choice in terms of what they are offered and what they can choose to buy. For the consumers, advertising offers them a choice to get at the best in the market at the best price.
Today, it is unimaginable to expect people, especially in urban areas, to spend their money buying products of which they haven’t heard a thing. People know what is in the market and then choose what they want. Nothing can be more satisfying than this, for then one gets his or her money’s worth. But advertising has been not only a boon, but also a bane in many ways.
Advertising relies on consumerism to succeed and consumer’s judge by materialistic standards. Moreover, successful advertising means emerging triumphant in the face of tough competition, often without consideration of high standards or aesthetic tastes.
Advertising being crass and opportunistic in its very basis, the overemphasis on advertising today is a bane. Advertisers tend to appeal to popular (even ‘low’) tastes to appeal to a larger section of the population. Images of sex and violence are used to attract viewers’ attention—a kind of ‘negative’ appeal is produced to sustain interest.