Advertising is something that has made its way into our everyday life. Whether you like it or not we can’t escape it and engage with it every day. From ads on social media to ads on the television to bus stops to huge billboards you see advertising every time you leave the house which majority of the time is something people don’t need but basically just promotes over consumerism. You have no choice but to engage with it every single day. You cannot escape it.
In public spaces all over the world, companies are constantly competing with each other begging for consumers' attention, intruding through their ears, nose and eyes, constantly assaulting them with sounds, smells and visual props.
This is times square in New York City. Millions of people visit it every year and it is seen as a bucket list place to visit. But why? It is literally just a place where the highest paying companies get their names on billboards just for there to be hundreds of other brands just like them competing for peoples attentions trying to be the next big viral thing when in reality because the average is American exposed to between 500 and 1,000 commercial messages a day, it wields considerable power over what we consider normal and people have begun to become immune to this type of marketing and dont even pay attention to it half the time.
We are slaves to brands and advertising. We tend to claim that we are individuals, but in reality, we wear what we're told, think as we're told and are heavily influenced by whatever the newest trending trend or influencer is.
While advertising can have a positive impact by informing consumers and helping them make better choices, it can also have a negative impact by creating dissatisfaction by stimulating unrealistic desires. Even in an online virtual space we are not given any freedom from advertising culture as we become more and more targeted by companies desperate for us to part with our hard earned cash to show just to show status.
Advertising can lead people to a constant feel of dissatisfaction when we do buy their products, especially with us being in the age o influencers who are constantly advertising anything they can get paid to advertise weather they actually like the product or not trapping us in a cycle of purchases and disappointment and constantly wishing we had something we don't have but can very much live without leading to over consumerisation which will lead to a bunch of products ending up in a landfill when the next trend is over and that being the constant cycle.
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