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Example research essay topic: Alcohol And Tobacco Joe Camel - 1,573 words

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In our society corporate advertising or more accurately labeled, corporate propaganda is delivered through advertising and public relations. Advertising companies are constantly targeting specific audiences and taking advantage of uninformed consumers. This multi-billion dollar transnational industry's propaganda campaigns affect private and public lives every day. Advertising agencies definitely have an idea of the audience who buys their product when they make up their ads. Sometimes these targeted audiences are misled into buying products based upon strategies advertising agencies use to lure customers in. Public Relations firms that most people have never heard of such as Burson- Mar steller, Hill & Knowlton and Ketchum are working on behalf of a myriad of powerful interests.

These powerful media moguls of the advertising industry went very much uncontested for many years. However, the ever-increasing consumer organizations are putting more heat on them to be more truthful and less deceiving. Consumer organizations such as the Better Business Bureau and the Center for Media and Democracy, have been created to bring awareness to the public about products that are misleading. These organizations define their missions as consumer assistance, protection and / or advocacy (FCIC 1). The majority of these consumer organizations develops and distributes educational and informational materials about consumer products. In 1995, Common Courage Press published a book by John Stauber (the founder of Center for Media and Democracy) called Toxic Sludge is Good For You: Lies, Lies and the Public Relations Industry.

While advertising agencies continue to look for the best marketing techniques, consumer agencies counter by bringing awareness about the real purpose and nature of advertising practices. Advertising, which is defined as any openly sponsored offering of goods, services or ideas through any medium of communication, has gone through dramatic changes over time. Advertising used to be informational and essentially told you that a product existed, where it could be found, and what it was used for. Today, advertising talks about the products status and attributes that have little to do with whether the product functions for its intended purpose. Advertisers now see advertising as a way to generate interest in products, and with the ever-growing Internet, it has grown to a global industry (Phillip 28).

The major US advertising media include newspapers, magazines, television and radio, business publications billboards, and circulars sent through the mail. The major criticisms of advertising are that it creates false values and impels people to buy things that they neither need nor want and that, in fact, may be harmful such as cigarettes. Advertising is looked at to be quick-witted and clever at its best. Although, sadly some of the cleverest advertisements promotes things that should be best left uprooted, or are misleading to its audience. The ads that people are subjected to are probably more influential than other forms of media because they are all around us and feed into our subconscious constantly.

It is likely that the average person will view over 1, 500 adverts in a given day (Marconi 52). As I mentioned, there are many different medias for advertising. All of these medias, excluding radio, use visuals to as their primary promotional tool. Consumers see something that appears fun, looks nice, or is interesting and they want it. Agencies produce ads to attract consumers to their product, however, sometimes interpretations and how closely the consumer reads into these ads can me misinterpreted. In order to sell a product, advertisers have created an attractive lifestyle that goes along with the product.

Much too often, consumers picture themselves living that high lifestyle if they were to buy the product. In reply, advertising defenders say that advertising is meant to sell products, not create values: that it can create a new market for products that fill a genuine, though latent, need and that it furthers product improvement through free competition (Phillip 4). These advertisers, through commission, are paid a great sum of money to figure out how they can sell a product to an audience. They are not concerned with the price or quality of the product, just the best way they can sell it. There is a lot of work that goes into these advertising campaigns. The most important task when creating an advertisement is figuring out who the targeted audience of the product is.

Once a target audience is chosen, the advertisers can begin to plan the attributes in the ad that will hook the audience. They will usually throw something at you to get your attention right from the start. This can include a likeable image, key words, or a persuasive attribute of the product. There are even advertisements that have been reported to have subliminal images.

These are images that are far from obvious, yet your brain detects them. The advertisements are tested and revised many times before ever being released to the public, to ensure the product is of its full marketing potential. Consumer organizations began forming in response to the misconception of ads that the public was facing. There are thousands of these groups who fight different types of companies, but for the common reason of keeping the consumers aware of misleading advertising.

The majority of these consumer organizations are independent and non-profit programs. It seems that there is a consumer organization for just about any topic imaginable. Instead of selling you a product based on an image, these organizations look to help the consumer find the best price on a product or the product of the best quality and reliability. In some cases consumer organizations serve a purpose other than informing the public about a product. They also provide a number of services to consumers including monitoring advertisements for truth and accuracy, screening advertising that involves products for children, providing information to consumers and businesses to help them make informed purchasing decisions, and settling consumer complaints (FTC 1).

They are also there to warn you about credit and insurance scams and mail fraud. However, comparative product testing remains the main activity of consumer organizations. Comparative product testing can be defined as determining if, and to what degree, features that are relevant for consumers, are found to be constituent characteristics of a representative number of brands and types of a certain product. Afterwards, the compared test results (of the different products) are published simultaneously, and the prices of the products are listed (Box 79). Comparative product tests aim at providing objective and independent information. The information is to be obtained independently of producers or suppliers and only the consumers' interests matter.

As consumers are the ones who are involved in the product testing, their interviews and research can be looked at by other consumers as reliable and truthful information and help a consumer to make a selection based upon their unconscious needs. Consumer organizations have proven very helpful, not only by giving us product or business information, but alerting the public about the dangers of alcohol and tobacco as well. Generally when people see ads for beer or cigarettes, they see people in the advertisement enjoying themselves and having a great time. However, the wiser consumer knows that this is not the case, and alcohol and tobacco do not take you away to a magical fantasy land. Yet, a good percentage of consumers are lured in by these misconceptions produced by advertisers. Children often pick up habits such as drinking and smoking based upon the fun advertisements they have seen all throughout their lives growing up.

A poll was taken of young children and it was startling to find out that they knew who Joe Camel was just as well as they knew Mickey Mouse (FCIC). The tobacco industry has for decades denied the obvious, that nicotine is addictive and that smoking and second hand smoke can cause a wide variety of diseases, and that cigarette advertising recruits children (Joe Camel) and keeps adults smoking. Even the candy industry can make smoking attractive to children through the sale of candy cigarettes. Many times the tobacco industries lobby politicians for protection at the expense of public health. There are a great number of organizations out there trying to inform the public about these misconceptions. Consumer Protection against Tobacco is one organization that provides information about the dangers of tobacco, and gives consumer accounts about their experiences with tobacco.

Other helpful organizations are setting out to bring public awareness to the misleading advertisements of alcohol and tobacco companies. While it seems that the media power brokers will always be dominant over smaller groups and organizations that challenge them, we as consumers and viewers can learn a lot from them. As a society that is under constant media-influence it is important to keep an open mind to what is important and what remains trivial and insignificant. Groups such as consumer organizations are bringing awareness to the influential and sometimes deceiving media and advertising agencies. Bibliography: Consumer Protection.

FTC. 16 Feb. 2001. Gold, Phillip. Advertising, politics, and American culture: from salesmanship to therapy. New York: Paragon House, 1987.

Marconi, Joe. Image marketing: using public perceptions to attain business objectives. Chicago, Ill. : American Marketing Association, 1996. POVERTY AND THE ROLE OF CONSUMER ORGANIZATIONS. Inter Press Service 30 Oct. 1997: 1 Road, Ron.

Social Effects of Advertising. 7 April 1997. Suffer, Harry. Consumer group attacks state franchise laws. Automotive News 19 Feb. 2001: 16.

Telecom Provides Benchmark For Media Relations and Regulatory Affairs. PR News 7 Sep. 1998: 10. The Consumer Action Website. FCIC. 16 Nov. 2000


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Research essay sample on Alcohol And Tobacco Joe Camel

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