Words: 1870
Advertisements can also be seen on the seats of grocery carts, on the walls of an airport walkway, and the sides of buses, or heard in telephone hold messages or in- tore PA systems C] nearly anywhere a visual or audible communication can be placed. (Wisped, 2006) Advertising can be persuasive and also informational. Advertising is used to influence the thought patterns Of society. It is a part of everyday life with almost everything that people do. In this paper I will discuss some of the effects of advertising in our society today within print media.
Every time we may open a newspaper, a magazine, pick up a pamphlet , drive down a local highway, or drive through a rural neighborhood , we see ads that are promoting almost identical products pending huge amounts of money in order to convince us to buy their brands. If we are bombarded by the same ads over and over again, we eventually may decide to look into that advertisement a little deeper, even if that ad was advertising something that you wouldn’t have thought twice about. We drive down our local highways everyday and see billboards advertising a variety of things that we may or may not need.
When we go to the doctor’s office, we are bombarded with all sorts of pamphlets that advertise things that we probably never even heard of, but yet it becomes an interest to us. We go grocery shopping at the market and see ads posted all over the entrance of the market and sometimes even at the exit door. Some of us read newspapers on a regular basis just so we can find the latest coupons for anything that we may think that can be of good use to us. At the end of the day, some of us end up spending money that we really don’t have or just spending money on things that we just don’t really need.
Advertising is pervasive and virtually impossible to escape. In some cases, the cause and effect factor of advertising can even interfere with our health depending on owe gullible one may be when seeing advertisements. According to a research article I read on advertising, consumers feel that advertising is every”here and that this ubiquity has evolved overtime. Advertising is as much part of the environment as the traffic and the trees. Sometimes people feel as though there is too much advertising and too much pressure in advertisements to buy.
However, the majority of our society embraces advertising as a part of life. When asked to think about life without advertising the response was that life would be very dull. There would be a lack of essential and desirable information. There would be less entertainment. There would be less street color. There would be less to talk about. (Retell, 2002) Billboard ads are one of the many ways advertisers use to influence which products are sold in certain areas. A newspaper ad is only good for a day and a television commercial only lasts about thirty seconds.
A billboard ad is advertising something twenty four hours a day and seven days a week. If you walk or drive through that particular area thirty times a day you will see that ad thirty times a day. Billboards are used to advertise a variety of things n certain demographic areas. The tobacco industry spends billions of dollars each year to create and market ads that show smoking as an exciting, glamorous, and healthy activity. Billboards for cigarettes are one of many common ads seen in African American communities. According to research done by Professor Vernally R.
Randall, from the university Of Dayton School Of Law, the size and number of billboards in minority communities have created an intrusive and persistent form of advertising. There is absolutely no way to avoid it. For instance, a 1987 survey conducted by the city of SST. Louis found twice as many billboards in black neighborhoods as white. Almost 60% of the billboards in the black neighborhoods advertised cigarettes and alcoholic beverages. In another study of seventy-three billboards along nineteen blocks in a black neighborhood in Philadelphia, sixty advertised cigarettes or alcohol.
In a 1 989 survey by the Able Foundation, 70% of the 2,01 5 billboards documented in the city of Baltimore advertised alcohol or tobacco products. Three-fourths of the billboards were in predominately poor African-American neighborhoods. In fact, the Center for Disease Control estimates that billboards advertising tobacco products are placed in African- American communities four to five times more often than in white communities. Furthermore, the advertisements are usually for menthol cigarettes, which are more popular with African- Americans and which have additional significant medical effects. Randall, 2005) According to an article found in a Washington DC newspaper, minorities, particularly blacks, have been disproportionately targeted by the tobacco industry giants. The internal company records of R. J. Tobacco Company and Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation show how they ran advertising campaigns in magazines, on billboards, buses and other media to attract blacks to mentholated brands such as Salem and Cool. Also, a 1978 corporate memo profiles the success of the Newport brand among African-Americans, particularly high school students. Cummings, 1 998) In addition to billboard advertisement, tobacco companies advertised extensively in African-American magazines. In fact, cigarettes advertised in African-American magazines such as Ebony, Jet, and Essence account for a higher percentage of the minority magazines’ total advertising revenues. For instance, in an eight-year period there were 1,477 tobacco advertisements in Jet, Ebony, and Essence. The tobacco industry poured millions of dollars into advertising in newspapers and magazines that serve the African- American community. Randall, 2005) According the Tacoma Pierce County Health Department, a significant body of literature has established that advertising influences minors to use tobacco products. Courts have taken judicial notice of the positive connection between advertising and consumption. Cigarettes are the second most heavily advertised product in the country after automobiles. Adolescents with high exposure to cigarette advertising are significantly more likely to be smokers, according to several measures of smoking behavior, than those with low exposure to cigarette advertising.
Research suggests that tobacco marketing is a stronger current influence in encouraging. Tobacco use by minors is a major and worsening public health problem. Each day, three thousand (3,000) children in the United States begin smoking, creating over a million new underage, addicted smokers each year. Tobacco industry sales to minors each year exceed one billion dollars ($1 as more than three 3) million American children under eighteen (18) years of age consume nine hundred forty-seven (947) million packs of cigarettes annually.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have reported that the rate of smoking among all high school students during the years 1 991 through 1 997 increased by over thirty-two percent (32%) and now stands at its highest rate since 1981. The CDC also reported that in 1997, forty-three percent (43%) of high school students used cigarettes, smokeless tobacco or cigars. In Washington State, students at every grade level were more likely to have tried cigarettes in 1995 compared to 1992.
The greatest change was in the youngest students surveyed (6th graders), who reported having tried cigarettes at almost double the rate in 1995 compared to 1992. In 1 995, twenty percent (20%) of Seattle 8th graders smoked cigarettes every day contrasted with thirteen percent (13%) in 1993; twenty-eight percent (28%) of 12th graders smoked daily in 1995 contrasted with eighteen percent (18%) in 1993. (Tacoma, 2000) Alcohol is also one of many products that are also advertised in African American communities via print media.
According to an article found in the Chicago Weekend newspaper, alcohol is the number one gal drug of choice for teens. More than ID million underage youth illegally consume alcohol, netting the industry $20 million in annual sales. Some alcohol billboard use iconic music figures such as Marvin Gage and Isaac Hayes to sale liquor ads. Even some popular rap artists promote liquor in their songs. When artists like Newly sings “Where’s the party/Pass the Bacteria” or Snoop Dog sings “Sipping’ on Gin and Juice,” those lyrics subliminally promote alcohol use to teens.
The most sinister of all alcohol advertisement are found on bus shelters – the same place where students stand to catch the bus to go school. Lynch, 2006) Alcohol advertising in magazines has been overexposed to the African-American youth. Compared to non-African- American youth, African-American youth saw 66% more beer and ale advertising and 81% more distilled spirits advertising in magazines in 2002, and 45% more advertising for alternatives, alcohols and other “low-alcohol refreshers. ” This means that 96% of African-American youth, on average, saw 171 alcohol ads, whereas 83% of non-African-American youth, on average, saw 1 11 ads. King, 2003) While African-American teens drink less than other youth, there is evidence from public health research that, as they age, African Americans suffer more from alcohol-related diseases than the rest of the population. Alcohol use plays a substantial role in the three leading causes of death among African-American youth–unintentional injuries (including motor vehicle fatalities and drowning), suicides and homicides. (King, 2003) On average, young people in general usually begin drinking at about age thirteen or fourteen.
Amongst other things, they are faced with pressure from their peers to drink alcohol. In addition, when the children see advertisements with celebrities drinking beer or hard liquor, it seems like it’s the in thing to do. Not only are these teens being faced with peer pressure, they are seeing advertisements that makes drinking alcohol appealing to them. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, by the time children are seniors in high school, more than 80 percent have used alcohol and approximately 64 percent have been drunk.
When adolescents move on to college, they bring their drinking habits with them: more than 40 percent of college students are binge drinkers. (Dept of Health, 2006) The fact that so many under age children are drinking to get drunk, may or may not lead to fife threatening situations. One example is the car accidents that occur especially with the under age children who choose to drink and drive. According to an article found on teenagers and drinking, motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for 15- to 20-year-old youth in the United States, according to mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics.
More than one quarter of the drivers killed in crashes had been drinking. In 1 999, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 3,561 drivers 15 to 20 years old were killed – and an additional 62,000 injured – in traffic crashes. Of those young drivers fatally injured, 29 percent had been drinking. Although driving after drinking is potentially deadly under any circumstances, it is particularly dangerous when teenagers do it. Science Blob, 2001) In conclusion, I have learned that for various reasons, four specific populations have emerged as target audiences for alcohol and tobacco marketers, mainly African Americans, Hispanics, children and women, minorities as a whole. Collectively, all of these populations have one thing in common. They are all especially vulnerable to the messages remoter by these industries. African Americans have disproportionately high rates of poverty and poor education, and also suffer from higher rates of death, disease and injury from alcohol and tobacco.