Advertising Debates

“Audiences are completely free to ignore advertising therefore it cannot brainwash people.”

          I agree with what this quote says, as I think that audiences are active and are able to make their own choices on what they see, as the Uses and Gratifications Theory suggests. Audiences don’t believe everything they are told and have the ability to see false truths or exaggeration, unlike what the Hypodermic Syringe Theory says about people being passive.

In this L’Oreal mascara advert, you can clearly see that this mascara wouldn’t be able to make eyelashes this long without use of other eyelash enhancing products such as false eyelashes. Only a small number of people would be naive enough not to realise this, and to understand that under the tough competition makeup companies face, they will use programs such as photo-shop to emphasise a person’s looks purely for advertising purposes.  They are able to watch this advert and not automatically want to buy the product, even if they’d want to look like the model, because they can distinguish the differences between the result of the product on an advert and reality.

Safe style UK advertised ‘Buy One Get One Free’ for their windows, which is a genuine offer they are giving and isn’t false advertising. But just because an audience watches the advert, doesn’t mean they will be brainwashed into going and buying them. If the advert applies to them, and they are currently looking for windows, then they might show more interest in the advert, but if they aren’t just because a good offer is on doesn’t mean they will show any more interest in the product.

The Disney World advert shows children being told they’re going to Disneyland and asks the question ‘So when are you taking them?’ If an audience was passive, they would automatically order a Disney holiday so they could tell their children about it. But not everyone with children goes on a Disney holiday, proving audiences are active and are able to make their own opinion on an advert, without being completely manipulated.