i had, a while ago, asserted in an old post that aggressive advertising was ‘evil’* and passive/informative advertising was okay.
it is a line of thought from an old advertisment thread from babble.(that i wont put i link to unless someone asks)
what do you all think?
*or just bad,if you prefer a less harsh word but still,this aggressive advertising is the shit that puts ad-ware on your computer.
Advertising’s neither good nor evil. Advertising just is.
But what if an advertisment gives false impression with the intention to lure/fool people? Isn’t that lying? And aren’t lies wrong/evil?
Supposing lying is evil then I think all we can say is that the lie is evil. Advertising’s not evil any more than any form of communication. Sure it can be used improperly. A baseball bat’s not evil. Cracking somebody’s head open with it on the other hand would be. Actions can be evil I would say.
It says in the bible that you should not lead a blind man over a stumbling block. The Talmud uses that statement to form its various views about how to conduct business ethically.
It means that you can’t trick people that aren’t fully aware of what you are selling them. Currently, many commercials are really little psychological experiments designed to make you have a feeling that has nothing to do with the product. An example would be, the beer commercial with sexy women, creating what’s called a false analogy in the analysis of advertising.
That is an attempt to “fool†the viewer and so according to the sources mentioned, is evil.
Never leave it to an evil person to identify evil.
I have always wondered what made a good advert commercially. I watched a program about 2 years ago which rated adverts on the jump in sales they produced and the winner was Levi’s where a guy got underessed putting his clothes in a washing machine (500% jump in sales!), I can barely remember it from childhood.
My biggest gripe is the adverts which try and sell a product on the back of a way of life, e.g. the present English Ford advert where they ask “What did you want to be when you grow up” (astronaut, pilot, racing car driver?). No, you’d like to drive a shitty Ford.
An advert is evil when it devalues something we hold dear, devaluing a noble ideal within society and advertising is very very good at doing that. There’s so many adverts where I’ve seen an excellent philosophical or socialogical ideal sullied by exploitation by advitisers. Present advertising makes the whole world more cynical, I really believe it is a true evil in today’s world. What’s worse, it doesn’t even significantly impact their sales! The sociological cost outweighs the econmic benefit. Advertising is a true leech on the overall good of society.
Imagine advertizing completely off the leash. It is a medium, within a structure, that has no morality, only profit, at it’s heart. The current soft-sell would soon become the hard-sell, would become the hardcore-sell.
Its drivers are not human, so tempt the humans involved to use anything that works without regard for human impact - beyond sales. It does not care, so its perpetrators cannot afford to do so either.
What standards it has, come only from outside imposition.
Advertizing is meme-warfare, and memes do not value their host’s well-being.
at the risk of beating a dead horse (and if it isn’t dead it will be) if you want to see a good advertisment, watch triumph of the will…
it is a tour de force in semiotics
-Imp
so youre saying there should be more legislation in place to prevent the evil use of advertising just like there are laws in place to prevent the evil use of baseball bats? excellent point!
more like referring to the same old horse nobody feels like looking for. maybe your pointing finger is falling asleep and you should start the actual beating? do you think anybody has gone out and seen this movie because of you? if i happen to be in a position to obtain a movie and i see it, ill sure get it. but i hate movies, they are dumb. their entire meaning can be summed by me in a paragraph of this length. so give me a paragraph like that so i dont have to watch this movie. or a sentence maybe.
A few weeks ago it was playing at a local place and I missed it.
That was dumb.
it will be shown again Monday, August 25, through Thursday, August 28 2008.
-Imp