Advertisements

Advertisements are found everywhere. Newspapers, magazines, billboards, television, radio and over the internet. People and companies advertise for a variety of reasons : to promote product, to seek suitable candidates for job placements, to buy or sell cars or properties, to sell their services, to seek business opportunities or partners and even to seek life partners.

Advertisements definitely play a role in this age of information technology. If a person or firm does not advertise its service or product, how is the world to know of its existense? Therefore, large corporations advertise heavily to ensure that their products and services are made known to the consumers.

Almost all magazines and periodicals survive through advertisement and not through subscriptions. The revenues brought in through advertisement ensure that these publications run profitably.

An employer looking to recruit advertises in the newspapers outlining the criteria needed for the suitable candidate. The newspaper, read throughout the country, brings the prospective employee to his prospective employer. How else is an employer to find the best man or women for the job? The same goes for people buying or selling cars or properties. Advertisements bring the two parties together. 

Though advertisements can be seen as useful tool from these examples, it is also being unscrupulously exploited by some to mislead the public into impulsive buying.

Examples of these are the "special' shampoos, hair creams, hair restoration products, detergents that remove the toughest strains, three-minute exercise machines that make you lose pounds in days, and many more. Every company is competing with its rival to 'proof' that its product is the best by using gorgeous models (with long silky hair for shampoo and hair products), 'laboratory' demonstrations and other 'scientific' methods. People who believe these 'wonder products' rush out to purchase them only to regret later.

It is my opinion that advertisers should be truthful and scrupulous and that advertisements should be minimised and based on actual necessity rather than based on the company's advertising budget.