Television and Media - TV Advertising - Selling Magic Potions and Happy

Advertising - Selling Magic Potions and Happy Pills The marketing world is a sea of fishermen waiting for some starving little fish to snatch up the bait. The bait is the commercial. Although the advertising industry provides the consumer with the opportunity to explore what is available, this industry can also lead people into believing that there are magical cures that can eliminate the unwanted and create the wanted. For instance, the print ad for Dove Nutrium Age Defying Body Wash implies that by using this product you can [look] as young as you [feel]. However, by analyzing the impact of the ad, the visual and verbal content, and the audience that it targets, the consumer is able to conclude that this product may help your skin, but will not affect "feeling" in the way of your emotions as portrayed by the laughing lady. The impact of this ad encourages consumers to buy this product so that they can feel the way the Dove woman feels. The term "feeling" is mentioned three times in the print, and the look on her face is expressing an exhilarated emotion. If I were to attach words to the expression on her face, they would say, "I am so happy and full of joy that I want to throw my head back and laugh." Is the Dove Company trying to tell me that this body wash is going to make me feel like that and defy age at the same time? So the next time I am feeling broke, fat, ugly, old, alone, and depressed, I will whip out my Dove and it will wash [all those bad feelings] away. I may have gone too far with the emotion, but the lure is about "how I feel." I would love to feel the way the laughing lady feels. But smart consumers wi... ...men that I know that fit into this category, are looking for age-defying products that reduce signs of wear and tear and that increase the youth they once had. In some form or another, everyone is trying to be healthy, and being healthy helps improve the way they feel. Women above the age of 29 are beginning, if they don't already, to feel the decline in their health. This ad is a decoy for those women. The commercial world is full of disguised promises. Through images, trick sentences, gripping messages, and society made into moving targets, the consumer is trapped into believing that magic potions and happy pills exist in the world. Not all advertisers are out to pull the wool over our eyes, but they all want our attention and they will do mind-twisting acrobats to get in to the world of the consumer's unconscious.