How advertising informs to our benefit

Our world is full of advertisements which promote nearly everything from daily necessities to luxurious items to health advertisements. We look at them every day and most of the time, we learn from them.
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n the passage, the author argues how advertising can work to our benefit. However, I disagree with him to a certain extent. It is true that advertisements provide us with information and some use the information to tempt us to buy their products. However, the information that is provided with the advertisements is not always complete. The advertisers are bound to conceal the information which will cause the advertisements to lose its effectiveness. The target audience of the advertisements will not get the full picture and they will have the impression that this specific product is flawless. This will cause them to be tempted and might eventually lead to buying that product without knowing of its flaws until the buyer actually uses it.

This lack of full information also causes us to spent unnecessary money. An excellent example would be the advertisements of food. They will show you how “humongous” the meal is and then, they will state that it is “very affordable” and that it is very healthy. These kinds of advertisements will usually achieve the effect which is to attract the customer to eat their food. However, the customers will not return. “Macdonald’s” and the likes of such fast-food restaurants like to over-exaggerate their meal servings. “Macdonald’s” also boasts of how healthy and how economic their food is. These factors will probably attract many people including me. We will think that what we see is what we will get as seeing is believing hence, we went ahead to try. However, it was very disappointing when we get the real thing. It was anything but what we saw. The burger was pathetic and the amount of French fries was so measly. Furthermore, many people got fat because of fast food. Hence we can see that actually advertising does not work to our benefit but actually causes us more harm than good.

Personally, I think that advertisers should have honesty and integrity so as not to “scam” people into buying. It is to also save people from unnecessarily temptations. It is essential for a buyer to get the full picture of the product that they are buying so that they can make a good choice. Especially in the area of health products. If the buyer does not know of its side effects, the consequences could be catastrophic. From this, we can see the importance of honesty and integrity. However, sometimes it is near impossible to be fully honest and uphold integrity. Companies which need to sell their products will need to compromise heavily on this as their advertisements would be rendered useless if they state all the bad points of their products.

Honesty and integrity would be something that I like to see in the future. It would also help the buyer to make the right choice as the advertisements is ridden of gimmicks and hidden conditions. However, we all know that it is almost impossible to for advertisers to compromise on honesty and integrity.

Being a creative director of a tobacco company, my main aim will be for the advertisements to achieve its optimum effect and in the end, benefit the company’s sales. Hence, not adhering fully to honesty and integrity cannot be avoided. Everyone knows that tobacco is detrimental to health. However, the main selling point of tobacco is that it provides an escapade from daily troubles and that it is a good form of entertainment and enjoyment.

Everyone knows that the use of tobacco commonly leads to diseases which affect the vital organs of the body. It is a major risk factor for heart attacks and pulmonary diseases and most importantly, it can cause cancer. People who smoke also have a tenfold increase in the risk of dying from chronic obstructive lung disease. Over usage of tobacco can cause people to double their chances of getting stroke. These hard cold facts are right in front of people who use tobacco and I will leave the job of finding out the facts to the people who want to smoke.

The point is, if we list out all the adverse effects of tobacco, we are scaring customers away which is not the point of our advertisement and there is no point in advertising. I will design my advertisement such that they only show the good points. Having said this, it does not mean that I am dishonest; I only assumed that the buyers are in full knowledge of the product. Furthermore, I did not change the anything about tobacco. On the point on integrity, it necessary to compromise on it as giving the full picture reduces the effect of your advertisements.

All in all, there must be some compromise on honesty and integrity if my advertisement were to work, but I will not go to the extent of fully compromising honesty and integrity as it will not make a good advertisement. I will not change the facts but will only show positive aspects of tobacco. This way, compromise on honesty and integrity will be reduced and the advertisement will also have its optimum effect, boosting the company’s sales.

Science- a menace to mankind?

Picture a world as portrayed by Isaac Asimov’s I-Robot where a world where humans are solely dependent on advanced technology without which our lives will fail to function. Imagine what will happen when technology fails

Science. Is it a menace to mankind? This is question that we must ask ourselves; especially in the age we live in where many will say that the recent scientific breakthroughs like the invention of the nuclear bomb harms more than helps. However, I think that there is no definite answer. We have to weigh the pros and cons ourselves. Although science has made killing so easy with newer and better weapons created, they are only a part of the many new findings and invention in the modern age. We should also consider the advancements of science which benefits mankind. However, it is because many people tend to look at the “big and obvious” things like the aftermath of a nuclear bomb rather than the minute things like how easy it is to kill cancer cells with laser.

The truth about science is that it is neither our friend nor our foe. It all depends how it is used and who uses it. We can compare it to two drivers driving the same car. Driver A chooses to use his car to ferry people around, driver B chooses to be the devil and go on a killing rampage and rams his car at anybody he sees. The above can be analogous to a sadistic scientist that uses science to create weapons to kill and a researcher who wants to save lives and uses science for the good of mankind.

However, I am more inclined to say that science will be a menace to mankind in the near future if it is abused.

It is possible to annihilate the whole world if you have the money to buy science. Any tycoon could purchase an atomic bomb and order a launch to any part of the world. Science can also be used to create weapons of mass destruction like bio-chemistry weapons. It can also be used to control the whole human race too as which any country or group that has the weapon and antidote can demand for a huge amount of return or rule make the whole world comply to their demands.

There have been many authors that predict what the world would be like in the near further. For example, in the book Brave New World, there was a dystopian portrayal of the scientific future. Science was used to overwrite human thinking, restrain their emotions and change the human way of life. We can see that in brave new world, science has become the master instead of the servant which is the direct opposite of the current situation. So do we want that?

Science is a menace to society because since there has been so much advancements in science, the human race have started to “slack”. During the industrial revolution, there were very little advancements in science and humans worked hard for change. However now, with such advance technology, major scientific breakthroughs are not emerging as frequently.

Furthermore, science has lessened humans’ ability to communicate properly. Gadgets like handphones and computers give humans an alternative to communication. This kind of communication causes people to not be able to communicate face to face.

Science has also made humans overly dependent on technology, causing humans to heavily rely on it. This is not a good sign as humans were once able to live without technology in the past. If technology fails one day, the human race will go down too.

However, I believe that the majority of the earth’s population will want science to be used for the greater good of mankind. There have been many scientists that use science to treat humans. For example, many new antibiotics have been created to fight against common ailments and that patients did not have to go through grueling surgeries like in the past.

All in all, science has become a menace to mankind at this particular point of time as it inhibits human’s development, poses a major threat to mankind and could potentially take charge of the life of humans.