The Importance of Advertisement

There shouldn't be any complications, and I thank him for his consideration of my suggestion. My argument against the importance of advertising consists of two main parts: first, that advertising is unnecessary for things which are truly significant; second, that advertising causes harm within a society.1) Advertising is unnecessary for that which is important. Human beings are acutely aware of what they need. A starving man will actively seek out food, or the means to acquire food. The same is true for people in social situations. If something is significant to a particular culture, a person who is a part of that culture is will invariably seek to acquire whatever it is that is culturally significant. A good example of this in our society is transportation. The need for mechanical transportation of some kind, whether by car, bike, or some other method, has become a necessity in our culture as our cities become more spread out and the need to traverse larger and larger distances as quickly as possible becomes more prevalent. As such, people invariably seek out efficient modes of transportation. This can also be seen in an ideological sense, particularly with regard to atheists and homosexuals in the United States. While some of these individuals never experience any particular drive to conform to the social norms of faith and "traditional relationships", the majority of atheists and homosexuals in America feel, at some point in their lives, a drive to conform to the culturally significant ideas of faith and "traditional relationships". Now, what does this mean for advertising? Well, advertising is in many cases, argued to be a method of providing the public with information. However, if people are already seeking out the things that they need, advertising is entirely unnecessary for necessities such as food, water, power, and so forth. Further, if people are already seeking out what they need to be successful in a cultural, financial, or intellectual standpoint, advertising becomes even less important, as people involved in particular activities will already have knowledge of what is necessary for their particular field. I can foresee my opponent disputing this point. After all, what about culturally significant items such as the iPod? It is entirely true that the success of the iPod (and similar items) was due in large part to advertising. However, at the time the iPod was released, would it really have been considered a necessity? It wouldn't have even been exceptionally significant in a cultural sense at that time. And this brings us to advertising's single aspect of importance: advertising creates "necessities", as my opponent has defined them. Advertising takes things which would otherwise be insignificant and/or unnecessary, and through marketing tools, makes these things into cultural "necessities". Advertising for food is unnecessary; and yet we see ads for food services every day. Why? Because the brands (McDonald's, Chili's, etc) are attempting to become "culturally significant", and in doing so, draw customers to spend money at their particular locations. There is no particular need to eat at McDonald's; indeed, there are more than a few compelling reasons not to eat there. However, their ads work to provide what is essentially propaganda for a particular product while ignoring everything negative aspect of the product. Take, for instance, the Cheetos ad at the top of this post. Nothing in the ad gives you any information about the product other than that Cheetos are something which you consume. It presents little valuable information on the subject, but rather is intended to attach the idea of the brand to something entertaining. As such, we can see advertising at work, not providing information, or providing any particularly important service regarding the product, but rather working to get the consumer to spend their money on something which they have no need for. And any potentially useful information an ad provides about a product is also placed among a series of biases and marketing tools intended to encourage the consumer to buy one product in particular as opposed to a competing product. These biases and marketing strategies make it difficult to perceive particularly useful information, and result in ads which are often misleading, or at the very least, completely useless in determining differences between products. . http://www.youtube.com...2) Advertising does demonstrable harm2a) Advertising promotes excessive and unnecessary spendingDo you really need to spend extra money on the iPhone 4 when you already have an iPhone 3? Do you really need that new car when yours still runs just fine? Advertising is aimed at one thing in particular: the consumer's wallet. If the consumer is not spending money, the advertising is not working as it should. However, for some products, this presents a problem. Consumers already have products which can perform the same basic functions as the newer products a company may be producing. As such, a company's ad campaigns must, at times, focus on not only promoting a particular product, but also to convince the public that the old product is obsolete. This ultimately leads to consumers spending excessive amounts of money to buy products which they do not actually need. Add that to hard economic times, and it should be fairly obvious why this unnecessary spending is harmful.2b) Advertising promotes spending on harmful products"I'm Lovin' It". The motto of McDonald's. The advertising for McDonald's tends to show exceptionally happy people taking a bite out of a Big Mac, or happily consuming a McFlurry. And all these people look healthy. And yet, if you go to a McDonald's, what you see is obviously different. The majority of regular customers at McDonald's and other fast food chains are exceptionally unhealthy. They tend to be overweight; many are diabetic or pre-diabetic. Most all of them are at high risk of heart disease. And they are all spending their money on food products (I use the term loosely) which are slowly but surely killing them. McDonald's advertising shows none of this. There is no warning that every Big Mac you eat gets you one step closer to a heart attack at the age of 30. Advertising for things like this is often misleading, and in the case of the food market, misleading advertising can be extremely harmful.2c) Advertising is damaging to happiness within a societyWhat is the best thing about TiVo and DVR? Is it that you can re-watch programs over and over again? Or pause shows so you don't miss anything? These things are nice, but the greatest thing about DVR technology is simply this: the ability to skip TV ads. This was actually a major concern back when TiVo was first released (. http://arstechnica.com...). But the fact is, most people don't want to view ads when they are trying to watch TV. The fact that DVR makes watching ads unnecessary has been one of the biggest draws to the technology, simply because people hate ads. If you need more convincing that ads are damaging to a society's happiness and well being, take the example of Sao Paulo, Brazil. In 2007, the city banned almost all forms of outdoor advertising. Despite this, the city is still a booming metropolis. And the population of the city has overall been pleased with the results. The elimination of outdoor ads even brought attention to more pressing problems in the society, such as the prevalence of shantytowns in some areas of the city. (. http://www.adbusters.org...)In conclusion, advertising is necessary to our society in the same way that cancerous cells are necessary to a person with cancer: the person wouldn't be the same without them, but really, would that be such a bad thing?