Recently in class we have been talking about advertising, and how much it has become integrated into our lives. Someone mentioned that they though advertising was a hoax so the question was posed, "Is advertising all lies?" I don't think that advertising is lies at all; it is simply an extremely carefully crafted (or perhaps constructed) truth or not the whole truth. My mom is in the marketing business so maybe I have a little more insight on what goes on before the advertisements are exposed to the world, and so I have learned just how much time is put into advertising. Take a magazine for example. Everything from the front cover shot to the last word on the final page has to be carefully examined to make sure it is exactly what the client wants because the companies do not make these magazines themselves. Instead, they send out what they want to a marketing agency, and continue to tweek it until it's exactly the way they want it. Just to put things in perspective, they start working on the Christmas editions at the beginning of the summer or earlier because the process of getting every last detail right takes so long. I don't think companies lie to their prospective customers because they now they could get sued for false advertising. However, companies have used to use words that will entice people in even if they aren't always true. For example, "as low as", "up to", and "approximately" to list just a few. All of these leave room for flexibility on the part of the company, making it unnecessary for them to say exactly what they mean.
What do you think about advertising? How much of it is the truth and how much of it isn't?
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