Advertising: information or manipulation?

It is generally believed that advertising reaches a new height where it can manipulate people into purchasing products without them noticing. I strongly agree with this statement, and I also believe that this method is stemmed from various causes. One of the core reasons for this growing trend of persuading consumers into buying through advertisements is that modern people are increasingly smarter. As promotion was invented a long time ago, people were inundated with the proliferation of billboards and advert columns to the point where they knew every corner of how advertisements worked and how to avoid them. Therefore, modern customers are accustomed to this old-fashioned way of promotion, which leads to the need for renovation of advertising. Taking advantage of this chance, many companies start to apply sophisticated tactics into their promotions such as emotion-provoking substance and wealthy lifestyle. Apart from the buyer aspect, competition between businesses also play a major role in monopolizing advertising. Due to the rapid increase of society’s demand for basically everything, more and more corporations mushroom and occupy the market. To maximize profit, one company must attract the most customers to knock out other competitors, and one of the methods of doing so is to rely on manipulative advertisements. With the advance of technology, it is very simple for any corporation to create a simple yet tempting and unique piece of promotion to attract a proportion of naive customers. For instance, when an advertisement presents a piece of food being amplified by special effects like crispiness and crunchiness, viewers tend to feel hungry and want to purchase it immediately. To summarize, modern advertising is emptying a great number of wallets in society with its cunning strategy. For years to come, this trend will only grow more.