Advertising Changes Social Values Essay

Words: 2440
Pages: 10

Change is imminent. As resistant as people may be to alter their patterns everything changes over time, especially social values. Whether it be new technology, changes in the economy, or new understandings, values never stay the same. Nothing reflects these values more than advertising and trying to appeal to the peoples need to “fit in” with the values of society. Since the beginning of advertising the sellers are trying to find ways to make the consumers buy into their goods or services and there is no better way than to reflect on how people’s attitudes and beliefs are focused. Changing social values are always reflected in advertising for consumer products. As social values change so too does the approach that advertisers take …show more content…
Therefore advertising techniques need to change constantly with the growing times in order to ensure these companies continue to see the desired results. Lee(2011) described the two different types of advertising strategies and showed how during the recession it changes from one to another. According to Lee (2011), “Transformational strategies focus on emotion and seek to make consumers feel good about the product by creating a likable or friendly brand. While Informational strategies are product-focused and typically feature product attributes or performance”(Lee et al. 2011). Informational strategies, as I stated earlier, are the strategies used during recessional periods. While advertisements change due to economic factors there are also other changing values that affect advertisements. Social values change due to new information on old behaviors. For example now that we know smoking is bad for you and can cause serious health problems, people have turned away from smoking. This is reflected in advertising in that now smoking commercials are completely banned from airing. But while smoking has decreased, drinking alcohol has greatly increased. Binge drinking is now considered a norm many alcohol companies are taking advantage of this and constantly creating commercials of how “cool” it is to