Advertising Billboards Essay

Everywhere you look these days you see a billboard or advertisement selling or promoting a product, it’s inevitable. You get in your car to go somewhere and look out the window and you are surrounded by them or you open a magazine and every other page is an ad promoting something. You walk into a store or public place and at every turn there is something staring you in the face. Since billboards are so big and visible from a distance they are hard to miss. It’s basically shoved in our faces without us having a choice, but to look and glance at it. Since we are exposed to this and this is something that everyone goes through on a daily basis, we tend to ignore a lot of it until something catchy or interesting catches your eye. Advertisements make things more appealing and make us more inclined to buy products. With the amount of competitors out there selling the same products, advertisement companies try and beat them out by coming up with attention getting ads. Advertisements these days seeming have more and more sexual content in them making them borderline inappropriate to fully inappropriate and unnecessary. See more: Experiment on polytropic process Essay This can be a negative effect on the public causing image issues and men and women being degraded. By using sexual innuendos and images, advertising companies are catching the attention of the public in bad and negative ways. Most advertising ads, whether on T. V. or on a billboard have some aspect and sort of sexual content involved. Many billboards or advertisements have a sexual hint in the message which may be taken literally and figuratively. They have two meanings depending on how you take it. It is usually a simple everyday product with a statement or saying to catch your attention. For example while looking at ads online, I came across an ad for a Toms Ford Fragrance. This ad contains a woman with red lipstick and red nail polish, she is clearly naked as she holds her breasts and the bottle of cologne is in between them. Now this woman has nothing to do with the cologne whatsoever, but I bet she helped sell a lot of the product which is directed at men. Why was it necessary to have her half naked in the ad? Because sex sells. Another ad and billboard I came across was for Ace Hardware. You have the Ace logo in the right corner and on the left in white writing against a black backdrop reads, â€Å"Need a good screw? Now this has a double meaning, you can take it literally as in needing a screw for maybe a project or something around the house or figuratively in a sexual way and meaning sex. Are these forms of advertising necessary, no, but it catches people’s attention and aids in selling and getting their product out there. Nudity has even become a major component in selling. Advertisement companies may think sex sells so they glorify it and use it. Yes, it helps to sell the product, but what affect does that have on society. Sex often has nothing to do with the product. If you look at clothing ads for top selling companies, it’s normal to see a woman or a man posing in a pair of jeans with their shirts off standing with their â€Å"perfect† bodies. Or you’ll see a woman in a bathing suit advertising for a hamburger company. Why do they need their shirts off or why does she need to be in a bathing suit? Because again sex sells. They are not completely naked but there is a lot of skin showing. This can create image problems in our society and make us self conscious as we try to strive to be like what they see in the ad or on TV. It causes body issues as you want your body to look like theirs, skinny and toned. Self esteem is a major issue that our younger generations are faced with especially in girls as they try and look like these women. For decades advertisers have come up with an â€Å"ideal† for the perfect woman. This woman represents what five percent of women look like, yet this body type represents 98% percent of the women seen in the media (Kilbourne). People look at themselves and compare themselves with what they see and tend to want to emulate it. Seeing these ads over and over with people you may want to look like can distort your thinking. You may start to dress like these ads and in turn are showing more skin because you think this is acceptable since it’s all you see around you. Or if you see a new product being advertised you want you go out and buy it not really needing it, but just want it because it’s the new â€Å"it† item, you can become never satisfied with things because you’re constantly out buying the new stuff. Sex appeal is a factor because would you buy something from someone who is considered less attractive? No, would be a common answer to some because our surroundings and being are built on looks and we are a very vain society where looks matter. So with companies having this way of thinking, how do others view this? They most likely are thinking the same thing. From commercials to infomercials you see beautiful people posing and acting selling something you may want. It can and may degrade men and women. Men are shown in these ads, but if you notice it’s mostly women who seem to be objectified to sell the products. Women are widely seen as sex symbols, so why not use them in ads. It’s become so common to see women half dressed that I don’t think we really realize what is being put out there. It has become a norm to see raunchy or inappropriate billboards and laugh. Many don’t see it as degrading, but as funny and entertaining. So imagine if we find humor in the ads and billboards now, just how far will the companies go to push the envelope to sell something. Using men and women in these ads in sexual ways only objectives them and we shouldn’t have to see them that way just to sell a product. Using â€Å"sex sells† is sending a bad message to the public. I think we should change our way of advertising and censor the ads a bit. Be considerate and respectful and realize that that ad might offend someone. There are a lot of people who feel these ads are wrong and shouldn’t be advertized. In fact, numerous women and men contacted the organization National Organization of Women (NOW) to complain about the sexist beer ads that for example were ran during the football season (NOW). NOW is just one of many organizations out there fighting for the cause of changing advertisements. So with people on board of changing the way billboards and ads are being presented and put out there we will one day see a change or at least see a reduction in the sexual ads out there. We as a society should see what is being put out there and see that what they are promoting is only a product.