DO YOU HAVE KNEE PAIN? Is your life punctuated by the pain in your knees? Are you sitting sadly at your window because of your knee pain?? If so, take this drug here right now! Your life will change completely! You will be able to walk without wincing, jog, run, chase your dog, walk to your grocery shop every day, win every bingo game and get a promotion!

Potential side effects are- sneezing, inflammation, swelling, more knee pain, stomach ache and all of the above. Please do not take if you are allergic to knee pain.

Sounds crazy? I agree.

But have you heard this kind of commercials before? Our world today is surrounded by advertisements. You probably saw an advertisement two minutes before. There is probably a pop up advertisement on this page. There are flyers in your mailbox, posters on buses and trains and large advertisement boards on every street.

As advertisement becomes a more competitive field we all see clichéd examples that are nothing short of hilarious. We all know that buying Fogg perfume (it’s an Indian thing) will make you instantly self aware. Any perfume or fragrance advert will convince you that all you need to do is spray their perfume on yourself to be surrounded by gorgeous girls. (Personality? Psshh nobody needs that! Grab any random person and drown them in perfume. The secret has been discovered! Perfume. DUH!)

If your car ever breaks down in the middle of the road, you probably spent a great amount of cash and a long time wondering why the same car in the advert drove extremely fast and up and over steep hills and rocky paths with easing grace while your car cannot manage a small pothole. Advertisements on cars will show you a gorgeous sleek car, that drives over rocks and hills and dust tracks with the ease and grace of a dancer. Try that in real life. I can guarantee your experiments will be mostly disappointing.

And let’s just talk about food advertisements. If it’s not telling you a completely unrelated story about a sad girl whose life changed after eating chocolate or a pathetic love story that started because of chocolate or chocolate as bribes yada yada yada. When advertisements try to add a story to their adverts, its pretty rare that it comes out as a meaningful, and entertaining plot. And lets be honest, NO ONE EATS THE WAY PEOPLE IN FOOD ADVERTS DO! People in commercials seem to be the messiest eaters ever! They drip food everywhere, spill their drinks across their faces and get chocolate all over their faces.

In all honesty, all people in commercials have bizarre motor skills. They throw water at their faces in skin adverts with force adequate to make them fall down, do weird dancing jigs and sloppily eat.

But the most annoying thing about advertisements is probably their jingles. The jingles get stuck in your head and you find yourself struggling to get it out of your head. Sure it’s a win for companies but when the words that are stuck in your head are advertising dish soap, well, its not your ideal situation.

While advertisements might seem hilarious or sometimes downright ridiculous to us they sure do bring in lots of money and shape our world.

 

Advertising has been defined as the most powerful, and manipulative tool that firms have to control consumers all over the world.   It’s a form of persuasion that is incredibly powerful. How many times have you brought a particularly t shirt or apparel just because a celebrity endorsed it or because the advert persuaded you to do so. Think about it. Watching a single video persuaded you to get up and spend your money on an item you haven’t even seen in reality yet.

Advertisement has impacted society throughout the years influencing habits, persuading and shaping the world as we know it today.

So if watching an actor dousing themselves in perfume and reciting a few lines convinces you enough to make a purchase and place your order. You also know that you’re part of a cycle that’s way larger than you that has each step designed.

 

-Adyesha