Does advertising portray its actual meaning?

What is really said to be advertising?

Streets of our beloved and mother land country, Ghana has all kinds of items being displayed on bill boards. These items range from food stuff, home appliances, I. T machinery as well as all forms of things which people think will make life easier. These things which are displayed on bill boards are so in order to create awareness educate people as well as try to establish some form of relationship with interested people.

As explained by knowthis.com, “Advertising is a non-personal form of promotion that is delivered through selected media outlets that, under most circumstances, require the marketer to pay for message placement. Advertising has long been viewed as a method of mass promotion in that a single message can reach a large number of people. But, this mass promotion approach presents problems since many exposed to an advertising message may not be within the marketer’s target market, and thus, may be an inefficient use of promotional funds. However, this is changing as new advertising technologies and the emergence of new media outlets offer more options for targeted advertising.

Advertising also has a history of being considered a one-way form of marketing communication where the message receiver (i.e., target market) is not in position to immediately respond to the message (e.g., seek more information). This too is changing. For example, in the next few years technologies will be readily available to enable a television viewer to click a button to request more details on a product seen on their favorite TV program. In fact, it is expected that over the next 10-20 years advertising will move away from a one-way communication model and become one that is highly interactive.

Another characteristic that may change as advertising evolves is the view that advertising does not stimulate immediate demand for the product advertised. That is, customers cannot quickly purchase a product they see advertised. But as more media outlets allow customers to interact with the messages being delivered the ability of advertising to quickly stimulate demand will improve.”

The question I seek to put across is, do most items advertised affect the human body in any form? Often than not things advertised have mainly parts of the human body being exposed. Cars, appliances, drinks and so many more have pictures of partially nude pictures of people on their bill boards. Is it to say that the person on the bill board would be added should you purchase the item?

Whiles male pictures are portrayed as masculine and therefore have the power to do any difficult task, women on other hand are portrayed as sex objects and this is disturbing to an extent. A generation which goes long away to reach people our great grandmothers’ mind not remember, tells us of an ideal woman whose obligation was to dress like a lady. Thus covering all parts which might seduce someone to an extent and this is bad.

This is however not the case off late, we dress and copy fashion blindly and people try to justify themselves saying they have to be current and move with the trend.

Advertising is all about show casing your product and appealing to the conscience of the people to purchase the product. This can be done very well without someone posing to expose vital parts of his or her body in order to send the message across. There’s a popular saying in Twi “Sankofa y3n kyiri” which literally means going back for something is not unacceptable.

The upsurge of our indecency as Ghanaians is something which might turn outrageous sometime soon. Advertising must serve its sole purpose which is to inform, educate and create avenues for people to interact with each other.