From Me to You: Decoding Advertisements

Advertisements have always been an interest of mine within mass media. They are so persuasive and they know how to push your buttons. They have hundreds of people sitting in rooms thinking, "what will make someone want to buy this?" Ad companies spends hours and hours picking precise words that will effect the reader or spectator the most. Lets take a well known advertisement as an example, zoom zoom. If someone from another planet who understood english but nothing else read these words, they would think that they had been written by a kindergartner. However you and I both know that these two words are the trademark slogan for the car company Mazda. Most commercials depict a very satififed driver, gripping the steering wheel tightly and barreling around tight corners with ease. The driver is always smiling, so content, they've just purchased the best vehicle. Their lives are now complete, they've got the girl (or guy) and sometimes the dog and now they've got the perfect car. It almost makes you jealous, you want that car, you want that feeling. However, when we feel this we should know that the ad companies have won, they've received the feedback that they want, greed. In John Berger's Way of Seeing he says, "The purpose of publicity is to make the spectator marginally dissatisfied with his present way of life. Not with the way of life of society, but with his own within it ... if he buys what it is offering, his life will become better." (142) I believe he couldn't have said it better, he completely understands the mission of an ad, to make you feel dissatisfied and empty. A successful ad will leave you thinking, "If I got that, I would be happier." Material possessions are beginning to rule the world, they make people "think" that they are happier when meanwhile what they were upset about to begin with had nothing to do with their crappy car, and will probably never be revealed to their conscious minds.


Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. N.p.: Penguin Books, n.d. Print.