The Persuaders

Recently in class we have all watched The Persuaders, a documentary about the power house companies and how they make their advertising stand out to the people who should purchase their products. Our generation was born right in the middle of this advertising craze, we have grown up while always being surrounded by advertisements. Having being cluttered with all of these advertisements, we don't really have a strong reaction to them all that much, because they are just advertisements and there is nothing much else to it. Persuaders, though, argue otherwise; they claim there is almost an art to advertisement. Persuaders are trying to create a new world, meaning, and identity for the consumers, so they claim. But how? I kept this in my mind the entire time watching this documentary. 

The Persuaders have now been able to stop with so much broadcasting and are now able to also narrowcast; we see it all the time. We will have ads alongside a website of clothing brands and shoes we like. The Persuaders have now learned everything about us, pretty creepy.  The Persuaders say that their advertisements are "helping us find meaning" and "filling holes that weren't filled before". They kept on saying these positive things and how advertising is opening up our minds, but they still didn't explain HOW these advertisements were opening our eyes.
These Persuaders want to give us the impression that they are filling our needs, but they don't actually want to fill the needs, they want us to think that a product will help us, so that we keep buying it to keep us happy. They have people stuck in this circle of misleading lies just so they can get money. Yes, it is true that some products do completely satisfy our needs, but most do not. So what's the point of them? It's not to help us, it's to help the big name brands get even bigger.
After watching this documentary on how these peoples' mindsets work, it makes me feel stupid for falling for their tricks. Really? Your commercial is going to make me feel connected to you emotionally? Is your product really going to give me a new world, meaning, and identity just because you say it will?
I think we all get way to wrapped up in what is popular and what will make us better that we begun to not gain identity from these advertisements, but lose it.
We all become this group of people who all shop for the same thing and wear the same clothes, have the same world that these Persuaders have shown us.
Where is the identity in that?
These people are not making us be our own self, they are turning us into one, big money-spending race that doesn't know an better.

We need to take a step back and realize,

it is just an advertisement and that is all it will ever be.