EFFECT OF ADVERTISEMENT ON SOCIETY

Advertising is a process, phenomenon or an act of gaining attention for publicising something. It can be anything right from small consumer goods/services to a national cause meant for the betterment of a country at large. Anything can be advertised, be it tangible or intangible. Advertising is not something that has been originally advocated by man; in fact even nature advocates the practice of advertising. For instance, the peacock advertises his wings in the hope of catching the best mate; the cuckoo does the same with its voice to woo its partner. Nature uses the magic wand of color and smell to announce the arrival of spring. Nature, in a way, if we see, runs the best advertising agency. Humans go about it through broadcasting mediums like the newspaper, television channels, radio, banners, leaflets, wall writing, and billboards, Internet etc; even the bodies of buses, trams and rail compartments are not spared from advertisements. In fact the list is endless. But how did it all start for human beings?? Why did the mankind feel the urge for a concept which is known as Advertisement today?? The first time when man started practicing exchange of goods & services with each other, he felt the need of making himself heard so as to make the people know about what all goods & services he has to offer. It was from this moment that the concept of advertisement started taking shape. Advertisement gradually started evolving in different forms in different parts of the world. Lost and found advertising on papyrus was commonly found in Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece. Wall or rock painting for commercial advertising is another form of ancient advertising that can be traced back to Indian rock art paintings that date back to 4000 BC. In the Middle Ages, the proprietors started selling their fruits & vegetables using street callers (town criers) to help the customers know about what all do they have for selling. Gradually as education became an apparent need and reading as well as printing developed, advertising expanded to include handbills. The first advertisement printed in English was a handbill printed in 1472.Two hundred years later, the first newspaper ad appeared in an English newspaper. By the 17th century, classified ads were appearing frequently in Englands newsweeklies. These ads featured simple descriptions of products and their prices. The first advertising agency, which was set up by Volney Palmer in Boston in 1841 marked the formal beginning of selling of Ad- Space in newspapers. Initially most of the Ad agencies were mere brokers of Ad- Space in newspapers who sold these Ad- Spaces to the clients who required it for advertising their products. In 1869, N.W. Ayer & Son became the first to open a full-service Ad agency. Illustrations and colour appeared in advertisements in the late 19th century. By now advertisements had become a known concept; it was no longer an untouched idea although it was still in its infant stages of evolution. It was from this point of time that advertisement slowly but steadily started infusing itself into the different quarters of the society and finally became an integral element that affects the society at large and gets affected in return. One

primary reason for the continuous evolution of the concept of advertising to the extent, it has, till now is its effect on society and also the way it gets affected by the various elements of the society. From the time the concept of advertisement started evolving, it started leaving some imprints on the society and moreover the various political, social & economic situations and environment prevailing in the society also started influencing advertisements in quite a considerable manner.Now, if one notices, there have been drastic changes in the political, economic & social picture of the world at large. The tastes, preferences and expectations of the customers have changed a lot from the time of evolution of advertising. With every major event that has taken place on global platform on the political and economic front in the last century or two, the evolution of advertising got shaped in some way or the other. Before the advent of the 20th century, the face of the society on global as well as local scale was completely different. Commercialisation during this phase was very bleak. People basically were dependent on word of mouth and promotional literature that was at their disposal in the form of newspapers, handbills, etc. During this period, the consumers did not expect anything more than mere information about the goods & services from the advertisements. Thus the advertisements used to be merely informative during this period. Since it was the amateur phase of evolution for advertising, the level of saturation in the field of advertising was not even in the picture. Anyone giving any advertisement in any way, as far as it served the purpose of informing the prospective customers about the products was considered to be a good advertisement. But gradually, with the emergence of more brands and competitors into the market, merely information-based advertising started becoming a monotonous practice. The arrival of the 20th century on the global calendar marked the beginning of the commencement of drastic and rapid social restructuring and serious changes on economic & political front. The global politics was experiencing a very unhealthy situation at this point of time with a World War on the cards in all probability. Situations became worse and the globe had to finally witness the First World War (1914-1919). World War I changed the entire picture of demand & supply of goods & services. Defence goods and war equipments emerged out to be at the top of the priority list for most of the nations round the world as everyone wanted to defend themselves and conquer others to serve their own interests. This resulted in a sudden glut in the demand for consumer goods in the market. After the war came to an end, industries had closed down, factories were locked-up and the market for consumer goods was in state of serious deprecation. This splurged up the need for a complete restructuring of the concept of advertising with its focus shifting from being informative to being attractive. Since after the World War the world economy had crashed and the consumer goods industries were trying to take a re-birth after all the destruction that happened, they had to ensure that they publicised and marketed their products in such a way that the masses got tempted to buy them. Moreover, people did not have money to spend due to the intense financial crisis caused because of the war. The final nail in the coffin was the Great Depression of 1929 that devastated the world economy like never before and the commercial and financial sector was globally left in turmoil. All this seriously damaged the trade & commerce sector and thus the market was in dire need of a structural makeover by changing the market orientation from defence goods to consumer goods and it also required that the people or the masses at large were motivated and tempted to such an extent that they were in a way forced to buy out products so that the market could get some incentive to re-emerge

and stand-up. And all this was possible only with the restructured evolution of the concept of advertising with its focus changing from being informative to being attractive. For the next 20 years or so, advertising followed a steady path of growth and evolution with new media like radio broadcasting coming to the forefront. During this period, radio channels started emerging and with it sponsorship emerged as a mode of advertisement. The radio channels used to broadcast sponsored programmes wherein they used to publicise the brand or product during the programme that has sponsored the programme. This and a few more strategies and modes of advertising emerged with a view to make advertisements attractive so as to tempt the masses. The tastes and preferences of the people had changed a lot by now as compared to the 19th century and the Pre-World War I era and with this changing tastes and preferences of the people and growing competition in the market, even the concept of advertising had evolved a lot by now in its journey from the time of its beginning on papyrus in ancient Greece and Rome to radio broadcasting of sponsored programmes till now, in between being affected by various events that affected the world at large like the World War I and the Great depression along with the structural and cultural changes that took place in the society during this entire period. But soon after this the world again seemed to move towards a major global political crisis and instability leading to the Second World War in the 1940s. This again created a situation similar to the Post- World War I era causing global financial crisis because of World War II and crashing of the markets, industries and locking-up of factories again resulting in a standstill situation in the field of trade, commerce, industries and market except those dealing in goods & services related to defence and war. Post-World War II era marked the initiation of intense, rapid and innovative growth and development of the advertising concept. By now, even television had come to the forefront as a medium and with this the concept of advertising entered a new world of telecasting of audio-visual advertisements. From the Post-World War II era, many new companies and brands started flocking into the market in various sectors and categories of goods & services and thus one could see a tremendous rise in the rate of competition. This further catalysed the need of an innovative and attractive approach towards advertising that could meet the rapidly growing needs and expectations of the market and the commercial sector. Thus slowly the whole advertising concept started moving towards becoming a showmans cup of tea who can present the products or ideas in the most out of the world, attractive and innovative manner so as to present a larger than life image of the product in order to manipulate the people to buy it. As the masses and the society at large started expecting more and more, as they started getting more and more choices and substitutes for a single product; their curiosity regarding the product and their expectations from it started increasing tremendously; this inspired the advertising concept to infuse an element of fake pretentions and representations into the advertisements and it was from this point of time that advertisements actually started affecting the society at large in a considerable manner rather than getting affected by the society itself. Advertisements of various companies and brands started making statements and claims one above the other irrespective of whether these statements and claims were concrete or baseless. More and more graphics and audio-visual designing technology as well as new evolving techniques for animation, graphics and other multimedia solutions started being used to make advertisements look out of the world and extremely attractive in order to woo the prospective customers to buy the products. This practice of false and out of the world

representations started enhancing its wings quite rapidly within the concept of advertising and after sometime it started misleading the masses by making false claims and quoting hypothetical statements that are actually practically impossible. By the last quarter of the 20th century something new started evolving globally which is known as globalisation. Soon, Web space advertising or e- advertising emerged as a new media of advertisement and this marked the beginning of the arrival of advertisements onto the virtual platform; the primary reason of emergence of virtual advertisement was internet becoming rapidly popular in a very short span of time and it becoming a part and parcel of peoples everyday life in the form of a necessity. . The advent of globalisation on the global arena further catalysed the growth of advertising industry and with showmanship and attraction becoming the primary focus of advertisements a lot of money started flowing into the advertisement industry. With such a huge money flow, advertising industry gradually started getting transformed into a huge commercial industry, but in the process the primary object with which the evolution of advertising concept had started a few centuries back of informing the people about products, somewhere started getting eroded and finally as of today, advertising is no longer about presentation of facts about a product to prospective customers; instead, today it has transformed to only be an attractive out of the world presentation of impractical claims that are only aimed towards manipulating people and convincing them to buy the product. This is having serious adverse consequences at present date. People are being misled by such manipulating and misleading advertisements and they are ending up buying products that do not satisfy them nor do they meet their expectations. Sub- standard products are being marketed in such a way that people are being misled to buy such sub- standard products. All these consequences are against ethical corporate and commercial practices. Moreover, it is also leading to questioning of the genuineness and reliability of such out of the world advertisements and this gradually leading to loose of faith and trust of people on advertisements at large. Advertising...a phenomena that was adopted by man centuries ago to express and inform people about the goods & services that one had for selling has evolved so much that today it remained nothing more than an out of the world representation of baseless claims and statements that are solely aimed to mislead the people so as to manipulate them to make them buy sub- standard and inappropriate products which ultimately lead to the harassing and suffering of the masses at large.

BY: KAUSHIK DAS SOMNA BHARDWAJ