Responsibility Fragility and the Possibility of Susceptibility

When was the last time you went anywhere or did anything and didn’t see advertisements? It doesn’t matter what you do – go to the park, watch a movie, play a game, visit a website, go to a football match – you see advertisements. We are exposed to them even when we don’t know it from birth. There’s some strange belief constructed by corporations that the more you see their name or logo, the more likely you are to invest in them. And when the revenue of the U.S. advertising and related services industry in 2013 exceeded 100 billion dollars (Statista.com), you’d have to guess that advertising works.

There is, however, consistent controversy around the ethics behind some of the ads that end up everywhere, and for good reason. I’d like you to imagine something for me. Imagine you’re walking to school one day with your 6-year-old cousin, and look to your left to see a poster with a man lifting a car advertising protein powder, look to your right to see a billboard with women shopping advertising Gucci, and look forward to see televisions showing a grease-covered giant of a man fighting a shark advertising Bruce Willis cologne. You slowly turn around praying there are no outrageous displays. Of course your cousin follows suit, to see an ad for an adventure camp claiming only the manliest can handle it. Your little cousin turns to you and says “I’m going to be strong because I’m a boy!”

We may recognize advertisement exaggeration, but others may not, and the more they are exposed to it, the more something seems to be true. That’s why it’s crucial that advertisers consider who will see their ads and how it will affect them. These companies are gaining more and more power, but as the great line goes, “with great power comes great responsibility”.