Everywhere you look the world is slowly being covered with advertisements. I wake up every morning and turn on Pandora before I get in the shower. Within the first 15 minutes of waking up, I am exposed to my first ad of the day. While shuffling through a bunch of songs I don’t like on my Pandora playlist, I notice along the bottom of my screen ads for Doritos, Ebay and Netflix. While getting dressed, I realized that today I too was a walking advertisement for Roxy shoes and Coach.
As the day progressed, I drove past the usual restaurant specials on Main Street and heard the same commercials on the radio in the mists of my five minute drive to school. While on campus I didn’t notice many ads because I was so focused on going to class and getting back home. At 2:00 o’clock I returned home and began watching a rerun of the Jersey Shore. I noticed that almost every commercial was targeted towards my age group of 18-24 year old viewers. Commercials for movies, Proactive, tanning salons, beer, and shampoo are what I noticed most on MTV. After catching up on my Jersey Shore episodes, I changed the channel to ABC family. The commercials around 6:00 pm were for Gold Bond, Neutrogena, Tide, fast food and Charmin. Unlike MTV, ABC family is a family network so the target audience is much larger and the commercials are much broader. Towards the end of my night, I went out for a drink with my friends in Reading. Sitting there I noticed behind the bartender was a wall filled with all types of beer and cigarette ads.
I knew that advertisements were a part of my life but I never noticed how much. The significance of a commercial or even seeing a brand can trigger a sale. I realized today that from advisements alone I wanted to go to McDonalds and try their new chicken bites and I have a sudden urge to see The Hunger Games. Advertising is the fuel for the engine of Mass Media Industries and it will continue to have influence on buyer’s decision.
