Advertising And Social Norms

587 Words3 Pages
Most advertising encourage conformity to social norms. Every day when I turn on the Television, I see advertisement about the beer, tobacco, weight loss programs and find them very influential to try them. Most of the advertisement encourages conformity to social norms. It persuades American people from following the trend of what others are doing instead of thinking what is right or wrong. Let’s take an example of an advertisement of Bud Light beer. Most of the Americans know that consuming alcohol is harmful for the body yet after looking at certain advertisements about alcohol everybody goes crazy about it. In Bug Light advertisement, the models are shown drinking beer, having good time, the atmosphere is enjoyable, carefree, and looking at that, it is very appealing to try the beer. They show that those models fit in the society so well and after consuming the beer everything goes well. Looking at that, one of my friend realized that drinking is the coolest thing to do. Whenever he went to the clubs, he decided to drink. He looked at the people around him and thought about the advertisement and accepted that only drinking beer with others will make him feel popular. His mind set was that by drinking beer he can make more friends and could fit in with the people in the clubs. These advertisements encouraged that drinking alcohol relieves all the pain and many people do it so we should do it too. However not all the advertisement encourages conformity to social norms. Some of them have no effect on the American people and regardless of what the advertisement is mentioning. They choose not to follow the advertisement or decide to ignore it thinking everyone is ignoring it. For example, there are advertisements which mention “stop smoking or else it will kill you.” The advertisement shows how the person looks like before smoking and after he smokes many cigarettes.

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