Advertisements: do they actually benefit us?

Advertising on a legitimized scale only began in the late 1800s (I think), from this soap company (you expected a more glorious starting right) called Pears Soap. Thomas Barratt decided that he needed to be more aggressive and started launching advertisements and posters featuring cherubic children in birthday suits using the soap which connoted his brand name as being full of purity and being untainted. In my opinion it’s very lame, but surprisingly it worked, and there began the history of modern advertising through symbolism and half naked people. Especially the latter.

To say that advertising is useful towards our wellbeing through the promotion of facts which becomes useful free-for-all public information, is like saying that Hwa Chong Institution advertising itself as the school with the highest SYF awards is correct. The abovementioned is true only because that includes our High School as well as Junior College side. If RI and RJC were to merge (they are going to) they would win us easily in terms of the number of SYF awards. Advertising has a bias, and will always have a bias, because that’s at the core of advertising. Even statistics thrown out, even if we concede that they are not faked or doctored, they are likely to be biased or misrepresentations. My friend once told me that we swallow up to 2 spiders in a week whenever we sleep. Firstly, that is likely to be an averaged out statistic, meaning that everyone has the tendency to swallow a lot more or a lot less spiders when they sleep. However, it is human nature to believe that that holds true for everyone, and become very disgusted and start vomiting.

Secondly, that statistic did not state the socio-economic background of those surveyed. Were they rich or poor? Where were the sleeping, a campsite? Were they even in Singapore, or Africa? There’s a reason why the BMI scale for western countries allows for fatter people than the scale for Asians. It is due to a difference in lifestyle. Global statistics, unless they’re calculated in a vacuum, are usually horribly inaccurate and inapplicable to anyone who is not “average”. But in this world, who truly is?

For my next paragraph, you all can go visit this link to show how funnily destructive competitiveness is: http://americatopten.blogspot.com/2006/12/advertisement-war-bmw-started-it-audi.html

Someone said that there are only three kinds of lies: Lies, damned lies and statistics. After which, someone is supposed to say “There are only three types of people in this world. Those who can count, and those who can’t.” Unfortunately for us, advertising can easily fit all three categories. Do you truly believe Horlicks has as much calcium as 20 cups of milk, gives as much fibre/something else as several plates of spinach, etc? Yes perhaps that might be the whole carton of Horlicks, or even if it was the nutritional value of one cup, there’s no saying of how much of that artificial nutrition is actually absorbed into the body.

Yet we still trust advertising somewhat, because otherwise we wouldn’t be able to buy anything. The small “Terms and Conditions Apply” in the corner is something we brush aside to so the “bigger” and easier picture. So we buy the product.
We’re idiots.