Advertisements for and against Advertising

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Host: Welcome to the Hana Discussion Club. Advertising can help us learn about products and find good deals. At the same time, however, many people worry about its negative effects. Today we are going to discuss the pros and cons of advertising. In particular, each speaker will use an advertisement to make his or her point.

Do You Know What Brought the Price Down?

Calculators before the mid 1960s Over $2,000

Calculators after the mid 1980s Under $20

Yes, Advertising Did It!

Minsu: Advertising can bring prices down. For example, when calculators started to be advertised, people started to buy them. As more calculators were sold, more were produced. As more were produced, the cost of producing them came down. And because advertising created competition, their quality went up. Advertising helped make it happen — just as it has for many other products.

Sumi: I know what you mean, but I don’t think advertising saves us money. Actually, it makes us spend more money. Several persons were picked for a blind taste test for ketchup. They tasted some different brands of ketchup which were not labeled. The people could not taste much difference between the brands. But in brand-labeled tests on the following day, the people preferred one brand above the others. Of course, brands cost us more money.

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Jina: You have a point, but advertisements help us, too. Readers pay for magazines, but advertisers pay more than readers do. What advertisers pay makes magazines a lot cheaper for readers to buy. Without advertising, magazines would cost twice as much as they do now. Likewise, without advertising, we would have to pay five times more for newspapers. In addition, TV and radio are almost free to the public because of advertising.

Daeho: We need to remember the purpose of advertising. Advertising encourages consumers to buy more products than they need. For example, you might not think of buying a new car, but after you see a new model in an advertisement, you might want to buy it. If you buy it, you spend a lot of money and you might get into financial trouble. Furthermore, the more unnecessary products, the more waste and that waste fills junkyards.

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Sejun: It is often thought that advertising tells us what to buy. However, do you really think that advertising makes people buy things they don’t need? If your house is full of books you don’t read, TVs you don’t watch, or beds you don’t use, is this because of advertising? The answer is almost always no. The choice is yours; you decide whether or not you want to buy something.

Sora: That might be true, but I thought of another way that advertising can hurt us. The beauty industry makes beautiful women appear as models in its advertisements. The beautiful women send the message: If you use this brand, you’ll be beautiful, too. Advertising has created impossible beauty standards. One supermodel said, “Not even I look as good as the pictures of me in advertisements.” Advertisers use computers to make the pictures of models look more attractive. The real harm of the beauty standards in advertising is that they are unreachable.

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Host: I appreciate all the excellent posters and opinions. Which side do you think is stronger? I think you have already picked the winner in your mind. Thank you very much for joining the discussion.