Truth about advertisement

Advertising. Defined by the Wikipedia as "the business of drawing public attention to goods and services, and performed through a variety of media." An extremely powerful communication tool capable, as we all know, of making "adult men and women ready to sign documents they do not read, at the behest of salesmen they do not know, binding them to pay for articles they do not want, with money which they do not have."

With the increased range of media available and the proliferation of television channels, radio channels, Internet, newspapers and magazines, advertisements are all over us like never before. Lest you get me wrong, I must clarify that advertisements are important for consumers because they contain critical information that helps consumers decide whether to buy a product or avail a service. So yes, we consumers want advertisements.

But let's face it, if manufacturers of some products spent the same amount of money improving their product that they do on advertising, they wouldn't have to advertise it. But they don't and so some products and services need to be spruced up and repackaged in wonderful words and images, otherwise no one is ever going to buy them. So we do understand that most advertisements, by their nature, will have to be slightly exaggerated. (Remember the famous H.G. Wells quote: "Advertisements are legalised lying"?)

But there is a limit to this lying, isn't it? And it is high time that we recognised collectively that this limit is not being respected.

Is it uncommon to see advertising models wearing a medical professional's white coat telling us how our children need to eat this or drink that? Is it uncommon to see miracle drugs being advertised (cures for cancer and HIV), while the rest of the scientific world is spending millions of dollars trying to find these cures? Is it uncommon to find highly toxic and hazardous substances being advertised as harmless and even child-friendly products?

Self-regulation

Think about