Patterns & Metaphors
Advertising
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Advertising is a means of presenting information about the qualities of commodies and services for the purpose of selling them by creating a demand. It can also be the dissemination of information about a person, organization or work of literature or art in order to create popularity. Advertising is useful to the extent that it informs the market of a variety of products, services, and events, thus enabling people to make a choice and take advantage of the competition in prices that advertising helps engender. But it is also a manipulative means of information, often mendacious in its urge to enhance the attractiveness of its subject. Apart from having purely economic objectives,it can also be used to shape the public politically and ideologically. It can mold the needs and living standard of a given society and is thus a potential weapon in the hands of power. The advertising media which are in the hands of monopolies help impose superfluous needs and implant standards of 'mass culture'. It has become a powerful means of ideologically influencing the public during election campaigns, sometimes foisting on the public political figures who suit the monied establishment.
