Reference Desk
Advertising is a long way from its humble beginnings. Advertising today is a multi-billion global industry with advertising giants monopolizing the advertising landscape. The early years of advertising saw such products as early electrical appliances, pesticides and farmlands for sale due to financial reverses. But today, there is one big difference. Most of the advertising we see today engages in so-called “semi-truths” that substantially deviate from the code of ethics formulated by industry practitioners and consumer protection laws passed by the government. In fact, it is very hard to distinguish today the real score in an advertising message. But the most likely possibility is that what consumers usually get are not half-truths which certainly violate existing statutes on consumer deception and unfair trade practices but a nice euphemism called as “semi-truths”. Purists might say they are the same thing but a substantial difference exists. It is as if someone said that trans-fat is used in the ingredients of most fast food items but neglected to say it can cause heart disease and high blood pressure because of the bad cholesterol.
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If you watched TV and saw that commercial, you can certainly spot what I am saying as ethical violations of the industry’s ethical standards. Clear examples here are ads targeted towards children and young adults and you wonder you they arrived at that concept without any qualms. These ads very often have subliminal messages that target vulnerable and impressionable young minds. Media experts always say that advertising is management of perceptions. This just simply says that advertising may not necessarily be saying the truth about a product or a service but is trying to project a certain image (perception if you will). Fortunately for those who want to learn more about the industry such as consumer advocacy groups, there are help desks that offer relevant information for them to research on. The help desk has many resource sites that cover almost all topics related to advertising such as its history, early practices, laws and regulations, ethical standards and job openings. There is even a new field of study called semiotics that is now applied to advertising. This is more conveniently divided into three core areas of study which are semantics, syntactic and pragmatics. Proponents study signs and symbols and how they are used to construct a logical meaning and the way these are understood by humans like cultural evolution.
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