Ads

This week's topic kind of bothered me as the topic dealt with some sense of racism in advertisements. I remembered the soap advertisements in which blacks and whites are represented as dirty and clean. It really bothered me but I understand it was the advertisement companies' own strategy to attract consumers since at that time most of consumers were composed of middle and upper white classes. One specific advertisement that I remember is that a white nanny cleans of a black baby with a soap and the baby turns into white. This dramatically shows the racism at that time and even overtly presented in the advertisements. However, white consumers would be interested and attracted and eventually buy the goods. So I found out the advertisements actually reflect the social or cultural problems but sometimes in wrong ways. In one of the Korean advertisements which shows not racism but some sense of stereotypes, insurance companies try to appeal people by showing insurance would bring happiness and safety to home. It is actually true that having insurace is better than not having it and it would be safe to have it. However, the ads only reflects only good things so the side effect of insurances in Korean society is never revealed. Vicious people try to take advantage of insurances; they harm themselves or others on the purpose of getting paid by insurance companies. This is actually a serious social problem in Korea. Thus, people should not all believe what ads reflect; they should be aware of the hidden things in the advertisements.