Advertising And Culture

Advertising has become an important part in human life. Everyone living and working in the modern world is under the influence of advertising.Advertising is not only a carrier of information, but also an important part of culture. From the history of advertising and through the study of abundant advertisements, the present author finds that advertising is one of the most active and potent elements in culture and is closely related to, or even intertwined with other parts of culture.The author manages to discover and demonstrate the latent relationship between advertising and culture through solid theories and abundant examples acquired from books and periodicals of various ages. Chapter I is the introduction, which is devoted to the definition and brief history of advertising. Chapter II discusses the way in which advertising transmits cultural meaning. Chapter III argues that advertising is a mirror of culture and demonstrates that advertising reflects culture in the following aspects: historical backgrounds, values, attitudes, rituals, ethics, literature and art. Chapter IV talks over the impact that advertising exerts on culture and asserts that advertising is a promotion of changes of values, a stimulus to human needs, a motive force of living standards and a creator of social trends.Sociologists and common people hold pessimistic attitudes towards Americans' marriages and families. From the 1960s on, divorce rate has been sharply rising and an increasing number of single-parent families have appeared in American society. It is said that traditional family ethics have already been discarded by most Americans. But, after analyzing a great number of American modern advertisements, the present author argues thatthis may not necessarily be the case. Americans still cherish love for children, and they are looking forward to the stability of marriage and happiness of family lives. Or at least they are pondering over the problems as the results of having been deviating from traditional family ethics. After all, advertising is a mirror of ethics, which reflects the inner world of people and their ideals as well, and more often than not, when people are not aware. Experts on advertising assert that values are cultural bedrock and advertising has to be consistent with, but cannot easily or quickly change values. However, the present author finds that advertising does help change people's values at an unexpected rate through the study of the American society in the early 1920s. Under the great influence of advertising, Americans shifted from the austere values of the 19th century life to new "consumer ethic" and then to hedonism within only a few decades. The impact of advertising is much greater than people assume it to be.