There is a dark side of advertising, and it has damaging effects on public health, a speaker at the Polytechnic campus said Thursday night.
Jean Kilbourne, an award-winning traveling lecturer, said her presentation, “Deadly Persuasion: Advertising and Addiction” is about breaking free from manipulation and censorship in the world of advertising.
The first step is recognizing the power advertisers hold, she said.
“Advertising does influence us, whether we’re conscious of it or not,” she said, adding that the average American sees more than 3,000 advertisements each day.
“Babies at six months can recognize logos,” she said. “You can’t grow up in America and not be influenced by advertising.”
For example, tobacco companies target children as they grow because the need for cigarette consumers increases as the smoking-related fatalities pile up, she said.
“The tobacco industry has to get 3,000 children to start smoking every day simply to replace those smokers who die or quit,” she said. The companies try to reach out to these children by featuring young, attractive people in their advertising campaigns, she said.
Kilbourne said tobacco companies deny that their campaigns encourage smoking, which is even more dangerous for consumers. The companies spend $15 billion annually on advertisements, she said, yet claim the ads merely promote their brand and not the actual act of smoking.
Advertisers also often exploit women, she said.
Through airbrushing and photo editing, women in advertisements are made to appear flawless, particularly through weight modification.
“Our girls are taught to aspire to become nothing,” Kilbourne said, referring to common body image insecurities and formative self-esteem issues.
Women are often turned into objects in advertisements, Kilbourne said, pointing out a photo of a woman having the body of a Michelob beer bottle.
Kilbourne doesn’t blame the advertisements for domestic violence, but she said often the first step to justifying this violence is through objectifying the victim, as the Michelob advertisement does.
Alcohol advertisers sell fantasies especially to college audiences, she said, through glamorizing drunkenness and giving alcohol prominence in places that are often important to students, like the music and sports industries.
The addictions these advertisements encourage can be fatal, Kilbourne said.
“On an average day, four college students die of alcohol-related causes,” she said.
Most of all, people should realize the way advertisers manipulate the public, she said.
“We are the product,” she said. “We are brought to the sponsors by the program,” not the other way around.
Steps to curbing addiction include seeking treatment, but more importantly, working on prevention — such as teaching media literacy in schools and encouraging critical thinking about advertising at a young age.
Company advertising strategies will shift when the flow of money changes, she said.
“Put your money where your values are,” Kilbourne said, encouraging the audience to make purchases from companies that don’t use images or themes that exploit consumers.
“Public health issues can only be solved by changing the environment,” she said.
Jenna Stern, a nutrition junior, said she thinks there’s a reason Kilbourne is a top speaker on college campuses.
“She brought to light a lot of the issues I only suspected were going on within advertising,” she said. “Her presentation was really enlightening.”
Reach the reporter at jessica.testa@asu.edu.
