Why Advertising?

My name is Adrian and I am a public relations major. This will be my third year at San Jose State University and this Spring semester I am taking the last of my prerequisites for my PR major which includes MCOM 63 and PR 99. I had space in my schedule so I decided to take an elective course from the Journalism and Mass Communications department, but why take an advertising course?
We live in a high tech world and advertising has gone to a whole new level in the past years because of social media. This is a reason why advertising excites me because it is ubiquitous on the internet from Facebook ads as well as ads at the beginning of YouTube videos. People may believe that they are not affected by advertisements but they are constantly being advertised to on a daily basis. Another component of advertising that moves me is how some advertisements have subliminal messages or are erotic and how they are targeted predominately at men. Products such as colognes, alcohol and clothes have ads in which they show that if men purchase those products then they will have any woman they want. What disgusts me about advertising is people fall for them, they end up buying the product or service that they see on an ad. I feel people do not think about an advertisement when they see one, they just react emotionally. Overall, I am exited to see what I will learn in this class. There is more than meets the eye about advertisements.


One advertisement that I saw on last years Super Bowl was about Budweiser and I thought it was genius. The reason for the ad being so good is how they used a historic period known as prohibition in which alcoholic beverages were illegal in the United States. In this ad, prohibition is abolished and the first available beer is Budweiser. Well played Budweiser.

 

This ad for a cologne is self explanatory for men. If they buy this cologne they will get what the photo shows. This is a powerful way of making men buy products like these.