Controversial Television Advertising

CONTROVERCIAL TELEVISION ADVERTISING

Today's advertising companies represent themselves and their product to society with the use of sex, drugs and alcohol potentially posing a thereat to innocent adolescent minds. All over the world people watch television for purposes of education, entertainment and to alleviate boredom. So as you can tell it's a part of our daily lives. What's to be done when during a break form your favorite TV show you see a commercial about a man who needs to use sexual enhancement drugs so that he has more confidence in himself or a women's exposed breasts during half time at a foot ball game on national television.

Sports icons and entertainers have become a critical part of today's advertising companies marketing strategy. Often, they promote products using profanity, drug abuse and sex in more ways than one. By exploiting famous people in day time television advertisements the target market has expanded to cover all ages, not just adult audiences. Everyone looks up to these people on a daily basis, Whether it be a young boy who watches football to improve his game or a young girl who watches her favorite pop star dance to her favorite song.

The most popular TV shows out there today are posing a major threat to today's youth. NBC's channel four has aired a new show called Nip Tuck, a show that graphically depicts sex, plastic surgery and illegal drug-taking at 9pm every Tuesday (Simms, Jane (3/18/04) Double Standards: Marketing (UK).) This type of advertising on television has gone unpunished for many years and has only grown stronger with each viewer, only opening the door for other shows like Sex in the City where women make oral sex a part of their daily routine a big hit in the television industry.

Day time television is not the only place where you can find this type of controversial advertising. In 2004, the Super Bowl was a very exciting and anticipated event. Today it is remembered as the year Janet Jackson lost her top and the many commercials that caught the attention of millions of viewers all over the world that consisted of CBS's lineup featuring a dog biting a man's crotch, a football player with toilet paper stuck to his be hind, a flatulent Clydesdale, and a special spot for erectile-dysfunction drugs aired that day. (Bechtel, Mark (2/7/2005) Sunday Best: Sports Illustrated Vol.102.)

The tobacco industry is also another one of the major companies that promote a product to the wrong audience.

One Campaign in particular, in the city of Quebec called the De Facto campaign showed a teenage girl lighting up a cigarette. This ad became the cause of 475,000 Canadian youth ages 10-19 become contributors to the profits of the tobacco industry. (Kucharsky, Danny (5/3/2004) Clearing the Smoke: Marketing Magazine; Vol.109.)

In an effort to stop this type of campaigning, a rarely seen but captivating ad showed a plane crashing into the World Trade Center, gassing victims in Kurdistan, and the mushroom cloud at Hiroshima with a counter giving the death toll of each. Following is a statement that tobacco industry products have caused over five million deaths per year, far more than these tragedies. This ad was praised by non-smoking groups, but the campaign was attacked by the tobacco industry, who threatened legal action only proving the campaign was a success. (Kucharsky, Danny (5/3/2004) Clearing the Smoke: Marketing Magazine; Vol.109.)

Civil engineers are portrayed as sexual objects, murderers and corrupted Officials In many television programs today. Here are some examples of the indecent portrayal of your most respected officials.

Imagine walking into your doctor's office for a routine visit; you sit down to watch the television in the waiting room and a commercial comes on that depicts Nurses as sexual objects.

In the 2004 Issue of Marketing magazine an article called "Nurses Nightmare" focused on a controversial television spot by Vancouver's Rethink Inc. that degraded nurses with sexual exploitation sending the wrong message to the public. (Marketing Magazine (10/18/2004) Nurse's Nightmare': 4/12/2005.)

Also a 2004 Emmy award winning show called the "Shield" portrays police officials as corrupt and immoral. This show pulls in approximately 2.5 million viewers a very good example on young adults. (Friedman, Wayne (1/6/2003) Ð''Shield' second to receive push from FX: Electronic Media; Vol.22.)

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