is advertising good for society?

John Calfee and Dinyar Godrej face each other on the issue of whether or not advertising is good for society. Calfee says that it is good for society, while Godrej states that it actually is bad for society. I agree more with John Calfee in thinking that advertising is good for society, although Godrej does make a good case on why advertising is not good for society.

Dinyar Godrej states that advertising is bad for society when he states that, “Advertising is a bit of a compulsive liar” he continues to explain this theory of his by stating, “Advertising today has little to do with introducing a new product or describing an existing ones virtues. It has everything to do with images, dreams and emotions, stuff we are evolutionarily programmed to engage with but which is almost without exception in the ad biz fake” (141) While I agree with him in the sense that the marketing business tries to engage consumers and get them to buy their products by appealing to them in a certain angle that guarantees most will buy the product, yet I disagree that marketing isn’t inventing new products. I think that they may be the same idea of a product that was already invented but I think most times the new product has been altered to make it more efficient and better than the products existing in the market that do the same function if not what is the purpose of releasing it to the public if it’s the same thing as what’s already available. Where is the competition in that?

I agree with John Calfee, because although I think that marketing and advertisements do get us to buy products we don’t need, yet it does give us a choice or at least a sense of having a choice. I think that advertising is important to companies to get their product recognized and ultimately bought but also to get potential customers aware that there is a product out there that they want and this is the company selling it. Calfee states, “It routinely provides immense amounts of information that benefits primarily parties other than the advertiser” (131) he continues to state that “the ability to use information to sell products is an incentive to create new information through research. Whether the topic is nutrition, safety, or more mundane matters like how to measure amplifier power, the necessity of achieving credibility with consumers and critics requires much of this research to be placed in the public domain, and that it rest upon some academic credentials” (131-132) Calfee makes a good point that there are ads that are repetitive and useless, however not all of them are. I have seen ads on the television primarily after Haiti’s incident where famous people would advertise on commercials for people to be more prepared no matter where you live. They advertised having water, flash lights and a first aid kit, now this doesn’t always appear on TV or plastered on the streets, however I agree with him that there are useless ads but not all of them are useless.

The last quote that he says in his argument that makes me take his side is when he states, “the unremitting nature of consumer interest in health, and the eagerness of sellers to cater to consumer desires, guarantee that advertising related to health will provide a storehouse of telling observations on the ways in which benefits of advertising extend beyond the interests of advertisers to include the interests of the public at large”(132) I think that this is important, it shows that yes advertisements goal is to get money for the product and those that make it but advertisement can also be beneficial to the consumers. I have seen many ads on the television for Kaiser Permanente; I know that by doing that the company is making money by potentially getting new clients/new patients however they company is also doing good for the consumers by telling them how to get a hold of them and where they are located. Same goes for Walgreens, I have seen all over the place ads to go get the flu shot there, it’s good for them because brings them customers but does a service to the community to get shots locally and cheaper or even free. I see the points that both arguments are making however I have to agree more with John Calfee in the fact that advertisement does more good than bad.