Advertising: The Unconscious Influencer

Nike ad provided by graphics.technoezine.com

After reading Jean Kilbourne's article titled "Jesus is a Brand of Jeans", it became clear to me that advertisements promote a false sense of feelings in the consumers that they try to target. Whether it be a fashion magazine advertisement making women feel that they need a certain brand of clothes to feel beautiful or the ad to the right that sends the message that Nike clothing makes men athletes "invincible", they are all around us and all corrupting us. These type of photos are bombarded toward us everywhere we look all of the time and most of the time we do not know that the ad has affected us. A lot of male athletes will look at this advertisement and be fully convinced that they are not influenced by it, however Nike is one of the biggest sportswear producers in the world. We are unconsciously being swayed by these ads whether we like it or not. As Kilbourne describes in her article, very rarely are ads like this actually consciously noticed, but as they slowly make their logos and motos familiar to our eyes we will go to this product when we go shopping for athletic clothing. So technically speaking, these ads don't even need the ridiculous idea that Nike clothing makes you "invincible" but that term helps sway people away from competitors like Addidas and Champion and many others. Overall, this ad is a typical form of lie that we are exposed to everyday and consumers must start learning that they need to stop giving into this effective form of advertising and start making conscious decisions on what they want to purchase.