When it comes to unit six, it can be seen clearly from the title that this text is mainly about advertising. So, there is a question rising in my mind: what is advertising claim? After reading paragraph one to paragraph eight, I quickly find the answer. Here, the “claim” is the verbal or print part of an ad that makes some assertion of superiority for the product being advertised.
Having known what the title refers to, I continue to read. In the first line of paragraph one, the author mentions “immunity to advertising”. I guess that it implicates [that]people usually think that the temptation of advertisement can be resisted. However, the advertisers hold different opinion. They know that a well-designed advertising work [works]bellow the level of conscious awareness and even works on those who claim immunity to its message. In this part, I agree to the author’s opinion. To some degree, we resist the ads. It makes us feel boring. However, actually, we can not refuse the attraction of advertisement. At the most time, it is an important standard of measuring a product’s value. Then, the phrase “inhabitants of consumer land” in the next sentence attracts me. It seems that the word “consumer land” is an amusing term used to describe the consumer society. The phrase “inhabitants of consumer land” just refers to consumers.
In the third paragraph, the sentence “a person unaware of advertising’s influence on him is precisely the one most vulnerable to the adman’s attack”interests me. Here, “attack” means “a vigorous attempt to persuade consumers to buy their products”. And the whole sentence can be understood that those people who do not conscious [realize]the influence of advertising usually first attracted by the ads. In this passage, I think the sentence “…for such an audience is rendered defenseless by its belief that there is no attack taking place” is difficult for me to understand. In the rest part of paragraph three, the author tells us the purpose of studying ads and the best method of studying[,] in order to raise the topic of advertising claim. Most ads balance on the narrow line between truth and falsehood by a careful choice of words because of “parity products”. My understanding is that so many brands are almost the same in the market. If the product wants to surpass others, it must depend on advertising. Only these exaggeration [exaggerated]and illusion [illusive]ads can create advantages. It is an inevitable tendency. Turning to “parity claims”, the first rule is use [the use of]“better” and “best” [which]with abused meaning. In the “parity claims”, ”better” means “best” but “best” only means “equal to”. In this paragraph the phrase, “something other than competing brands” means something that is not in that product category. Then, in paragraph seven, the author tells us the second rule is that if any product is really better than other one, the ad will say clearly and will offer some kind of convincing evidence of the superiority. The expression “the competition” is used to refer to the goods that a rival company is selling.
In paragraph eight, there are only two sentences. To create the necessity [necessary]illusion of superiority, advertisers usually resort to the six basic techniques. I guess it is a transition passage, which can connect the whole text well.
This is my understanding from paragraph one to paragraph eight.
