Today, I read the paragraphs 1-8 of the unit 6, which talk about advertising claims.
At the beginning of para.1, the author points out that many people have immunity to advertising because they think advertising is dumb, a bunch of lies and only the masses of the less sophisticated people are influenced by such childish commercial tool. They also think their own purchases are made purely on the basis of value and desire, as some advertisements are misleading, the quality of good is so exaggerated that customers are lured into buying things they don not need or purchasing goods not worth the money. In this paragraph, the word of “CONSumerland” is worthy understanding, which refers to an amusing term used to describe the consumer society. The phrase “inhabitant of consumerland” means the consumers. By the way, I pay attention to “naïve”. Why the writer uses the word to describe these people?
With a doubt, I continue to read the para.2, which gives me an answer. Indeed, advertises know better. Nowadays, no one can avoid being greatly influenced by ads. There are ads everywhere---on TV, over the radio, in the street, or even on your clothes. Although few people admit to being greatly influenced by ads and pay no attention to it, it actually works. Surveys and sales figures show that a well-designed campaign has dramatic effects. However, I am bewildered by the last sentence. Turning to the dictionary and reference books for help, I know the new word of “belittle”---which makes up with two independent words “be” and “little”---stands for making something or someone seem unimportant or of little value. And the phrase “all but” in the sentence means “all except”.
The reason is giving in the next paragraph. A person unaware of advertising’s influence on him is precisely the one most vulnerable to the AdMan’s attack and is rendered defenseless by its belief that there is no attack taking place. In order to persuade consumers to buy their product, adman uses technique in ads---advertising claim, which is one of the simplest way.
The cons of advertising are that most ads fall into the category of neither downright lies nor helpful consumer information. They balance on the narrow line between truth and falsehood by a careful choice of words. What a pity, only a few are honest statements about a truly superior product. Why so many ads claims fall into the category of false information? They are applied to parity products, those in which all or most of the brands available are nearby identical. Since no one superior product exists, and someone may feel quite at a loss with so many choices before them, the adman creates the illusion of superiority to sell his products to the public and bring more profit to the business company.
From the para.6 to 8, the author analyses two basic roles of advertising –claim. The first one involves the Alice-in-Wonderland use of the words “better” and “best”---hence reference is made to this children’s book because it is full of words which have absurd meaning . The uses of “better” for “best” and “best” for “equal to” is equally absurd.
The sentence of “Bing could not have said that minute maid is ‘better them any other orange juice’ bothers me. I read it several times and then understand the grammatical structure. It is a suppositional mood and omitting the sentence of virtual condition---even if he had wanted to.
The second rule of advertising-claim is simply that if any product is truly superior, the ad will say so very clearly and will offer some kind of convincing evidence of the superiority. The expression of “the competition” is used to refer to the goods that a rival company selling.
This is my understanding of this part of the essay.
