Food For Thought

We always have been in a situation where we often crave for food after a busy day. Because most of us don't really have time to make food, they turn to fast foods. Food is no exception since it's a satisfaction for our tummy. Ever since 1997, the Food industry in the United Sates have spent about $7 billion while the US Dept. of Agriculture spent only $330 million. The fast food industry alone have spent over $4 billion a year in advertising. Why alone? Because Advertising Agencies can’t make money on government agencies.

 

As you may have noticed, 50% of ads on televisions are food ads, mostly on children's shows. These ads are overpowered by unhealthy food products (34% for candy and snacks, 28% for cereal, 10% for fast food, 4% for dairy products, 1% for fruit juices, and 0% for fruits or vegetables). 

Because of this, children are almost never been exposed to public service announcements or advertising for healthier foods. No matter how great and appetizing these advertisements appear, there are some negative reaction to it. Mostly due to the growing obesity rate. People often blame the company for the cause. That's when there's campaign about banning junk food advertisements.

If promoting junk food becomes prohibited, the company will be doomed for the lack of marketing. Yes, raising awareness for healthy choices is a great way to lower the obesity rate. But why banning the ads?

This is much better than the banning campaign.

 I don't understand why people blame the advertisement for being the cause of the growing obesity rate. It's the individual's fault for their choice to make themselves and other's have an unhealthy diet.

People just need to be more responsible with their diet.

Just hit treadmill or make salad or something instead of blaming or suing the advertising/food company. Gosh..

The Power of Photoshopping

There are a lot of times where photos are needed to be photoshopped in order to make the ad look more appealing and attractive to the eye of the audience. When it comes to having food that are stuck between the model's teeth, dust on foods, or a food stain on clothing, that is when photoshop are strongly needed to fix this mishap.

However, photoshopping can create a powerful effect on the ad and their audience because it can sometime create misleading images that fits their expectation until they see the actual product.

Such as in food advertisements, the burger make look very fresh and appetizing. And I gotta admit, they look very attractive. While waiting in line for my burger, I was expecting my burger to look like this.

As I open my box of burger, this is what I get..

Upsetting isn't it? I'm telling you, photoshop is a very powerful tool in the marketing industry.

It's even worse when it comes to body and fashion in the Fashion Industry. Since we live in a society that is really crazy over beauty and body images, photoshopped images alters the self-conscious audience's perception of reality. That's when the abuse begins.

Like Lorde for example, the photoshopping upset the young singer as she feels she isn't herself in the airbrushed picture that she posted on her Twitter account.

It's even worse on many fashion advertisements. When I was a kid, I used to think all women have flat stomachs and no belly fat folds all thanks to those photoshopped images I've seen on many forms of medias.

Check out these before and after photoshop comparisons. 

Because of how much abuse photoshop does to alter the reality of body images, it angers a lot of people. That's when, you'll see some campaign like this.

I am not saying that photoshopping is bad for marketing. If used right, it can create some humour or optical illusions just for laughs for the audience. Like these Colgate campaign I found. At first glance, I only notice the food that are stuck between the teeth until a few second later, I noticed an intentional photoshop mishap.

 Now that's more like it!

Before I wrap up this second blog post of mine, sit back and enjoy watching this video! :)

When Advertisements Goes Too Far

Marketers tried their best to make an advertisement that has to be as powerful as possible in order to get their message across to their target audience. However, they sometime cross the line to the point of having the ad banned by the government, company e.t.c due to the created explosions of arguments or negative reactions caused by the content of the ad no matter the portrayal is. Most of these controversial ads have their own reasons to why such an intimidating ad that involves with explicit themes and sensitive subject has be made. It is understandable why ads like this has to be made in order to make it memorable enough for their audience as well as portraying their intended purpose.

Some controversial ads are clever and hilarious despite the negative reaction they give off.

Some have beautiful, emotional, and artistic way of portraying messages but still in a controversial manner.

Even though the image does not seem so explicitly shocking, the words do.

Ok that's a "little bit" too far....

People can be quite sensitive to certain subjects most commonly, themes that has something to do with sex, political and religion. That was when the ad gets banned so that the audience won't get to hurt by the context of the portraying message. However, some ad does not necessarily need to be banned from the eye of the audience due to how light and not very well explicit it is.

Young children are the major concern for the audience. All because they want to preserve the children's innocence. However, no matter who the audience is, the message needs to be conveyed anyway because the world is full of dark secrets that no one is able to accept. That's why the need for controversial ads is made necessary to reveal the true color of our world.