Is Advertising Good for Society?

This week we were asked about advertising and if it is good or bad for society. This was a tough question to answer because there are so many different forms of advertising and also both sides of the argument have legitimate reasons for why advertising is good or bad. After thinking about how advertising has affected me I came to the conclusion that advertising is good for society. The reason I say advertising is good is because it informs us of what products, businesses, places, technology and other things that the world has to offer us. For example, when the iPhone first came out there were a ton of commercials about it letting us know of its capabilities and how the technology of phones has changed forever. If it wasn't for advertising the iPhone wouldn't have been able to be successful as it is know and because competitors wouldn't have known about it either they wouldn't have been pushed to make a similar or better product. By having advertising in our society it creates competition between businesses and brands. When a certain company advertises their new latest and greatest product, competitors will see this and start on building or marketing a new product that will be similar if not better so that they do not fall behind. With businesses going back and forth like this trying to make the products they have even better it helps grow the world to be even better than it already is. The majority of things we see and use today would have never came about if it wasn't for advertisement because businesses would have never strived to make better products since they wouldn't know about competitors and their products. Advertisements do get us to buy products we don’t need, but at the same time it does give us a choice or at least a sense of having a choice. Advertising is essential for businesses because it helps get there products recognized and bought buy consumers, which in turn means more money flow and a better economy. Advertising helps people to spend their money on goods and products which then helps business to pay their employees who then go back out and spend it on goods and services. It is a never ending cycle and advertising is at the center of it all. Without advertisements people wouldn't know what to spend their money on and if you thought the economy is bad now just think if there were no commercials. Money flow would be stagnant and businesses would fall apart and eventually the economy wouldn't even exist!!!(little over the top, but you get the point). Because we as a society rely on T.V. and other media outlets so much that if there was no advertising at all we would be completely lost. As you can see from the examples above advertising is essential for our society and we cannot live without it.