Amy Middleton Loves New York

A few years ago I was at work and having intense chocolate cravings. After a while I realized my status message just happened to read: “Count Choculitis.” I changed it to something banana-related and had no problems the rest of the day (I had bananas with me). I’m that easily influenced.

Or maybe I should say, I’m that easily tempted by something already inline with my values. I’m not so willing to change my values by the power of suggestion; a thousand steak ads would not get me to consider abandoning my vegetarian ways. Maybe this is why most of us think we are immune to the effects of advertising–we don’t pay explicit attention to it and are unwilling to change our minds, values, or behavior to conform to ad messages.

I was disturbed to realize yesterday that even if advertising doesn’t change my values, it changes my perception of what society finds acceptable. For instance, because of ads that hawk them, I believe that most parents think it’s ok to give their kids ridiculous wrongly colored squirty fruit gusher processed snacks. I’ve never EVER talked to parents of grade school children about this, I just assume, based on the existence of the product and its advertising budget, that the message is accepted in our culture.

So if this personal discovery is at all reflective of how other people feel–if we collectively assume things about our culture based on the ads we see–then we really have to divorce ourselves from society in order to stand a chance of being immune to advertising’s influence. This whole time I’ve been thinking advertising doesn’t really change me, but it turns out it changes what I think about you, which is a more powerful influence than this Marketing Communications major had ever given thought to.