Advertisements that Lie

There are endless examples of advertisements that just straight up lied. We see them all the time and might not even realize it. They are all around us. In other words, we are lied to every day.
Vitamin water claims it is healthy, but it contains as much sugar as coke. They advertise their product pretending it is something it's not, and people believe it. Many times people do not know enough about something to know if it is true.
Eclipse gum claims it will kill the germs that cause bad breath, when the only thing that comes close to killing germs in your mouth is mouthwash. In fact, no gum can actually kill germs; they can only mask it with a good smell.
Many weight loss-related products leave out the fact that you have to exercise to lose weight. It seems like an obvious thing to consider, but there are people that expect results only by eating the food provided by these programs. The programs do not technically lie, but they make it seem like they require less effort than they actually do. Some people will threaten to sue companies that do not tell the whole truth. These people usually end up losing because companies and advertising firms have lawyers to make sure their advertisements are not breaking any rules or laws, even if they found a way to word something so that it tricks people.
Several car crash test commercials show cars that are secretly reinforced with beams to survive the impact. They claim the cars can survive a certain amount of impact and show a demonstration with enhanced impact survival capabilities. The cars shown in the commercials are not what is sold to the public. This is absolutely false advertising because people do not get what was promised.
One specific example of false advertising is s phone commercial that shows off a Nokia phone's camera. The footage demonstrating the camera's features was not actually filmed with that phone. This advertisement shows two people riding bicycles down the road. The man in the commercial is filming the woman using the new lighting features of the Nokia phone. During the video, the background reveals a reflective surface that the real cameraman can be noticed in. Many viewers noticed this mistake and it went viral, making the Nokia company look extremely insincere. Perhaps they should have filmed the video with a Nokia phone like they advertised they would do. Or at least they should not have made the mistake of accidentally showing the real camera:

Really..???

What does Nokia expect people to say when the camera does not work as well as it does in the commercial?
Perhaps someone bought the phone and threatened to sue. Unfortunately, they probably will not win.
Not enough advertisers get in trouble with the law when they lie in advertisements. Why is this a problem?
When something is not as it was advertised, customers are extremely inconvenienced and possibly wasted a lot of their money. No one should be worried about the fact that the product they bought might not be what was advertised.

Sexualization of Women

It's clear that women are over-sexualized in advertising. There are pictures of women in magazines, in commercials, on billboards, and in internet ads everywhere. There is nothing wrong with most advertisements featuring women. However, there are many that use their sexuality to sell a product. 

Depending on the target audience, the sexualization of women is used in two different ways. If it is an advertisement for perfume or makeup, the target audience is most likely women. In this case, the woman or women featured in an advertisement have the purpose of making viewers want to be like them.

When men are the target audience, women are used in advertisements like objects, especially if their character is victimized in the situation. There could be an advertisement for just about anything that will feature a woman being hypersexualized in some way. This is only to grab the attention of male viewers.

Beautiful women are used to sell products and draw attention to a brand. This is much more prominent in women than it is in men. In advertising, women can be shown as seemingly unintelligent sex objects. Men are surely over-sexualized in media, but it has not caused as much controversy as the situation of women being over-sexualized. This is because the position is much worse for women and it is easier to find advertisements showing women in this way than it is showing men in this way.

Because it could seem like strictly someone's opinion to consider something "sexual," researchers have created a scale to explain how different ads are sexual in different ways. This scale rates photos and models based on the posture, facial expression, camera angle, make-up, activity, and amount of skin shown. The website that explains the scale can be found here:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/social_issues-july-dec13-sexualization_12-21/

Two of the experts included in the creation of this scale, Erin Hatton and Sarah Murnen, analyze images and point out in what ways it is giving off sexual vibes. They found that after years of research the problem of over-sexualizing women in the media has only gotten worse.  “We’ve seen three trends associated with these images,” Sarah Murnen stated, “It’s now common to see more parts of the body exposed. There is more emphasis on the size of women’s breasts. And easy access to all these images has made it all more acceptable to us.”

It's one thing for an ad shows a woman wearing a swimsuit and the ad is for swimsuits. It's another thing when an ad has a woman wearing a swimsuit and the ad is for a cheeseburger. 

It is obviously unnecessary for companies to show women in this way, it is sexist and wrong.

It's easy to see this is a real problem because there are some companies that have such sexist advertisements, it has caused an outrage. For example: almost every single advertisement for Hardee's (a fast food restaurant) contains sexualization of women. It is effortless to find a sexist Hardee's ad because all of them are this way. In fact, all one has to Google search is "Hardee's advertisement" and the results clearly prove my point:

This company has become known for these types of advertisements and it has become their reputation. A company should build their reputation on of something that doesn't degrade women and display them as only sex objects. No company's marketing should be at a point where every single advertisement could be considered sexist. Hardee's, and many other companies, should make themselves known through their food and find other ways to draw customers in that doesn't involve advertising half-naked women.

Racism in Advertising

One serious problem in marketing is racism. Many races and cultures have been victimized by this. It may be something simple that offends people, or it may be an advertisement that was intentionally being racist to draw attention. 

Most advertisements that are considered racist feature a culture, race, or nationality being degraded or considered inferior somehow. It also is racist when advertisements give in to the stereotypes that have labeled certain cultures or races. Some advertisements take racial stereotypes and amplify them to a point where it is extremely offensive.

Most of the extremely racist advertisements released in the United States were released during the Golden Age of advertising and are now considered vintage. Although much of the problem has disappeared, it is still something that exists today, just in smaller ways. It is not a problem that is as noticeable as it was during the mid-1900s. But, perhaps it is time the problem disappears completely. There is no need to be racist and no one benefits from racism. There are many ways to advertise and capture viewer's attention that doesn't involve degrading a race or culture.

It seems many people find things offensive that mostly involves race, as opposed to simply culture or nationality. There are some people that see racism when it isn't there, but some modern advertisements are very clearly racist such as this one:

And then there are some that are questionable like this one:

Perhaps advertisements like this one are not trying to be racist, but it is just a coincidence. But, maybe it was on purpose. There is no way to truly know.

 There are definitely instances where people are over-sensitive and intentionally try to look for things to complain about. Sometimes people point things out about advertisements that are controversial, such as the cereal boxes above. It is racism? Or are people being absurd about it?

It is possible that many companies are intentionally racist, and some are truly by accident. 

However, when the racism is extremely obvious, someone in the company must have noticed it before it was released and failed to do anything about it. Advertisements that are racist should not be released because no one deserves to be offended so that a company can sell a product.

Offensive Vintage Ads

During the "Golden Age of Advertising," many new advertising techniques were developed that are now considered vintage. This was around the 1950's and 1960's. It was the time that the business of advertising began to become a prominent thing.
Many ads during this time were for household products that portrayed a woman as a housewife and with a working husband. Today, this arrangement is not as common, though it still can be common in advertisements. In this day and age, women are just as present in the workforce and the typical family roles have been reversed in many situations. However, most commercials and ads for household products, especially kitchen and cleaning products, still show only women using and endorsing them. After all this time, the stereotypes still exist.
It is true that some products are made for men and will be advertised by men and some made for women, advertised by women. This is just what makes sense. But, when there are products used by both genders that are only advertised by one, this can confirm a stereotype. Yes there are hobbies that appeal to one gender more than the other, but both genders have to clean their house, so why is it always women in cleaning product commercials?
Cleaning product and household product ads are only one example. Many different gender stereotypes are present in advertising that may not be noticeable unless one is looking for it.
Offensive gender stereotypes were the biggest problem in vintage ads. But, there were huge amounts of racism and body-shaming as well. Many advertisements back then showed programs to help women gain weight so that men wouldn't think they were too skinny. It is ironic that the weight-changing programs today seem to aim towards the opposite result.
All of this racism, sexism, and body-shaing is something I would think would have changed since the "Golden age of advertising." During that time, ethics in advertising was not a big deal and people were not so outspoken as they are today about things offend them. Here are some examples of the types of ads released during this period:

Below are some examples of offensive vintage advertisements. The first two are examples of racist ads. The first is racist towards Native Americans, while the second is racist towards African Americans. The other ads are examples of sexism and body-shaming, as explained in the beginning of this post.
All of these advertisements that were released during this time would never be allowed in modern times. Marketing has improved greatly since this time, although it is still not ethical enough and it's questionable if it will ever improve.

Body Shaming in Ads

People feel insecure enough as it is, they do not need advertisements to make them feel worse. It seems every advertisement shows the same type of body-type. This is why people become so insecure. Society has convinced people that only one type of body is considered attractive, but in reality there are many body-types that can be considered attractive. Many people, especially women, become depressed because they feel so insecure about their bodies. They realize their bodies don't look like all the models in ads. People need to know that they do not have to look like that and that all body-types are beautiful. This is why I believe that body-diversity should become a more prominent thing. If the media became more diverse in body-types, eventually less people would become insecure, depressed, or even suicidal. One company that is a main target for people promoting body-diversity is Victoria's secret. Many body-diversity advocates are outrages that Victoria's secret only advertises with one type of model and has never once hired a plus-size model. They even used the words, "the perfect body" in one of their ads showing an image of ten models with the same body-type:

Why is that considered the "perfect body?" Perhaps that is just one perspective and Victoria's secret should consider showing a variety of bodies. Advertisements featuring clothing tend to display models that only have one body-type. This can cause people to feel terrible about their bodies even if they are perfectly healthy. People need to know that other body-types are beautiful too. No advertisement should display the words "the perfect body" like the Victoria's Secret advertisement.

Not only do advertisements all show the same perception of a "perfect body," they also make it seem shameful to have any other body. There is a serious amount of body-shaming that mostly consists of fat-shaming in advertisements like this one:

This billboard is encouraging people to go vegetarian. Perhaps there is a better way to get this point across that doesn't involve fat-shaming. It clearly is comparing overweight people to whales and it is not only rude, but a ridiculously unrealistic comparison. No human being should be compared to a 420,000 lb animal. Maybe becoming a vegetarian would help people lose weight, and there are people that need to lose weight for medical reasons and this could help them. However, I do believe this message could have been expressed in different ways. Anyone with a body-type similar to the one on this billboard must have been extremely offended because it is just wrong.

People should be able to look at advertisements without feeling bad about their bodies. Ads should feature a variety of body-types and not consider only one as perfect.

There is a Problem

Most people have noticed, at this point in their life, that there is a problem in advertising. The problem involves ethics. Why are there advertisements out there that are offensive? Why haven't we moved past offensive advertising as a society? Why are companies getting away with advertisement that are not telling the truth?
People should not have to fear advertisements or feel like a target. It's one thing for ad agencies to target an audience they know will buy their product, it's another thing to degrade part of an audience.
This occurs especially in commercials. Commercials have actors that are representing racial, cultural, and gender stereotypes in an extremely offensive way. Ad agencies often mock or make fun of a certain type of person to be humorous. They exaggerate stereotypes more than should be allowed. They do this in order to draw attention to their company. They want people to pay attention to them, look them up online, and invest in them. The only way for a business to become known is to advertise. However, there is a right way to advertise and a wrong way to advertise. The wrong way would be advertising in a way that offends people. Another wrong way is to lie in an advertisement.
The right way to advertise is to find a clean way to inform an audience that is completely honest and ethical.
There is more for ad agencies to lose then there is to gain from offending people. Even if making an ad offensive draws attention, it is wrong and there are better ways for a company to make themselves known. Companies that release offensive advertisements succeed in getting the attention they desired. But, most of that attention is going to be extremely negative because people become outraged. Because of this negative attention, companies have lost business and income has plummeted. This proves that it is not worth it to release unethical media.
One extremely offensive form of advertising is using a metaphor to spread a sensitive message like this ad:

Although the advertisement had good intentions, people are extremely offended by the use of such a tragic event to send a message about cigarettes.
People that were personally victimized by the events of 911 were probably the most offended.
Sure, cigarettes are bad for you, but there are better ways to get this message across in a equally impactful way. Using a tragic terrorist attack to spread a message is insensitive.
It is important that advertisers learn to be sensitive to issues like this one and consider people's feelings before making such bold statements.