Is Our Friendship Influenced by Discriminative Marketing Advertising?

Is our friendship influenced by discriminative marketing advertising?

Advertising is the most used promotional tool, part of the the marketing mix, that companies

use to improve brand image in order to gain distribution and create goodwill for the company.

Using creativity, advertisers try to bring together consumer goods or services and a representation

of the culturally constituted world, within the frame of a particular ad, which is in the end sending a

message. Through advertising you show to the public what you want to express, what you want

others to perceive. “You can tell the ideas of a nation by its advertisements”(Norman Douglas)

Usually, companies invest huge amounts of money in advertising or advertising campaigns

and sometimes face difficult situations, mainly because the properties desired for the ads do not

reside in the culture of that specific country/region. The message they send must be meaningful in

terms of experience of people, it must be appealing to the desires and ambitions of the targeted

audience and it should not offend sensitivity. But it should be also noted that body motions are

interpreted differently among cultures and countries legislations are different between them.

Nowadays, as we are living in a “fast forward era”, companies confront also to the fast spread of

bad or inappropriate advertising. Using internet, socializing networking sites like Facebook, Twitter,

My Space, blogs and websites, people interact much easier, they share opinions, criticize, make

suggestions, Friends get more easily connected in the virtual space, they share experiences and

become communicators of what they see, perceive or what they listen to. By living in an era of free

communication and unlimited access to information, people can influence others and get influenced

by others.

In different countries, some ads can be considered of not good taste, too direct, meaningless

or discriminative. People living there, because of the cultural background differences and social

influences, will translate the message of the ad in their own cognition. For instance, Koreans rely

more on word of mouth