A Walking Advertisement (Oct. 27th)

    Subsequent to yesterday's class, we watched the documentary on corporations and the manipulations they do to enlarge their profit. While watching the film, Mr.Paterson introduced a company in the UK which allowed sewage to be dumped right into the sea, instead of paying substantial amounts of money to repair their system. As a result, the sea is getting polluted at an alarming rate, and even worse, affecting so many other regions in the vicinity. Obviously, hundreds of people have taken to the streets to protest and express their anger, but changes have not been implemented, and even as we speak the pollution is only escalating. I feel that there is a misunderstanding of the scale of the ocean, because not only the UK, but companies in Japan and various other countries dump a plethora of stuff (majority of the time waste) into the ocean as if it will be diluted and not affect anyone. Occasionally, people who are not interested in protecting the environment will not care about a lot of controversial topics regarding environmental issues, but when it comes down to untreated sewage being thrown into the ocean, I could not imagine a single person who would be unanimous with this idea. Furthermore, it seems like corporations are not only exacerberating environmental issues, but also they are now violating ethical issues that involve children. 

    My father works in the marketing industry, and things go out of style absurdly quick, so they are constantly renewing their methods to persuade their target audience. I do not know the year this documentary was produced but if the advertisement was said to be "sophisticated" back then, I am sure it has developed even more throughout the years. Notwithstanding the continuous evolution, unethical research is not acceptable. The extent corporations go to, in order to accelerate their profit is extremely concerning, almost petrifying. It also angers me that corporations are able to conduct such surveys with the help of parents, but the parents are getting betrayed by having to deal with more annoyance by their child nagging them to buy products. Up until today's class, the perspective of a small child had never come to mind, but manipulating children is probably the easiest out of any form of manipulating we have encountered in class, thus far. On the contrary, the progressiveness of countries like Sweden already banning cms for children, while Japan still advertises tobacco daily, on copious billboards. In health class, we studied about health concerns of smoking, but we only discussed how we could make advertisements more informative on the health effects, but did not talk about completely wiping out tobacco advertisements. Mr.Paterson had told us there are so many countries in the world that do not allow tobacco advertisements which are pretty understandable. In my opinion, I can not entirely agree with banning all children's advertisements because these cms are a form of entertainment to children, and I am not sure how well the products' will sell without any advertisements. Nonetheless, the more I think about it, several demerits rose up in my head. For example, families who can not afford to buy these products children nag for will have an especially hard time with so many effective cms. To end today's blog, one of the most thought-provoking questions Mr.Paterson had asked us was on how we feel about advertising brands for free by wearing their clothing with their logo in it. Never in my life had I contemplated wearing a t-shirt with a logo, for the reason of being a walking, unpaid advertiser. I personally do not mind wearing clothes with brands' names as long as I like the brand, but then come other problems like whether or not the company (or corporation) is ethical, and if I agree with the company's objective.