Advertising and Conformity - Sample

Nowadays, people are bombarded with advertisements everywhere - from ads on their way to work to ads on their phones and computers. Meanwhile, there is a sentiment that the overwhelming number of promotions is eroding our individualism, making us buy, use, and wear the same things. This is a sentiment that I generally agree with.

There are a handful of brands that dominate their respective industries and thereby possess an outsized amount of marketing power, leaving consumers with fewer choices. The advertisements from industry titans such as Nike and Adidas for athletic shoes, Coca-Cola and Pepsi for carbonated drinks, and Gucci, Channel and a few others for luxury consumer goods are often accompanied by much higher brand value and recognition, wider appeal and reach, and stimulates more purchases from consumers. Hence, for these highly centralized industries, customers mostly purchase and use the same set of apparels advertised to them via various channels. These clothes and gears are mainly designed to fit as many people as possible, rather than products that are more specifically geared towards different individuals. This conformity of purchasing habit is eating away at people’s uniqueness and individuality.

This is compounded by the fact that for the vast majority of people, the advertisements they consume are astonishingly similar. Due to yet more centralization in social media and search engines - with Facebook, Youtube and Google’s dominance almost reaching monopolistic levels - the majority of promotional materials served to people would be on these platforms. Thus, the aforementioned advertisements reach a wider audience than ever before, gaining even more influence on the purchases that consumers make. This amplifies the similarity of products that people buy and wear, worsening the lack of originality in society. Together, the power of advertising from certain brands and the anti-competitiveness of social media platforms and search engines are making everyone converge on the same looks and the same accessories and gadgets that we use in our daily lives.

In conclusion, advertisements play a major role in encouraging the lack of distinctiveness, personalization, and individuality, due to the domination of a few big players and the duopoly of online advertisement between Facebook and Google.

(Band 7-7.5)