English revise an Essay. Basic writing
Yazeed
209_second_essay_1.docxYazeed Alsadhan (Yaz)
209 Final draft
Advertising has been one of the most effective ways to sell a product for a many years. People usually become convinced to buy a product because of the advertisements, not the product itself. According to Megan Vandekerckove in “International Advertising in Developing Countries”, America spends more than $200 billion in advertising (2002). That shows how important advertising is to American society. I believe that advertising has a strong effect on all societies. In this essay I will cover three aspects of advertising. First, I will demonstrate how through language, advertisers sell their products to Americans by reflecting implicit American values. Second, I include how American advertisers advertise to the global market and what the purpose is of doing it. Lastly, I will include an advertisement from Saudi Arabia and I will discuss the aspects of it that reflects my culture.
Since they are many companies in American society, advertising companies do their best to convince the audience that they are buying the best product. They use many different ways to improve the value of their products in their advertisements. According to William Lutz in the article “With These Words I Can Sell You Anything,” it is hard to determine the exact meaning in some advertisements in that “no one could know what does it really say” (2003). Advertisers use indirect ways to convince the audiences that their products would benefit them greatly. For instance, this is an ad from Lexus Company while they are trying to sell a car in an effective way.
The ad has a handsome man and beautiful girl and they both are standing next to the car. I believe this ad is for men, not girls, because the man is standing next to the driver’s door, in control of the car. This ad has an obvious meaning that is that the car would make the person buying it appear more handsome and many girls would be interested in him. This is how advertisers control the value of their advertisements. Adding something attractive on the ad as like beautiful girl would increase the value of the ad by adding desire to the product. Thus, many people would be attracted to buying the products. These days, advertisers use tricky ways to express what they need to say. They use words that could be understood in many different meanings. For instance, when I had a fever, I was looking for a medicine that has fast effect in relieving my fever. I bought one product that had “Fast Fever Relief” written on the back. I was expecting the result to occur the same day, but when I asked my doctor he said it would take three to four days for the medicine to work. Not everyone measures how “fast” something is in the same way. That is a tricky way to convince the consumer to buy their products than other company’s products by making their product seem to work faster or better.
International Marketing is becoming important in today’s world of business. That is one of the important reasons that international advertising is widely used. In this article “International Advertising,” Susan P. Douglas and C. Samuel Craig say, “advertising exerts a formative influence whose character is both persuasive and pervasive” (2002). Therefore, the goal of international advertisements becomes widely known in all countries. In the same article the authors state that international ads are designed to introduce new products from one culture to another (2002). The advertisers are not trying to push their ads on other countries; they simply are trying to sell their products more globally and worldwide. While the international advertisers are trying to achieve their best, they face some difficulties in doing ads. Douglas and Craig state that “a message may, therefore, not get through to the audience because of people's inability to understand it (due to literacy problems), because they misinterpret the message by attaching different meanings to the words or symbols used, or because they do not respond to the message due to a lack of income to purchase the advertised product” (2002). When a company wants to produce international advertising, it is normal that not all people would understand the exact meaning of the ad. Moreover, many commercials could be understood differently by different cultures. Recently, my Spanish friend told me about an interesting ad about Chevrolet trying to sell a car that was called “Nova” in the Spanish speaking country. However, in Spanish “No va” translates to “it does not work.” At that time Chevrolet encountered a difficult time to sell the car. In order to have a success, global business needs to understand about other cultures’ backgrounds before the make the advertising.
This is a commercial from Saudi Arabia. It is from a communication company that is called “Zain” which translates to “amazing”. The word in yellow means “free” and the two words that written on the hand mean “special numbers”. This advertisement represents a free service that allows their customers to call special phone numbers without any additional fees. In Saudi Arabia it is important for some people to have organized phone numbers because it is very important to them. Some people believe that a person who has special number is an important person in the society. For example, Al-waleed Bin Talal, a prince from Saudi Arabia who is one of the richest people in the world, has the most organized number in Saudi Arabia, which is “05555555555”. In fact, he does not use this number, but he only owns it. It is just similar to buying a luxury car just to show it off. Some of the numbers cost thousands or even millions of dollars to own. That is why I think it is an effective ad in Saudi Arabia because everyone is looking to have organized number. However, I believe this ad would not be effective if was advertised in the United States. People in America do not hold the same value about the phone numbers as in Saudi Arabia. Different aspects of creating the value of this ad only work in Saudi Arabia.
