Reflection

Media greatly affects my life. It affects the products I chose and the way I look at things. It is quite impossible to be be unaware of all the advertisments in the world today. I can't enjoy a television show without commercials interrupting. I can't go on informational websites without advertisments on the margins of the page. I can't even go on Microsoft without an ad being on there, and I can't even exit/hide the ad. Media is everywhere, and unless you live in a city where advertisement is outlawed, there will be plenty of it. Before this critical thinking class I knew that people in the advertising business had some type of guidelines they would follow to market their product, but I never knew what. After learning all the techiniques and the needs companies try to fufill, I realized that every advertisement follows at least one of the techniques. I have made fun of commercials and ads plenty of times, but I now know that the reason I found them to be funny was because the commercials would over do one of the techniques. The company would be heading in the right direction, but doing so in a cheesy manor. I would like to think that before this class, I didn't fall for the tricks that advertisements or commercials use. But now I know I am conscious of products that seem appealing because I look more in depth of the advertisment and notice key information that a commercial or ad will lack, like if an ad said that "this soap is better." But better than what? I have learned some of the tricks behind the media by analyzing commercials and will be smarter with my decisions from that. It is important to have media literacy so there are no foolish decisions made or foolish products bought. Advertisments just tell people what the audience wants to hear and they will slither their way into your brain to make you choose them. The techniques taught in class worked on the uneducated of media and cheated them out of their money. Being more knowledgable about the media, will save quite a few bucks. If you don't truly read into what a company or brand is saying, you could be disappointed with your decision of choosing them. Words are twisted into phrases that sound appealing, but with a vagueness that people fall for, just enough to trick people. By keeping this media log, I have become more aware of the media and the media techniques being used to draw in customers. I had no clue how money was spent on advertisments to attract customers and much time and thought was put into making the advertisements. So much money is spent on a risk; commercials have now guarentee of attracting customers. I wish that there was less advertisments, but I don't know how I would survive if there were no signs on stores. I need some type of sign to tell me where stores are. There is no happy medium about advertisments because having less ads than now would still be a ton. Media has grown so much, there is almost no turning back.