During last week’s case study, I was particularly intrigued by how advertising and marketing were crucial to Monsanto’s continued success. As Raven mentioned in her post, the Monsanto advertisement creates a very positive image of the company. It portrays them as a responsible corporation that produces valuable goods that help the world’s impoverished rise out of poverty in a sustainable manner. Raven noticed how these images hid the company’s true reality, and led farmers into buying the company’s flawed and sometimes harmful products. I want to take another look at the power of advertising.
In American culture, we are constantly bombarded with ads. For example, Americans who live in the city see up to 5,000 advertisements a day. I think we would we all like to believe that, over time, we get immune to the persuading power of these advertisements, or in other words get desensitized to it.
However, that is simply not true. Let’s take Apple for example. My first introduction to the iPod was in middle school. My friend had recently purchased the iPod mini and took great pride in showing it off after school. Although I found the iPod interesting, I certainly didn’t rush out and buy it.
However, as months passed, I found myself watching a lot of apple ads, many of them featuring the new iPod mini. And suddenly, I found myself simply needing an MP3 player. That is the power of ads today.
Of course, I understand that my decision to buy an iPod was motivated by a lot of factors, not just advertising. The fact that my friend and a bunch of other kids at my school had an iPod probably influenced my decision as well. But, I feel like Apple’s marketing strategy played a big role in the making the company the success it is today.
In fact, if we think about it, MP3 players existed long before the Apple iPod. However, in 2001, with the release of its most famous product, Apple simply took over the market. Many people say that this success is due to Apple’s marketing strategies. By emphasizing a sleek and colorful look in both its product and its advertisements, Apple turned the MP3 player from a unknown, techie device to a worldwide phenomenon.
Today, Apple is a very rich company and sells countless iPods, iPhones, iPads and MacBooks a year. It is one of the biggest players in the global economy.
In class, we have often mentioned how capitalism is one of the most important driving factors in globalization. As we have just seen, ads can greatly influence the capitalist economy because they can turn a struggling company into a market giant, almost overnight. Therefore, I think that, when talking about globalization, we should never underestimate the power of media.
