Advertising in the Media

         Since the technology boom of the twenty-first century, the media has played an important role in everyday life, acting as the prime source of entertainment and fascination to people of all over the country. The media, because of its huge success and popularity over the years, is equipped with the ability to capture audiences with its constant use. Furthermore, the media has the power to persuade audiences into buying whatever merchandise are shown in the actual show, acting as a prime source of advertising. While the media is useful for entertainment purposes, filmmakers and authors incorporate advertisement into specific shows, including HBO’s True Blood, promoting individual merchandise, which ultimately bring more success and fortune to the show itself, disregarding what is ethically right.

American culture is completely fascinated by the media world and relies on the fictional stories found in popular T.V. shows to bring satisfaction. Furthermore, people who are involved with media want merchandise from the actual show that they can have for their own. Moreover, companies will pay a high amount of money for their products to appear in the blooming, popular T.V. shows. I strongly think that America is completely focused on consumerism which leads to mass production of merchandise found on T.V. shows for the purposes of advertising and profit. American companies are not worried about whether or not it is ethically right, but rather, if the marketing and products will be profitable.

Advertising within the media has blossomed, especially with the popularity of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. “The aggressive marketing predicted by this cartoon also describes a critical problem: the novels and the hype become intertwined, resulting

in analyses that fail to take into account the full complexity of either” (Nel 236). Since companies have gone to the extremes to take the films for themselves, the true story cannot be expressed perfectly through both. Film companies tend to tweak the stories so they are not completely accurate which creates false advertisement. Also, “first of all, conflating the books with the marketing fails to produce a sufficiently sophisticated analysis of the latter. Second, such critical conflation leads some critics to overlook the novels’ considerable literary achievements” (Nel 237).  Because of Harry Potter’s huge success, companies of all types want to create products that are identical to the ones in the film so that people will want to buy them. Companies create every type of product, disregarding the true idea of entertainment. Similarly, HBO’s recent T.V. series, True Blood, has become hugely successful and companies have been craving to profit from it. The companies have gone to the extremes to create an artificial blood substance drink to promote the show. This marks HBO's second effort to generate attention for True Blood, which portrays a world in which the development of a synthetic blood product in Japan has allowed vampires to "come out" of their coffins, as it were, with all kinds of cultural ramifications” (Steinberg). Because of the fascination of True Blood, production companies want their products to be related to the show so that they will have a greater chance of selling items.

American media today primarily focuses on success, money and stresses the importance of advertising. Advertising companies do not want to do what is ethically right, they just want to receive money, even if it means hurting the films and shows. America has the tendency to believe that the world on the big screens are reality and will pay or do anything to have items that are found on the specific show.