Virginia Slims Advertising Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Virginia Slims Advertising - Essay Example This is the marketing thrust of Virginia Slims to induce women to smoke by inducing anxiety among its target market then later provide Virginia Slims cigarette as the panacea to relieve the women of its distress through the use of beautiful images in their advertisements. As a product, without the gloss and twist of advertising, Virginia Slims was really nothing but just a cancer-inducing tobacco which causes bad breath, cardiovascular disease and lung cancer. But with the fuzzing or altering of the target market’s perception, the product suddenly became desirable where its smokers became an epitome of class, sophistication, confidence and seem to be happier. Virginia Slims does this by distorting reality through the use of beautiful images in their promotional campaigns whereby they associate that such beauty, class and sophistication can be achieved by smoking their product of which we know to be untrue. It is an unhealthy advertising because it creates discontent to make or induce the market to become receptive to its harmful product. The pervasiveness of this kind of advertisement that uses beautiful images of men and women to sell harmful products lowers the self-esteem of the target market. It is because the audience of these idealized beauties inadvertently compare themselves to these images that are unrealistic where the models themselves will have a hard time achieving without the aid of computer enhancement. It also makes the audience frivolous because these idealized images inadvertently make an individual tie up his or her self-worth to the physical appearance which is not a healthy gauge of one’s sense of self. It is also unhealthy because it makes the audience strive for an idealized concept of beauty that has no other value than its aesthetic worth. It benefits none except those who purvey that idealized beauty because they profit from it. It also breeds discontent and unhealthy personal disposition because it induces its audience, men and women, to strive for something that is not only unrealis tic but also of no use to better one’s life, society nor does it contribute to a common good except to enhance the profit the client of the advertiser. This idealized concept of beauty that advertisers capitalized on can even be used to manipulate one’s psychological make-up to serve a particular end that does no good to an individual.