The Purposes of Advertisement
Selling/Profiting/Gaining Popularities
The most realistic answer is “selling a product and generating profits from it”. It is the reason why companies hire hundreds of people and spend millions of dollars to make 15-second short films or a big poster. Advertisements can help companies to gain popularity, attract customers, and make money by selling products/services in the ad.
Educating Audience
From the “See Something, Say Something” ads in subway stations to “go vote” ads, you can see every election year, these ads are made for educational purpose. Governments, institutions, and individuals want to use advertising as a mass communicational method to educate its audience and call upon their actions.
Spreading Loves
When the tragedy of George Floyd happened, lots of people shared information about charities on their social media accounts. This can also be considered as “advertising”. But the purpose of this type of ad is to spread love and appeal for changes (on social injustice). Similar things happen in China when natural, or man-made disasters occur: people tend to share useful information on Weibo and WeChat (Chinese Version of Twitter and What’s App). They hope it will help people who need it.
Is it possible to have “good” advertising? “Bad” advertising? Why, and what is the difference?
Yes.
First of all, we can judge the advertising by evaluating its outcome: does it achieve particular objectives? If it doesn’t. We can definitely put the “bad” label on that piece of advertising.
We can also take a look at the impact/influence the advertising has. If the ad ends up receiving massive backlash, it is easy to tell that it is a “bad” ad. If everyone remembers the ad itself and the brand/company/individual behind it, it is safe to say that it is “good”.
Additionally, in my opinion, the advertising that has too many exaggerations are “bad”. I understand that sometimes you need to exaggerate something in your ad to have specific effects or to achieve particular objects. But too many exaggerations are not helpful at all as they distort the facts. The ad, therefore, is more of a type of fraud.
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