Positive Uses of Advertising
Advertising has become a part of the lives of basically every person in the modern era, whether we notice it or not. As our technology advances, the presence of advertisements only continues to grow as our thirst for entertainment and reliance on the internet also grow. Nowadays, the average adult is exposed to around 3,500 pieces of advertising information every day. For the most part, advertisements just seem like a common annoyance that we have to deal with on a daily basis, with only a few ads that seem to have some merit to them. This reigns true for the most part, but there seem to be at least some beneficial consequences to our society from the abundance of advertisements, although few and far between. For example, a recent study was conducted to try and get more people to wash their hands to reduce the spread of diseases caused by dirty hands, such as diarrhea.
The participating companies in the study were tasked with trying to find a way that an ad campaign could actually cause more people to start washing their hands, specifically in Ghana, where only half of people washed their hands after using the bathroom and only 4 percent actually used soap in the process. This proved to be a difficult task as public health campaigns generally have had limited success in actually changing certain unhealthy habits. For instance, evidence suggests that antidrug ad campaigns actually have an adverse effect on minimizing drug use. Eventually, they were able to find a link between using soap while washing hands and a feeling of disgust in the user. The ad campaign that was run showed mothers and children exiting a bathroom with glowing purple hands that spread to everything they touched. Follow-up research made it clear that the campaign was effective, with a 13 percent increase in the use of soap after using the bathroom and an increase in 41 percent of Ghanaians who used soap when washing their hands before they eat. This experiment is an example of how advertisements can be used in beneficial ways to society, not just an advertiser trying to sell a product.
https://saylordotorg.github.io/text_launch-advertising-and-promotion-in-real-time/s06-02-the-good-advertising-enhances-.html