A TALK ON ADVERTISING by Herman Wouk

 

A TALK ON ADVERTISING by Herman Wouk

Herman Wouk is an American author. In his essay “A Talk on Advertising” Wouk points out the negative features of advertising. He considers advertising Job as cheating people and earning more money.

 The author went to Marquis Office on his invitation. In his office he found different things used by the Advertiser. The office was filled with many pictures, captions, models etc. The author makes use of this situation to talk about the evil effects of advertising.

Herman Wouk asks many questions about the basic needs of human beings. Everyone earns money to eat. The advertisers too earn money to eat, but the way they earn that money is so cheap and is a very worst sort of mischief.

A shoemaker, a singer, a pilot, or a coal-miner does his work and get paid by the people cheerfully.  But the advertisers induce human beings to want things they don’t want. The create want, where want does not exist. The author feels that they could not give a logical reasoning for their own activity.

The author tells that the Advertisers eat food out of the profit of the people’s unnatural purchasing. The Advertisers are fed by the makers of undesired things, who share their profit with them.

The author tells that no one give advertisement for meat because people naturally buy it but even the users of tobacco hates it, but the advertisement is in a very high class for it. Almost all the advertisement aims at selling the useless commodities.

Advertising spoils everything that is good and beautiful in nature just like a fungus. For commercial purpose they spoil the language. The advertisers used Shakespeare’s rhyming words which he used to create immortal lines to sell their shampoo. They even forget that language is like a Promethean fire that lift man above animal. But they misuse it to the level that people start thinking that the English used by the president is a lie and that is used by the advertisers is true and good.

The Advertisers had covered up the whole land with their banners and they had suppressed the beauty of the land. The whole land seems to be painted old woman crying ‘come buy’.

The author wants to close all the advertising agencies who employs the young girls as models. The young girls who are cursed with beauty by nature are dishonored to the core and only few manage to get success in this field. People fail to realize that the smile given by them is forced and it fades away with the flash of the light.

The advertisers never mind destructing others. Their only motive is to sell, sell, and sell. They never bother about the innumerable little tragedies that happen because of their false promises of love to miserable girls or victory to the failures.

The author concludes his essay by apologizing for attacking the advertisers. He wishes that if at least two persons would leave the advertisement job on hearing to him, he would feel happy.  

----HAPPY LEARNING-----