I believe the goal is to get your attention and persuade you to CONSIDER the particular product or the particular service advertised. Compelling you to spend your money on the product or service is well beyond the power of advertising. There are all sorts of ways to tell the story of your product/service, and some are more effective than others. I don't think there's anything particularly unsavory or manipulative about advertising in general. A particular advertisement might be tasteless or manipulative, think of the recent commercials put out by the NRA concerning the President's daughters. It's my impression, however, that tasteless and manipulative advertising is generally the arena of political advertising as opposed to the province of pure commercial advertising and PSAs.

So "no" is my answer to your question with certain exceptions. Hope this helps.

Yes! It's job is to get you interested in a product you have no experience with or to buy more of something you have used. people are generally smart enough to know what advertising is, but they are still influenced by ads the enjoy and by the hidden messages the get from other sellers. Some advertising just want to make a good impression and others want to trick you when you aren't paying close attention.

GEICO Insurance uses fun to make you think they are better to work with than their competitors. Many viewers will miss the idea that that is probably not why you should choose a product.

Other ads, like "call within 15 minutes and we will double your order" try to get you to act before you realize you don't really need the product.

Any kind of information or input that we receive is manipulative (but not always in a harmful way), so I will go with "yes" on this one. As a note though, advertisements do typically undergo government regulations that prevent them from claiming things that are blatant lies. Of course, expressions such as "cheap", "great", "luxurious" are all relative, so those should typically be ignored when trying to ascertain fact from fiction anyway.

Advertising can be manipulative, which is why I posted this question, but got no answer.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?...

Of course.

Otherwise, why would advertisers study psychology?

They study people and they design their campaigns to maximize coercive force.

The world of advertising is manipulative and attempts to brainwash consumers into parting with their money. Yes or no? Brief explanation why or why not. (for a survey at school) Thanks!