In class recently, for a project on archival research, I scrolled through old editions of the Santa Clara Newspaper
I learned some exciting stuff about my topic while in the archives, and in addition, stumbled across some advertisements that grabbed my attention. I observed how advertisements changed throughout years and years of the newspaper, and it forced me to contemplate advertisements in general and how products, specifically are advertised today.
Towards the beginning of the newspaper years, around 1960, most of the advertisements were cigarette ads and they depicted them as a product for adventurous folks. In order to be “cool”, you had to smoke.
From Healthcare-Administration-Degree
Additionally, advertisements like this portrayed smoking as healthy habit – not at all bad for you!
This didn’t come as a shock, I feel like most people are aware of the decent amount about the rise and fall of the tobacco industry. It was still interesting, though, that the Santa Clara University newspaper would advertise a product now banned from campus.
It makes me wonder what type of products today we are advertising as “completely safe” when in reality they are extremely harmful. A couple more products that came to mind similar to cigarettes are DDT, Lead, Mercury and others.
At the time people thought all of these to be extremely useful, practical and safe solutions to household problems. (Just to remind everyone that people used to spray their cupboards and dishes with DDT because it would keep bugs away! It seems clearly harmful to us today, but hindsight is 20/20) Or, in the case of cigarettes, a safe way to blow off some steam and look like a movie star.
Ultimately, we can’t know for sure what products will be harmful and which are as advertised. Maybe the people who fear cell phones for their radiation will turn out to be the smart ones and the rest of us will look like idiots. My personal opinion is that vape pens, which have been advertised as the “safer” alternative to cigarettes, will turn out to be just as bad, if not worse. Maybe that stems from my general hate for people vaping, but, maybe not.
This thought process brought me to another point, Climate Change. Now I know you may not understand the clear connection, but like these other pollutants and harmful chemicals, oil, methane and CO2 are all destroying our world and the most absurd part to me is that we’re knowingly doing this. It’s not just clever advertising or a lack of information on the topic of global warming, but also the issue that people still don’t believe it matters.
Maybe we should start advertising clean energy as “cool”. Maybe that’ll make more people care.