Advertisements are ubiquitous. They are everywhere you look. You can't walk down the street, get coffee, go to class or even brush your teeth without being bombarded with advertisements. The omnipresence of advertisements produces a vital need to analyze and understand them and their affect on society.
Daniel J. Boorstin, an American historian, professor, writer and attorney, once said that advertising is the "characteristic rhetoric" of a democratic society. “If we consider democracy not just a political system but as a set of institutions which do aim to make everything available to everybody; it would not be an overstatement to describe advertising as the characteristic rhetoric of democracy” (Media/Impact: An Introduction to Mass Media).
Rhetoric is the art of public speaking to convince. Where rhetoric and advertising meet is where they both serve the purpose of helping people we relate to each another in a free, democratic society. Advertisements bring people together through common basic needs and desires, such as conformity and belonging. Those people who are on the edges of culture and society are always trying to identify with the culture of the inside in order to belong. Advertisements allow those people to do so through the products they sell to people. They create the rhetoric through which a never-ending conversation in society occurs. All of this because of advertisements…
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