Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Changing AD Culture In Pakistani Media: Who is Responsible?

It's a spark, a quest, a confusion or a never ending road. What is infront of the path when every other side is blocked. Moving on is the only choice left. The question is where to move on and how to move on when the surrounding condition will not change. Yes living in a biased society is just to walk blindly with sides blocked and the path is not even smooth. Hard work rendered by citizens goes unrewarded when the few rupees earned will be swallowed by more wider needs of a humanly body survival.

Especially when it is evident that the basic needs of a human life are the deficiencies in the country then other less prioritized wants just appears to be a luxury. More than half of the country lives in poverty but nobody wants to even talk about their miseries. Open up the TV channels what advertisements are on air and these ADs are just injecting something in the society which are not just in contrary according to the cultural and ethical aspects but the advertised commodities are just a luxury product.

High tech products are shown making a family life happier. Its hard to identify the marketing mix of such advertising when they know that they are selling in a country where people's purchasing power is less then what they try to portray through their ads that by indulging in such high involvement purchases there life will become glorious. Every AD is directed towards showing a life style that can only be gained through purchase of the xyz product. How ironic is that being at the opposite degree of reality you are offering something which major chunk of the population cannot buy. So the only consequences is that Fine you are putting up such ADs on TV but the purchasing power of the potential customers is not adequate which will not end up in purchasing but it will leave a more feeling of deprivation.

As far the ethical and moral norms are concerned they are already crossed in commercials. So what the viewers can do except to watch some immoral content while sitting with their family but why would TV channels care about the social grooming of the society as they just seem to be concern with PROFITS.

Its not just the responsibility of the Ad makers to follow some ethical guidelines while creating their ad but the medium who are displaying these ads needs to show some responsibility for not displaying such ads. TV is a source of teaching the society so what are they teaching?

Its really an ironic phenomena that when such TV channels through their heated discussion alarm the viewers about so many social evils then what about that social evil in which they themselves are involved. Aren't they hypocrites? On one hand they claim that they making the viewers aware of the problems while on the other hand engaging them to view such Ads.

The trickle down effect can be obvious that with having daily stimuli of such exposures the behaviors automatically tilt towards them consciously or unconsciously. So who has to step back the ad makers or the TV channels? It is the duty of the regulating bodies like PEMRA to devise guidelines and all related entities associated with PEMRA needs to align with those guidelines. Without a proper policy and monitoring no betterment can yield.

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