Advertising season

It’s that time of year again. No, I am not talking about the transition of seasons when everyone is discussing how the campus trees are changing from summer green to autumn red. And I am not talking about the time of year where chocolate candies and people dressed as superheroes celebrating the dead, are running around town.

I am talking about football season, or should I say advertising season. The time of year where American’s consume more amounts of advertisements on Sundays than beer- alright maybe it turns out to be equal.

For example, after watching the Denver Broncos beat the Oakland Raiders on Sunday, I realized how brainwashed I felt because of the amounts of advertising I devoured. Lizards telling me to “save money with Geiko”, Peyton repeatedly explaining how digital cable is great for football fans, Budweiser telling me to take cans to the opera and Bronco cheerleaders telling me to eat McDonalds "world famous french fries".

According to TNS Media Intelligence, approximately $143.3 billion dollars a year is spent toward advertising and about $40 billion is spent toward TV advertisements. Although more and more money is spent each year toward advertising, approximately 65 percent of American’s believe that they are bombarded with too much advertising.

After reading statistics regarding the amount of money spent on advertising I couldn’t help but wonder if marketing and advertising really work. Are commercials increasing consumer sales or just annoying the target audience? Does what marketing agencies do for their clients really matter in business?

Although I am not able to answer these questions, I believe that Peter Drucker, 20th Century business guru, couldn’t have explained it any better: “Because its purpose is to create a customer, the business has two basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results, all the rest are costs.”