George Saunders - Advertising

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/jun/07/healthandwellbeing

I found this article by George Saunders on advertising which links with the short story 'My Flamboyant Grandson' which is what my presentation is on. In this article Saunders talks about the techniques of advertising and how they persuade you to buy the products they are trying to sell.

One of the examples he uses is of a stapler advert. If you show a man buying a stapler with 9 supermodels around him, then the message is buy this stapler and you will be attractive to supermodels. He also gives many other examples of this technique.

He concludes his article by saying "My point is advertisements are a big lie. I'm going to break free from the false seductiveness of that ad and live in the real world." This links to 'My Flamboyant Grandson' as he writes of how fake America is in it. Every time the Grandfather goes into a public space he is forced to watch adverts which try to persuade him to buy their products and in his article it is much the same in real life as advertising companies are still trying to make you buy things through falsely persuading you into believing the product will do something or cure something which in reality, it probably wont do.