The Role Of Escapism In Advertising

Advertisements speak volumes of their target audience. The amount of resources placed in high-traffic adverts is invested with the expectation of reasonably high returns. As such, similarly extensive deliberation is extended to ensure the highest response to the ad. Prospective advertising departments undoubtedly consider what their audience will best reciprocate to. Therefore, to associate a given nation 's ideals with its advertisements is to assume that it has a sufficiently established advertising sector. The United States certainly fits this qualification and exemplifies the rule. One example of this in respect to the U.S. is the prominent need to escape. Commonly referred to escapism, Americans often use this phenomena as a means to escape stressors by attempting to forget the causes, if only for a short while (Stenseng et al 19). Stenseng et al. further enumerates some activities used in this manner which are blatantly harmful ("suicide attempts, eating disorders, and drug abuse") (19). Given this definition, escapism can apply to employing any activity with the goal of avoiding a source of stress without addressing the underlying cause. Examining the advertisements found in United States publications can show the prominence of this advertising theme. An extremely common …show more content…
They note that connectedness is important to a favorable brand experience, second to predilections, which are arguably fixed compared to connectedness of the advertisement. The most significant component of connectedness in their study was "escape" (621). The study does not make the claim that people watch advertisements explicitly to escape. However, this is certainly a correlative product. As such, advertisers likely capitalize on this by emphasizing the "distraction from reality" to unconsciously create positive