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Complete PICLE corpus of essays by Polish advanced EFL students (330,000)
Advertising is the business of persuading and encouraging people to buy things, using a variety of techniques to achieve its objectives. It makes use of pictures, words, songs on television and radio, large public notices, and newspaper and magazines. First, there is a technique which uses very general and, in fact, often meaningless or ambiguous words that produce a favourable response. The second technique attempts to achieve a desirable response by creating some kind of link between the advertisement's idea and the product that is viewed favourably by most people. The third technique uses famous people to speak in favour of some products. It is also easy to observe how a great number of people jump on the bandwagon and tend to copy what other people are doing because it is supposed to be fashionable or successful, this creates the impression that everyone is for this particular product. These subtle approaches appeal to the baser human instincts and exploit our secret dreams. Advertising appears to prey on our fears, our vanity and our greed and consequently makes us buy insurance, cosmetics, clothes, and more food then necessary.