Advertising discourages people from being different individuals by making us want to be and to look the same

QUESTION
Advertising discourages people from being different individuals by making us want to be or to look the same. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

Notes: Đây là câu hỏi cho đề thi thật IELTS ngày 11-07-2015. Trả lời bên dưới mang tính tham khảo của tác giả Robert IELTS Town.

ANSWER

As many people have access to television and the Internet, advertising is becoming an integrated part of the modern life and greatly affect our behaviours. Personally, I agree with the view that these ads tend to make us want to behave in a similar manner.

For decades, advertising has been shaping consumers' behaviours with several identical patterns and preventing us from making us a diversified society. A common practice is that marketers try to create new habits for customers who nonstop adopt new lifestyles' concepts. These habits then become the norms of modern life. For example, when people feel tired, they now get familiar with taking an energy drink like Redbull or Sting instead of water, which never happened in the past. As a result, modern citizens around the world, at present, love to wear clothes of Gucci, use an iPhone 6, take a Starbucks in the morning and go to McDonald's for lunch.

It is also clear that adverts often take advantage of the images of celebrities to make the audience conduct themselves in the same pattern. Because people usually take some superstars as their role models, letting them see ads involving these famous people would give rise to the desire to by the same products or to react in the same ways. In other words, if they do not use those products, they might feel that they are just old-fashioned ones. For example, when Ho Ngoc Ha – a Vietnamese famous singer – becomes a representative for a cosmetic product, thousands of women immediately think of buying that product, not because of the quality of itself but the fact that they want to look like her.

In conclusion, the rise of advertising is an irresistible trend, and this movement apparently prevent from being different individuals.

(Word count: 295)

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Useful expressions:
Lưu ý: những cụm từ đặc biệt hay
- have access to television and the Internet: được tiếp cận với TV và Internet
- behave in a similar manner: hành xử tương tự nhau
- the norms of modern life (*): quy chuẩn của xã hội hiện đại
- shape consumers’ behaviors (*): định hình hành vi người tiêu dùng
- conduct oneself: hành xử
- irresistible trend (*): xu hướng không thể cưỡng lại được
- the rise of advertising(*): sự trổi dậy/ lên ngôi của quảng cáo