Shari Graydon's Made You Look

Flashy pictures, bright colors, and bold messages all work together to create the eye-catching advertisements that companies use in order to lure customers to buy their products. In this day and age, ads surround Americans almost everywhere they go. Because companies want to persuade people as effectively as they can to buy their products, they continually look for new ways to advertise their goods. Over the years, advertisers have learned that children hold a strong sway over the spending of their parents’ money. In Made You Look, a book about how advertisements work, the author, Shari Graydon, mentions, “Some marketers estimate that kids have a say in close to $300 billion worth of their parents’ spending” (18). Because of this influence

Many commercials portray junk foods in positive light in order to persuade viewers to purchase the advertised goods. However, many companies often use misleading advertising in order to accomplish their goal. Ads deliberately use words such as “part of”, “may”, and “helps” in order to write bold, flashy statements without making any promises. As one example, Graydon comments that “if the icing-covered pastry is promoted as “part of a nutritious breakfast,” is it possible that the skim milk and fresh fruit you eat at the same meal are actually the nutritious parts?” (42). Advertisers also add bright colors, catchy tunes, and joyful scenes to their commercials in order to convince their audience to buy the snacks or drinks. Because ads show appetizing snacks and drinks in appealing ways and use misleading language in order to give the treats the appearance of healthy foods, children have learned to overindulge on fatty junk food. This overindulgence on unhealthy food causes an obesity problem among a large percentage of kids in America. According to the book Made You Look about one in five children wrestle with weight problems (Graydon 22). As Graydon points out, while advertisements are not the sole cause of weight problems and obesity, they certainty have a strong impact (22). Despite the child obesity problem in America, junk food producing companies continue to use attention grabbing ads targeted towards children to entice them to desire unhealthy