ENGL 100: ADVERTISING ESSAY, PT. 2 MODEL MCKENNA
The Bare Necessities (cont.)
Every person looks at advertising in a different way. Many times people become so
absorbed in their ideas of what they feel they want or desire to feel complete, that they forget about
the things they really need. When people start to become so intent on what they believe they desire,
they begin to lose who they really are. They become so obsessed with having the right brand-name
products that they forget what is truly important: the necessities of life.
In an essay titled “The Cult You’re In,” Kalle Lasn describes what he sees as the “cult” of
American consumerism and how everyone seems to follow the ideals of someone else. He states
that “without even realizing it, just about all of us were recruited” into this cult (53). People don’t
realize the effect that consumerism has on them until it is too late. They go through their lives
compulsively buying things they don’t really need, products that will make them look better or feel
better about themselves. In the essay “Salespeak” Roy Fox also touches on the idea of people losing
their identity to consumerism and advertising (57).
In the scenario in part one, the woman in the story begins to look at her life and the ways
that advertising has changed it. Salespeak, by Roy Fox’s definition, is “any type of message
surrounding a transaction between people” (57). Fox also calls Salespeak “persuasive in nature”
(57). It makes people think that they really need to buy things that are unnecessary in order to make
it through life. Advertising appears everywhere this woman looks. Even when she isn’t looking for
it or paying attention, it is still swarming all around her: on the radio, on billboards she passes by,
and even on the commercials in between segments of shows her family watches. Sometimes people
just need to take a second to slow things down and take everything in. Many times adults look back
and realize that throughout their lives they have been driven by advertising and consumerism, from
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