考研英语阅读命题思路透析和真题揭秘(46)

Money spent on advertising is money spent as well as any I know of. It serves directly to assist a rapid distribution of goods at reasonable price, thereby establishing a firm home market and so making it possible to provide for export at competitive prices. By drawing attention to new ideas it helps enormously to raise standards of living. By helping to increase demand it ensures an increased need for labour, and is therefore an effective way to fight unemployment. It lowers the costs of many services: without advertisements your daily newspaper would cost four times as much, the price of your television license would need to be doubled, and travel by bus or tube would cost 20 per cent more.

And perhaps most important of all, advertising provides a guarantee of reasonable value in the products and services you buy. Apart from the fact that twenty-seven acts of Parliament govern the terms of advertising, no regular advertiser dare promote a product that fails to live up to the promise of his advertisements. He might fool some people for a little while through misleading advertising. He will not do so for long, for mercifully the public has the good sense not to buy the inferior article more than once. If you see an article consistently advertised, it is the surest proof I know that the article does what is claimed for it , and that it represents good value.

Advertising does more for the material benefit of the community than any other force I can think of.

There is one more point I feel I ought to touch on. Recently I heard a well-known television personality declare that he was against advertising because it persuades rather than informs. He was drawing excessively fine distinctions. Of course advertising seeks to persuade.

If its message were confined merely to information-and that in itself would be difficult if not impossible to achieve, for even a detail such as the choice of the colour of a shirt is subtly persuasive----advertising would be so boring that no one would pay any attention. But perhaps that is what the well-known television personality wants.

把钱花在做广告上是我所知道的最好的花钱方式。广告能够直接促进货物以合理的价格销售，由此建立稳固的国内市场，并且有可能以有竞争力的价格对外出口。通过各种新观念对人们注意力的吸引，广告有助于极大地提高人们的生活水平。广告还能够促进需求的增加，从而确保对劳动力的需求，因此是抵制失业的有效方法。广告也降低了很多服务业的成本，如果没有广告的话，我们每天看的报纸其价格会上涨到现在的四倍，电视收视费也会翻番，坐车或地铁的花费将多出20%以上。

也许最重要的是，广告能够为你所购买的产品和服我提供一种合理的价值保证。除了国会制定的27项法案对广告的内容有所规定之外，没有哪个正规的广告商敢促销与广告不符的产品。他有可能通过欺骗的广告暂时愚弄某些人，但是他不可能长期这么做。因此，所幸公众有着良好的判断力，他们不会第二次购买质量低劣的商品。如果你看到某个产品不断地得到广告宣传，那么这是我所知道的对于一个产品名副其实的最确凿的证明，说明这个产品代表了很高的价值。

广告比我能够想起的任何其他形式都更能给人们带来物质利益。

此外还有另一点我觉得我应该讲一讲。近来我听说一个著名的电视人物声称自己反对广告，因此广告是在说服人们、而不是为人们提供信息。他把这两点分得过于细了。广告理所当然地要去说服人们。

如果广告内容仅限于提供信息--这件事如果不是不可能，也很难实现，因为即使是对于衬衫颜色的挑选也具有一些劝诱性--那么广告将会变得非常索然无味，甚至没有人会注意到它。而这也许是那位电视名人希望看到的情况。