Messages Conveyed Through Advertising Advertisers send messages about American culture through their advertisements using various design effects to increase their persuasiveness. These messages about American values, beliefs, and desires constitute American culture. By examining these values, beliefs and desires communicated through advertising we see the many different ways advertisers use to persuade their audiences. The ad I selected conveys a growing problem in American culture. It is an advertisement for Companthia Athletica: Health and Wellness and can be viewed on youtube.com under funny advertisements. It is about the topic of obesity and the desire to be healthy. It shows a crying baby lying in his crib. The father, wearing pajama pants and no shirt, picks up the child and sits on the couch to comfort him. The distraught child then begins sucking on his father's chest in an attempt to feed himself. The ad gives a humorous effect to the advert so as to appeal to the body image of the audience. The ad is a statement about obesity and the embarrassment it brings. The ad uses no verbiage, just text that says “Get fit.” Although it doesn't use words, it still sends a powerful message about obesity through its design. Using the fact that it is women who breastfeed babies due to their enlarged breasts during pregnancy, it is suggested that the father is obese because his son believes he is the mother and has breasts large enough to feed himself. This is an attack on man's body image. Nowadays it is very embarrassing to be obese and it is a big problem for the American people. If your chest is large enough to be confused with that of a pregnant woman, then… middle of paper… eat all the time. People in other countries, many times have to store food and get whatever they can when it is available, proving that many times they do not get the delicious, but very unhealthy, food that we have. Obesity is a very stressful problem in current American culture. It is an issue that is increasing its presence in the media. In the chosen commercial we look at it with irony through the embarrassment it causes despite affecting American society in different ways. Looking at the causes of obesity, in our example it affects body image, let's see why it is a problem and why it needs to be treated. This is the purpose of the commercial, to bring to light the problem that affects Americans. It is a desire of every American to have a positive body image and not be embarrassed by it, which is why it influences our American culture.