Wikipedia defines advertising as a marketing communication that employs an openly sponsored, non-personal message to promote or sell a product, service, or idea. This can be buttressed by ancient China where advertising was oral as recorded in the classic of poetry as bamboo flutes herald the sale of confectionery according to history.
Also in Europe, those selling fruits and vegetables from the back of their carts and wagon employed town criers to announce their arrival. Later in the 18th-century advertisements started to be visible in a weekly newspaper in England, which were practically used to promote sales of books.
According to the father of modern advertising, Thomas J. Barratt, advertising is a strong and exclusive brand image through saturation campaigns. Accordingly, advert guru, Volney B. Palmer, in 1840 established the roots of the modern day advertising agency in Philadelphia.
Consequently, in the early ’50s, there was the use of radio, commercial television, and cable network to drive home the persuasive message from advert companies.
Among the many types of advertising are displaying advertising and mobile advertising to mention a few.
It is important to note that advertising is a deliberate plan to reach and persuade a customer to buy a product, goods, or services, which are executed through institutional or product advertising. For the benefit of doubt, advertising and public relations are not the same. Public relations is the practice of managing and guiding the perception of your business to attract new customers and strengthen the loyalty of existing stakeholders or the public.
In recent times, organisations and companies have strategically designed deliberate methodologies to have a market share in both new and existing stakeholders. Apart from the use of billboards, TV, radio, and newspaper adverts, the use of unsolicited advertising on our mobile phones is another case in point.
In the quest to probably break new grounds in advertising, companies have strategically and vigorously established their forced messages on our teeming youths on the university campuses.
Nevertheless, some may innocently get excited about these new advert territories. To understand holistically, one may define education as a process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, morals, beliefs, habits, and personal development, either through formal or informal means.
Educational experts have stated that for it to thrive it must be in a good learning environment. This learning environment entails diverse physical locations, contexts, and cultures to which students are exposed too.
To be very candid, a positive classroom environment helps improve attention, reduce anxiety, and support the emotional and behavioral regulation of students. It was discovered that when educators foster a positive learning culture, learners are more likely to acquire a higher motivational pedigree that will enhance credible learning outcomes than a boisterous environment. This is because noise obstructs message source and destination.
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According to communication experts, noise blocks the process of coding and decoding important information. Studies have also shown that loud noise can create physical and psychological confusion, stress, reduce productivity, interfere with communication especially during lectures.
Ironically, our university campuses have been strategically saturated with different kinds of unsolicited advertising which has unknowingly reduced critical thinking among students. This sad situation is not unconnected with the overburdened strong population growth in our universities. Now that the quality of education is gradually going down it is high time government at all levels and school authorities check the menace. The advert companies usually come with huge and high-tech of musical equipment with volumes capable of jolting a deaf man.
Apparently, the culprits of this obnoxious advertising on our university campuses are usually telephone companies and those marketing new products. However, these adverts are accompanied by a series of local tunes as popularly known.
In Rivers State, the situation is in a sorry state which is not far from what goes on in other universities, where a market hub with motivated disco now sounds tracts with heavy public address system. Right now our environment is the epicenter of all manners of unsolicited advertising interrupting the original noiseless zone in the past. One vital question is: who invites these advert agencies into our educational system? A reggae musical legend, Robert Bob Marley, said, “time will tell.”
