"Advertising is the 'wonder' in Wonder Bread," says U.S. advertising professor, Jef I. Richards.

"Kodak sells film, but they don't advertise film. They advertise memories," according to ornithologist Theodore Parker.

"In our factory, we make lipstick. In our advertising we sell hope," Peter Nivio Zarlenga points out.

Notice a pattern?

Good marketers never cease to find ways of deceiving potential buyers.

Advertisers convince people to spend money they don't have on things they don't need, but that will supposedly help them improve themselves or their lives.

Advertisers often use superlative phrases such as "the best," "the greatest" and "the most for your money." I'm sorry, but how can it be that every brand of laundry detergent, or cereal, or car can be the superior one in its class? It can't be. Yet people are conned into wasting their money every minute of every day.

Infomercials constantly storm the television during hours of low popularity. Also, regularly programmed TV shows never air without perpetual commercial breaks that allow viewers to be amused by monkeys swinging around, promoting some new kind of toilet paper or SUV.

Ads fill roughly half the space in most newspapers and find themselves in every mailbox across town. Solicitors constantly walk door-to-door promoting their products and telemarketers call everyone, even those on the no-call list.

Let's face it; we live in a world dominated by advertising.

I just don't understand why people so frequently believe everything the advertisers say. It's their job to convince consumers to buy certain products. Therefore, the average marketer will do whatever it takes to sell his or her product.

Testimonials are no different. Do you really think all those "real" people on infomercials had their lives so drastically changed by that new set of knives, or that food chopper, or that vacuum, or that acne treatment?

Of course not.

Most people will say anything if someone offers them enough money. Wouldn't you tell the world that that hair restoration system saved your life if some guy with big bucks agreed to pay you $1000?

I must give advertisers credit; they carefully master the many languages of their target audiences so that they can speak them when promoting their products. However, the mission of advertisers to promote conformity is not all that ethical.

"Our society's values are being corrupted by advertising's insistence on the equation: youth equals popularity, popularity equals success, success equals happiness," according to British admiral John Arbuthnot Fisher.

People should have their own opinions, own styles, and own beliefs. They should not follow a path that will supposedly make them popular. I mean, what is popularity anyway? One minute Britney Spears is the biggest pop star ever, the next she's shaved her head and gone insane. All the little girls used to want to be Britney Spears; now many people would find it an insult to be compared to her.

I wish advertisers could see the importance of individuality and allowing society to decide what's cool for itself, rather than being solely concerned with revenue generated by a product. As put by James Randolph Adams, former president of John and Adams Inc., "If advertising had a little more respect for the public, the public would have a lot more respect for advertising."

Personally, I agree with humorist Will Rogers who said, "Let advertisers spend the same amount of money improving their product that they do on advertising and they wouldn't have to advertise it."