Marketers carefully research ways to trap the customer into buying more than they need. The consumer has the right to research these techniques and how to recognize uncover trickery and persuasive messages from honest ones. With a little work and thinking, you can find yourself above the influence of schemes and ploys and keep a little more money in your wallet. And… if your intentions are well meaning, I might allow you to use the same ideas behind these tactics to engage in your own persuasion. Here are just a few of the ways advertisements use words to their own advantage.

How to make matrimony work.

We all have the power to influence people and the world around us while at the same time people and the world also has a power of influence over us. Take a look at how your attitude, what you see and hear, peer pressure, and society can influence and be influenced in a way that makes us and it who we become.

The death of Joy Guevarra after she and her friends played make-believe contestants of “Ano Ka Hilo?” on ABS-CBN 2’s “Magandang Tanghali Bayan,” focused national attention on the power of television upon the lives of men, women, and children. Concerned citizens were complaining that noontime shows, including “Sige, Ano Kaya Mo?” on GMA 7’s “Eat Bulaga,” were putting people’s lives in danger with the kind of contests they were promoting.