IELTS Speaking for Success - 🧲 Advertisements (S07E26) + Transcript

Episode Date: August 1, 2022

What advertisements do you dislike? Do ads influence your choice? Is there too much advertising now in our life? Why do companies advertise their products? Is advertising important? Is it good that celebrities advertise things? Tune in and have a great day! - Video version of the episode: https://youtu.be/Sg89GYVOnmw Get exclusive episodes on IELTS Speaking parts 1, 2, and 3: https://linktr.ee/sfspremium Our course on Phrasal Verbs: https://successwithielts.com/podcourses Transcript: https://successwithielts.com/s07e26 Our IELTS Writing podcast: https://linktr.ee/wfspremium Find an IELTS Speaking Partner: https://links.successwithielts.com/ieltspartner Our social media: https://linktr.ee/successwithielts © 2022 Success with IELTS Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, Sunshine. I'm Maria. And my name is Rory. We're the host of the IEL Speaking for Success podcast. The podcast themes to help you improve your speaking skills as well as your listening skills along the way. We've started in this podcast to give you gorgeous grammar and fabulous vocabulary for your high. IELD school and night school. Oh, I really like what you're wearing today. Where did you get that? Yeah, I got it in Turkey. And it's called OXO, OXO, Clothes.

So OXO. I don't know where it comes from, but, yeah, when I was in Istanbul, I bought this piece. That's okay. You're a good advertisement for them. Shall we talk about advertisements? I think so. That's the coincidence. On this podcast again. It's a comeback, dear listener. We had this topic a year ago in 2021, and we released an episode on the,

31st of May, 2021, so you can listen to the old episode, and now you can listen to the new episode. Again, IELTS people do recycle different topics, maybe because they don't have enough topics and advertisements. It's just a nice topic and everybody can relate. So, here we are with advertisements, adverts, ads. Rory, what's advertising? Do you dislike? All of them, really? Who wants to watch ads when they could be watching their favorite shows or, I don't know,

whatever media is they're consuming? It's maybe easier to talk about the ones I like, such as the Iron Brew Adverts, which usually have some sort of borderline offensive humor going on that's always edgy or darkly funny or offbeat. Most ads are not like that, though, which is why I don't like them. Do ads influence your choice of products? I think once or twice I bought something because it was supported by someone I followed on social media. I have a few shirts as a result of doing something like that.

Otherwise, not really no. If anything, they negatively influence it to make me not want something. Take those miracle supplement ads, for example. Everyone knows the sports people in them are taking steroids or something else to make them cheap. Why would I want to buy something from someone being dishonest when I can work hard and take pleasure from that instead? Is there too much advertising in our life? Honestly, any advertising is too much advertising. I think you should just let people look and find by themselves using whatever search criteria they come up with.

Although I'm probably being a bit utopian about that since I'm quite independently minded and many people are not. And there are some genuinely quite nice adverts. I like the Stelarus fifth anniversary trailer. That's got good music. Why do companies advertise their products? Well, in short, to make money, and in more detail to make more money than the otherwise would if they just let people look for things by themselves. I mean, if the branded beans have a catchy tune and an advert compared to the store branded beans,

then people are more likely to be influenced to go and buy the snazier version, even though it's just about exactly the same product. Is advertising important? Well, it depends on what we're talking about. Advertising executives would probably say so, yes, since it's, well, their whole business to create these things. And they're also supporting industries in graphic design, which benefit too.

But it's not like they would cease to exist without advertising. And it's important for consumers to make an informed choice. Maybe, although given how dishonest they are these days, I highly doubt it. Is it good that celebrities advertise products? Well, absolutely not unless it's their area of speciality or connected to something they're involved in. I'll listen to a movie star talk about their recent movie,

because that's what they were playing a part in. But I'm not taking life advice from them. What on earth do they know about how to live well? Enough of them seem to have catastrophically bad lifestyle outcomes that it seems like the opposite advice would be better to follow now. Thank you, Roy. for your answers. Hopefully they were good advertising for us. Our free episodes focus on part one, but if you really, really like our stuff, then you can

subscribe to our premium, and that focuses on parts two and parts three, so you get the full speaking test experience. This week, I'm going to describe a time when I was caught in a traffic jam, and then we'll follow up in part three with more questions about traffic problems. It's another coincidence. The link is in the description. Make sure to check it out. And now a short break for commercials. We have our own phrase of verb course. Oh my God, yes we do. And the only reason I like this advert is because I know exactly what to say.

Sign up for our phraseofurps course at success with iHealtz.com forward slash podcourses. You can tell I've had it drummed into me and that's why I can say it just like off the cuff like that. Woo! Yeah. First of all, what, how do we say it? advertisements, advertisements, advertisements, advertisements. Well, in America, I'm pretty sure it's advertisements, but there's also ads, advertising. Yeah.

So these video clips, advertisements or ads. So advertisements, adverts, ads, right? Can I also say commercials, like to paraphrase? Yeah, that's like an Americanism. I think they usually say commercials. Right. but if I talk about the whole industry, that means advertising. And is it advertising or advertising or both?

I didn't really hear a difference there, but then maybe my earphones aren't so great. Maybe your ears aren't so great. That's a very rude thing to say. I have to go to the doctor on Friday to talk about my ears. Really? Yes, really. No, we do need your ears. No, you don't need my voice.

We do need your ears. No, because you listen to me, you respond. and then, you know, we do need your face. We do need you all in kind of intact. Oh, that joke was wasted on you. About the ears. Did you not hear that? No.

You said it's important for you to listen to me, and then I was like, what? Sorry. Ha. Ha. I'm in trouble now. Ha, ha, ha, ha. So, advertising or advertising? Advertising.

Advertising. Advertising. Advertising. Advertising. Advertisements are important. Advertising is important because it's an industry, right? Advertising. And also we can say, for example, advertising executives. So what did you mean by this? Advertising executives? Well, there are people that are, I suppose, in charge of advertising departments. So an executive is like a higher level and if it's advertising executive, then they're the higher level. employees that organize all the advertising. And when you say that I dislike ads, you can say I can't stand them, I hate all advertisements,

all adverts. And then Rory said that, well, I like some of them, right? So, and I'm brew as really Scottish, right? Well, allegedly it's really Scottish, but you can get it in England. Like, people say it's hard to find. It's not. It shouldn't be hard to find. And then we can like some ads because of their borderline offensive humor.

So, humor, offensive humor about what, Rory? What's offensive humor? Well, I think the, well, we probably shouldn't dwell on this too much because it's going to get us canceled. But offensive humor is usually about some kind of subject that people find quite taboo. or it's like extremely offbeat. For example, when of the Iron Brew adverts, they're singing about Iron Brew and then the woman in the video,

the mother, says, I love Iron Brew even though I used to be a man. So it's like totally irrelevant to enjoying Iron Brew. But she just like breaks into this solo number while all the other members of the family look at her like, what did you just say? Yeah, and if you say that something is offbeat, is one word, it means that something is different from the ordinary, something like unusual,

but still it's positive, right? Offbeat. It means that something's irregular, that could be positive or negative, depending on how you like your comedy. For example, we can say, oh, he's got an offbeat sense of humor, right? Or I like the ads with an offbeat sense of humor. So extraordinary, something unusual. So, yeah. And I always said, like, some ads have borderline offensive humor, offbeat humor. And then you said that edgy. You also said edgy. Edgy humor, yeah?

Yeah, but edgy just means like close to, well, it's just like close to being offensive or getting you in trouble with the wider public who might be more sensitive than you are. So can I say that, well, usually I hate advertisements, but sometimes. Some adverts which are hedgy and offbeat are quite okay for me. Well, they're not okay for you. You can find them funny or find them entertaining. You have to explain why you like them. So I find edgy adverts, funny or entertaining.

So agy adverts, right. Adverts can negatively influence our choices. Right? So Rory follows somebody on social media. He goes there and buys their products. You, dear listener, viewer, our favorite person, watch us, listen to us, and then you go and buy what? Rory? If you're so inclined, you could buy our premium episodes for part two and part three. You will find the links for those in the description below. Now I've completely sold myself out.

Yeah, so Rory has just sold himself. Okay, yeah. So some ads, not our ads, some ads can negatively influence our choice or could have a negative effect, a negative influence on our choice. And then Rory made an example about miracle supplement. What did you mean by miracle supplement? You see them on, well, maybe you don't see them on your social media feeds, but you can see them on Instagram.

You have like these absolutely massive guys who are advertising these, they could be pills, or powders that people take and apparently they make you look great but they're called supplements for a reason it's like something that you add on to something but they sell it like it's the main thing

so that should be your first clue that something's not correct but that requires people to have a grasp of well a good grasp of language so that's what they are it could be they do it for everything and it's all absolute nonsense yeah you can say that I don't

like advertisements because they are dishonest and people cheat and they're lie and they are all a bunch of lies. Yeah. I mean, for example, it's like one of the, some of them are like, oh, you should take this powder and it'll make you look good. But these people are clearly taking performance enhancing drugs. Like, no one, no one naturally looks like that. You can, no one with that amount of veins, for example, or that number of veins is,

Tate is living a normal life. Take this water and it will make you into a band nine person. You just drink it and you get a band nine for everything. Well, even we've never said if you listen to our podcast, you're going to get a band nine. That's really misleading. Yeah, we've never said that. Hmm, maybe we shouldn't. We've said that we're helping.

That's different. It takes hard work. Sorry. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Life is difficult. Yeah.

again, on a bright side, many of our listeners do get highest scores, especially for speaking and listening, right? And people get to have fun along the way. Yeah. Any advertising is too much advertising, so, yeah, Rory doesn't like it. And Rory, you've used a very interesting grammar structure here. Have I? Yes, you did. You said, like, I'm probably being a... bit utopian about it because blah blah blah why did you say that i'm probably being utopian utopian utopian like utopia right so imaginary kind of something right which doesn't exist utopia utopian so i'm probably being why not i'm well yes go ahead i'm i'm in trouble now because i've

used present continues no actually to be honest with you and there's a there's a very good purpose behind that because we're using present continuous to describe a temporary situation. And what I'm saying is this is my belief now, but it's probably going to change because it's a bit idealistic about the world. So I should probably change it. Yeah. So for example, you usually say, okay, I'm beautiful. I'm smart. I'm gorgeous. I'm amazing. I'm Maria. I'm Rory. But if you say I'm being silly, it's just right now. Yeah, right? Not forever.

And it's like a temporary situation, not forever. Like, I'm smart, right? But in this situation, oh, I'm being silly at the moment, right? So, and this is a very high level use of the present continuous. And also, for example, when Rory is being stupid or silly, and I go like, Rory, you're being silly. Like, stop it, right? You are telling me nonsense.

You are telling me gibberish, gibberish, right? so just keep telling me smart things, right? So just for this particular moment. I would like to point out, I wasn't being stupid with that explanation of present continuous. That was a good one. It was a good one. Or for example, we can also say, oh, you're being too kind. But actually the person is not kind at all, usually.

And you say, oh, you are being far too kind now, right? But usually they're evil. And some adverts are genuinely nice. So genuinely, if something is genuinely nice, it's like really nice, truly, yeah? I shouldn't have said nice, though. Like, that's a bit bland. Yeah, but you did use a lot of adjectives. We used edgy and offensive and offbeat, and also you've used utopian.

You also used a nice adjective, snazzy. Yes, snazzy is like nice, but it means it's interesting, it's sparkly, it's like, Oh, it's shiny and new. Give us examples. It's like a fun combination of something that's fashionable and interesting and it attracts your attention. So, for example, usually, well, look at the example I gave with the beans. Usually people buy beans that have nice covers because they're interesting.

Yeah, or for example, people can design some snazy graphics. Snazy graphics. or It's to do with getting attention So actually it's perfect for Talking about advertising Because advertising is all about getting attention Yeah it should be eye-catching

Can I say like snazzy adverts Snezy advertising It's usually the products that are snazzy As opposed to the advertising But it could still count I mean it's still a good adjective to use Because like I say it fits the context Can my clothes be snazzy

Snazy clothes They frequently are in your case The shoes, it's the shoes. I say this as I'm wearing black shirt number 327. Yeah, then we can talk about the importance of advertisements for consumers, for customers, consumers, and also for advertising executives, right? So for the managers, for advertising people. Rory doesn't take any advice from celebrities.

Sorry, I went on a little bit of a rant there, but really, when you think about it, What on earth does an actor know about whatever product is they're trying to sell unless they made it themselves? I'm not taking any advice from them. Celebrities advertise some products. And what's the word? What's the very precise word to say that celebrities, famous people, advertise different products? It's... Oh, I didn't say it.

Endorsement. Endorsement. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So you could say, like, I'm not paying any attention to celebrity endorsements, and that would be absolutely fine. Yeah. I didn't say that, though. However, I was caught up and being outraged about how much I dislike celebrity, so that's okay.

And then Rory is kind of getting emotional and then like a, what on earth do they know about life? How to live life well, you know? And that's fine. You can kind of ask questions. You can answer them. You can get emotional. You can get annoyed by the questions. Like, you know, celebrities advertising things telling me what to do, what to drink.

I'm not taking advice from them That's a good one for intonation as well And it's still connected to asking questions It's not a question tag It's just what on earth do they know about And then you could talk about whatever the topic is And what do they know about how to live well? I ask you

Right in the comment, seriously Has a celebrity come out with Any piece of life advice While they were advertising a product That you would want to follow? Hmm I like Messi messy yeah but he advertises you know crisps and um

oh yeah that's for that's what we need in an obesity crisis and he doesn't say anything he's just there you know he just eats these crisps and drinks you know and this just he's nice messy messy yes macy if you want to sponsor our podcast you can go ahead and write to us okay Right, dear listener, thank you very much. Again, it's a comeback of a topic, so do listen to our audio episode we recorded last year in May, May, yeah, May 2021, and yeah, stay in touch. Thank you so much. Bye. We'll see you next week. Bye-bye. Rory, what advertisements do you dislike?

All of them, really? It wants to. watch ads when they could be watching their favorite shows or, I don't know, whatever media is they're consuming. It's maybe easier to talk about the ones I like, such as the Iron Brew Adverts, which usually have some sort of borderline offensive humor going on that's always edgy or darkly funny or offbeat. Most ads are not like that, though, which is why I don't like them. Do ads influence your choice of products? I think once or twice I bought something because it was supported by someone I followed on social media, I have a few shirts as a result of doing something like that.

Otherwise, not really no. If anything, they negatively influence it to make me not want something. Take those miracle supplement ads, for example. Everyone knows the sports people in them are taking steroids or something else to make them cheap. Why would I want to buy something from someone being dishonest when I can work hard and take pleasure from that instead? Is there too much advertising in our life?

Honestly, any advertising is too much advertising. I think you should just let people look and find by themselves using whatever search criteria they come up with, although I'm probably being a bit utopian about that, since I'm quite independently minded and many people are not. And there are some genuinely quite nice adverts. I like the Stelarus fifth anniversary trailer. That's got good music. Why do companies advertise their products? Well, in terms of short to make money and in more detail to make more money than the otherwise would does, well, they otherwise would if they just let people look for things by themselves. I mean, if the branded beans have a catchy tune and an advert compared to the store branded beans,

then people are more likely to be influenced to go and buy the snazier version, even though it's just about exactly the same product. Is advertising important? Well, it depends on what we're talking about. Advertising executives would probably say so, yes, since it's, well, their whole business to create these things. And they're also supporting industries in graphic design, which benefit too. But it's not like they would cease to exist without advertising. And it's important for consumers to make an informed choice. Maybe, although given how dishonest they are these days, I highly doubt it. Is it good that celebrities advertise products?

Well, absolutely not, unless it's their area of speciality. or connected to something they're involved in. I'll listen to a movie star talk about their recent movie, because that's what they were playing a part in. But I'm not taking life advice from them. What on earth do they know about how to live well? Enough of them seem to have catastrophically bad lifestyle outcomes that seems like the opposite advice would be better to follow now.