Are Values Betokened in Filipino Television Advertisements?

Abstract

Humanity needs values to direct their daily activities since they offer the ethical bearings of their behavior. Television advertisements are rooted in specific values. The advertisements have dual purposes of influencing and encouraging the audience to adopt the products or services, and the attitudes and values embedded inside them. This paper determined the contemporary values betokened in the top-rank Filipino television advertisements from 2010 to 2017 based on online reviews. A complete enumeration [N=100] of freshman college students who were enrolled in the subjects handled by the researchers were the respondents of this study. They watched the advertisements (for familiarity) thrice and watched for the fourth time to identify the contemporary values embedded in each advertisement. The results revealed four contemporary values embedded in the advertisements, such as personal values, spiritual values, moral values, and technological values. Hence, advertising a product is not just an indication of an emerging economy, but it also addresses injecting specific values, attitudes, and ideologies that form the new society. Moreover, the community subconsciously adopts contemporary values betokened in the advertisements circulated through mass media, especially that young and old are exposed daily to technology. Furthermore, increasing the number of respondents who will identify the contemporary values present in TV advertisements in the Philippines, including the number of commercials to assess, are the recommendations of this study.