"Whasaaaaap!"-- two words, combined into one. This word was THE WORD, just a year or two ago, stemming from a Budweiser commercial that showed a group of friends greeting each other on the phone with this phrase. The phrase became so famous that the group of friends who started it even made an appearance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. They looked innocent enough. Among other Budweiser commercials one shows a group of frogs chirping the fragments: Bud, Weis, and ER, another shows a 20 something son telling his father, "I love you man," just in order to get his beer. One may ask, "What is wrong with these commercials?" What do these commercial have to do with the product they are selling anyways? Beer commercials are dominating the airways more than ever. You may watch the Super Bowl, and notice that Budweiser is advertised more than any other product. According to Business Week Online, companies such as Budweiser dished out an average of $2 million to advertise in the 2003 Super Bowl (np). Why would they do this, unless they knew their sales would outweigh their costs?
             Funny commercials such as those Budweiser commercials employ some of the many strategies companies use to try and lure costumers. Along with beer/alcohol companies, tobacco companies use methods that would be deemed unethical by most people. Three such strategies include: the alcohol industry's attempts to promote alcohol to young people, the tobacco industry's attempts to advertise to young kids and its attempts to increase sales overseas.
             First, let's talk about the ploys that the alcohol industry uses to lure college students and young teenagers. In many beer commercials, you may see a raging party, with everyone drinking a certain beer. This is meant to appeal to the college crowd. Being on their own for the first time, college students sometimes tend to let loose and party a lot. These companies target this cro...