Advertising Products as New: Causes and Effects

In their advertising, businesses nowadays usually emphasise that their products are new in some way. Why is this? Do you think it is a positive or negative development?

Annotated response

6 correction notes

Showing 6 correction notes.

Businesses often have to endure cut-throat competition in order to attract customers and increase sales and profit. As a means to attract more customers, they have a tool which emphasises how their products stand out from the crowd and how uniquely novel they are. Advertising new and unique features of a product is a marketing and branding strategy to boost sales, and in my opinion, it is mostly a negative development.

Every brand claims that they have , and their goods have fascinating new features. They do so to create a positive impression on the consumers to increase their sales and profitability while also staying ahead of their competitors. Take the advertisements that we watch on TV for consumer products like shampoo, soaps or body lotion - all of which proclaim that their products have the best ingredients and something new that their counterparts do not have. Even they beat their old versions by adding a new vitamin or flavour (which is often ridiculed by scientists) and claiming that this is the best-ever product! Clearly, this is a marketing strategy to boost sales and profitability while also creating a craving among consumers for their products.

This trend may have some advantages but it is mostly a negative trend because the new features that the businesses advertise are nothing novel in the true sense. They are just another version of the same product with a change in look, flavour or ingredients. Most often consumer products add more creativity to their advertisements than the real products, thus that people need their new products.

In conclusion, novelty and innovation in products come through research and development, not through marketing and advertising tricks - which is often the case in the adverts we are exposed to. It is expected that the true features of goods rather than claiming something new and innovative every now and then.

Overall assessment

Why this response received Band 7.0

The response's strongest aspect is its clear, consistent position that emphasising novelty in advertising is largely negative, supported by a relevant consumer-products example and a range of vocabulary. The main limitation is some repetition of the same ideas about sales and profitability, which limits depth of development and makes parts of the argument feel recycled rather than expanded.

IELTS criteria

How each score was decided

Task Response

7.0

The response answers both questions directly, maintains a clear and consistent position that the trend is mostly negative, and develops the why and the evaluation with a relevant shampoo-and-soap example, though idea development is somewhat narrow and repetitive.

Coherence and Cohesion

7.0

Ideas progress logically through a clear introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion with appropriate cohesive devices, but the heavy recurrence of the same points about sales and profitability makes progression within paragraphs slightly mechanical.

Lexical Resource

7.0

Vocabulary is flexible and mostly precise, with natural collocations such as 'cut-throat competition', 'marketing and branding strategy', and 'creating a craving among consumers', though some phrases are informal or overused ('this is the best-ever product', repeated 'sales and profitability').

Grammatical Range and Accuracy

7.0

Sentence structures show good variety and control, including complex relative and conditional forms, with only occasional minor slips such as 'making a false sense' and tense or article choices that do not impede understanding.