@Richard_Littler

Advertising may not work on you Richard - but if it didn't work on most people, big business wouldn't be spending 1.4 trillion dollars on it every year.

Apart from being designed, obviously, to extract our hard-earned money from us, I think the most pernicious effects of advertising are:
1. It makes us unhappy. That's the whole point. It is fundamentally based on making us feel we'd be better, more attractive, popular, successful, etc, if only we buy this or that latest cosmetic, car, whatever; and
2. It shapes social expectations - it makes having new, more expensive things, holidays, etc, look and feel desirable, it associates happiness with wasteful consumerism, so we come to really believe that having a 'luxury lifestyle' - big house, fancy car, swimming pool, jet-setting, etc - is better than living contentedly in caring families, communities and the natural world.