Random Thoughts: I Hate Advertisers
Advertising is a necessary evil of capitalism. I'm not debating that.
My biggest qualm is with the deceitful, underhanded, unethical, insulting and downright evil techniques that modern advertisers employ to try to separate consumers from their money.
In it's purest form, advertisement is informing someone that your product exists and what its intended use is.
Example:
We have a product called Tide. It is a laundry detergent. It is for cleaning your clothes.
That's simple, honest, to the point and accurate. Completely wrong according to today's advertisers.
Today's advertisers look at their job as inducing you (the consumers) to buy a specific product. They don't care if the product is good, if it works, or if you need it. All they care about is getting you to buy it. They will say or do anything to get you to do this short of breaking the law - and sometimes even then if they think they can make enough profit to offset the penalty.
After bombarding generations of people with ads that claim that such-and-such product is better than the "leading brand" for products that consistently fail to live up to these promises, the public - Generation X and Y specifically have been labeled "ad-resistant", causing advertisers to resort to more subtle methods.
The advertiser responsible for Mentos ads explains that he knows his ads are banal, but his goal was to make them irritating enough that they stuck in your head.
Advertisers intentionally try to get children to demand that their parents purchase certain products and misbehave if the parent's don't comply. They even have an official term for it - it's called the "Nag Factor".
Advertisers show images of ridiculously happy or euphoric people next to their product in the hopes that you will associate happy feelings with their product.
It's so obvious that it's almost not worth mentioning, but advertisers also routinely use sexual images for the same purpose, preying on our most basic of instincts.
How did we ever live before Lipitor, Viagra, Levitra, Zantac, Prevacid, Paxil, Claritin, Crestor and the other billions of drugs that you're being told now to "talk to your doctor" about? It used to be that if you needed a drug your doctor would talk to you, but not nowadays. Oh no, you're not buying enough drugs if you don't have your doctor on speed-dial so you can ring him up any time Pfizer decides that you need to try their latest miracle drug. You can't possibly be healthy without a fist full of pills every day.
You can pick up virtually any marketing magazine or book that promises to show you how to reach today's consumer and it will go on and on about how the old tricks won't work so we have to have all new tricks like honesty (not real honesty, just the impression of it) and entertainment.
The thing I find most disturbing about it is that you can pick up a book about dog training and notice distinct similarities in the attitudes of advertisers trying to get consumers to buy products and dog trainers trying to train dogs to sit. In reality that's how advertisers view consumers - as their unwitting servants. We exist to do their bidding, it's just a matter of tricking us into doing it.
Ever wonder why a really good television program suddenly got cancelled? Firefly? Threshold? Eyes? Advertisers. They didn't feel that the show reached a large enough demographic and that was that. Just Google the phrase "new customer majority" and you'll see what I mean.
Does anyone remember the original promise of cable Television? Your subscription fees were supposed to pay for the programming instead of advertisers. But Television got greedy and started double-dipping, so now we pay for Television that is easily 30% advertisement. They don't even wait until the built-in commercial breaks anymore - ads are popped right up over the program you're watching. Maybe one day they'll find a way to beam ads right into our brains as we sleep! Wouldn't that be convenient!
Replay TV, the TiVO rival, advertised as one of the most attractive aspects of its product a feature that would allow you to very conveniently skip advertisements when watching TV. The recorder would do this for you automatically on pre-recorded programs, and would even do it for you on "live" TV if given enough lead time. Pressured by TV advertisers, Replay TV removed the feature. Customers complained loud and long over it so they replaced the feature and were later sued into bankruptcy by TV advertisers. The product was purchased by a new company and no longer contains the feature. Get that, America? You're not allowed to watch TV without advertisements. Why, it's practically stealing, you evil pirates!
In summary, I hate advertisers for the following reasons - they lie, insult me, insult my intelligence, give me bad advice, try to dictate my habits, and they wield entirely too much power.
What can we do about it? (assuming that you don't want to be a dupe like the masses) Not much besides refuse to let advertising sway your decisions. Research a product and get honest answers from people who have actually used it before buying it.
My wife thinks I'm crazy (and she's usually a pretty good judge of character, so I probably am), but I actually maintain a list of companies that I will not do business with or purchase products from based on the advertising they have thrown at me. Instead of passively ignoring ads, I seek to punish companies for insulting me and attempting to drown me in their intellectual garbage.
My favorite method of resistance is Television on DVD - you might be surprised at how immensely better TV is without advertisements. I'm planning on enjoying it while it lasts - I'm sure some vile scum-sucking congealed excrement that passes itself off as a human being is hard at work trying to make sure that unskippable product ads find their way into even the DVD versions of the shows.
All I can say is thank God for hackers.
HTPC
Linux HTPC
My biggest qualm is with the deceitful, underhanded, unethical, insulting and downright evil techniques that modern advertisers employ to try to separate consumers from their money.
In it's purest form, advertisement is informing someone that your product exists and what its intended use is.
Example:
We have a product called Tide. It is a laundry detergent. It is for cleaning your clothes.
That's simple, honest, to the point and accurate. Completely wrong according to today's advertisers.
Today's advertisers look at their job as inducing you (the consumers) to buy a specific product. They don't care if the product is good, if it works, or if you need it. All they care about is getting you to buy it. They will say or do anything to get you to do this short of breaking the law - and sometimes even then if they think they can make enough profit to offset the penalty.
After bombarding generations of people with ads that claim that such-and-such product is better than the "leading brand" for products that consistently fail to live up to these promises, the public - Generation X and Y specifically have been labeled "ad-resistant", causing advertisers to resort to more subtle methods.
The advertiser responsible for Mentos ads explains that he knows his ads are banal, but his goal was to make them irritating enough that they stuck in your head.
Advertisers intentionally try to get children to demand that their parents purchase certain products and misbehave if the parent's don't comply. They even have an official term for it - it's called the "Nag Factor".
Advertisers show images of ridiculously happy or euphoric people next to their product in the hopes that you will associate happy feelings with their product.
It's so obvious that it's almost not worth mentioning, but advertisers also routinely use sexual images for the same purpose, preying on our most basic of instincts.
How did we ever live before Lipitor, Viagra, Levitra, Zantac, Prevacid, Paxil, Claritin, Crestor and the other billions of drugs that you're being told now to "talk to your doctor" about? It used to be that if you needed a drug your doctor would talk to you, but not nowadays. Oh no, you're not buying enough drugs if you don't have your doctor on speed-dial so you can ring him up any time Pfizer decides that you need to try their latest miracle drug. You can't possibly be healthy without a fist full of pills every day.
You can pick up virtually any marketing magazine or book that promises to show you how to reach today's consumer and it will go on and on about how the old tricks won't work so we have to have all new tricks like honesty (not real honesty, just the impression of it) and entertainment.
The thing I find most disturbing about it is that you can pick up a book about dog training and notice distinct similarities in the attitudes of advertisers trying to get consumers to buy products and dog trainers trying to train dogs to sit. In reality that's how advertisers view consumers - as their unwitting servants. We exist to do their bidding, it's just a matter of tricking us into doing it.
Ever wonder why a really good television program suddenly got cancelled? Firefly? Threshold? Eyes? Advertisers. They didn't feel that the show reached a large enough demographic and that was that. Just Google the phrase "new customer majority" and you'll see what I mean.
Does anyone remember the original promise of cable Television? Your subscription fees were supposed to pay for the programming instead of advertisers. But Television got greedy and started double-dipping, so now we pay for Television that is easily 30% advertisement. They don't even wait until the built-in commercial breaks anymore - ads are popped right up over the program you're watching. Maybe one day they'll find a way to beam ads right into our brains as we sleep! Wouldn't that be convenient!
Replay TV, the TiVO rival, advertised as one of the most attractive aspects of its product a feature that would allow you to very conveniently skip advertisements when watching TV. The recorder would do this for you automatically on pre-recorded programs, and would even do it for you on "live" TV if given enough lead time. Pressured by TV advertisers, Replay TV removed the feature. Customers complained loud and long over it so they replaced the feature and were later sued into bankruptcy by TV advertisers. The product was purchased by a new company and no longer contains the feature. Get that, America? You're not allowed to watch TV without advertisements. Why, it's practically stealing, you evil pirates!
In summary, I hate advertisers for the following reasons - they lie, insult me, insult my intelligence, give me bad advice, try to dictate my habits, and they wield entirely too much power.
What can we do about it? (assuming that you don't want to be a dupe like the masses) Not much besides refuse to let advertising sway your decisions. Research a product and get honest answers from people who have actually used it before buying it.
My wife thinks I'm crazy (and she's usually a pretty good judge of character, so I probably am), but I actually maintain a list of companies that I will not do business with or purchase products from based on the advertising they have thrown at me. Instead of passively ignoring ads, I seek to punish companies for insulting me and attempting to drown me in their intellectual garbage.
My favorite method of resistance is Television on DVD - you might be surprised at how immensely better TV is without advertisements. I'm planning on enjoying it while it lasts - I'm sure some vile scum-sucking congealed excrement that passes itself off as a human being is hard at work trying to make sure that unskippable product ads find their way into even the DVD versions of the shows.
All I can say is thank God for hackers.
HTPC
Linux HTPC
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