Ad Libs
Nick and I often disagree about advertising. Obviously, as a communications major advertisements and marketing will be a large aspect of whatever career he chooses to pursue. He certainly spends a great deal of his free time and energy on both of them, whether it be for a project, an event, or just plain old self-promotion. Having not known Nick when he was younger, I cannot say for certain whether this is something he had a natural attraction to or it’s an interest he developed over time, but he certainly has adapted his thinking to consider what sells, what gets noticed, what achieves notoriety, and how. It’s his bread and butter, if you will. Given these facts, it’s not surprising that he supports, or at the very least does not oppose, the proliferation of advertising.
I, on the other hand, have grown tired over the years of being pelted with messages from every angle imploring me to buy, buy, buy. That’s my initial objection to advertising - that it’s constant and inescapable. I feel like there’s an abundance of advertisements plastered everywhere and on everything. Despite the fact that doing so serves a very useful purpose, heaven knows that I do not enjoy going to the dentist, but at the very least it’s a discomfort I only have to endure for an hour or so every six months. In their defense, advertisements serve a useful purpose as well - more on that later, but unlike your semiannual teeth cleaning, adverting has become both continuous and incessant. You cannot watch television, go to the movies, surf the internet, read the news, or even just walk outside without being told you should do this, see that, buy this other thing, and it’s coming at you from every angle. I have often thought that I would prefer advertising to be like those trips to the dentist; I would gladly sit through a day of nothing but advertising if it meant I did not have to look at a single ad for the next month.
Now as I said, advertisements do serve a legitimate purpose. In essence, you trade time and/or attention for money. This principle is exemplified best in LiveJournal itself. If you want special features on LJ, you can go one of two routes. Either you can pay a yearly fee for a paid account, or you can have a “sponsored” account which has most of the same features in exchange for having banner ads in your journal. Now while I am generally annoyed by most ads, this is a pretty sweet deal in principle, especially if you just ignore them anyway, and this deal is not just limited to LiveJournal. Television is cheaper because of advertising dollars, organizations can make t-shirts for free and all they have to do is paste some company’s logo on the back. In essence, you can get content that’s free of charge in exchange for the inconvenience of the occasional (or persistent) ad. Where this crosses a line for me, and I would speculate that many share this view, is when these ads are made so that they’re impossible to ignore. I do not mean this in the sense of “wow, there’s some fantastic art on that Pepsi poster,” but ads that are, as I described earlier, unavoidable. The advertisements that really irk us are things like pop-ups, spam, talking banner ads, and the like. These techniques of marketing are employed with disturbing frequency. It’s no wonder people would take issue with ads that actually get in the way of the content you’re trying to enjoy.
Yet despite the fact that we are bombarded with advertising already, Madison Avenue is constantly working to find new and creative ways to shill to us. Recently, Facebook decided to open up its user base of millions and millions of active members to the highest bidder, allowing companies to come in and hawk their wares with a greater freedom than ever before. Now that they have access to Facebook in the form of “applications,” building your message into the site itself is easier than ever. When the magic of TiVo came along and advertising firms spent millions in market research to discover that people fast forward through the commercials (what a shock), they also decided to pull out their ace in the hole - product placement. That’s right, now it’s no longer possible to, in the words of Conan O’brien, “just get up and leave the room when the commercials come on,” because now the commercials are the show. I have made my distaste for American Idol quite clear in the past, but every time I see the last five minutes of the show while waiting for House to come on, I think I’ve stumbled into some sort of tribute to Coca Cola. I am told that all the good guys on 24 drive Fords and make calls on Cisco phones. When marketing is mixed with content, the two begin to blend together. Where do you draw the line between when you’re seeing art, when you’re being entertained, and when you’re being sold to? I am a fairly discerning person and sometimes I cannot tell the difference; what chance do less scrutinizing viewers have?
That’s what bothers me more - the blurring between content and advertisement. As far as I am concerned, they should be as separate as church and state. This was another aspect where Nick and I disagreed. When Facebook instituted ads in their news feeds, I started a group in opposition; my reason for doing so was that while I did not object to the banner ads off to the sides, I did not appreciate trying to see what’s new with my friends while having to hear about “Kristin’s Lasik Journey” smack dab in the middle of the updates. Nick’s position was that it was Mark Zuckerberg’s site and if that’s how he wanted to make money, more power to him, and he refused to join the group.
Yet, it was not until recently that I realized why I am truly so resistant to the machinations of advertisers. It is nigh impossible to convey complex or intricate messages in a thirty second spot, a two by six banner ad, or even a fifty foot billboard which will likely catch someone’s attention for a mere blink of an eye. Because of this, most advertisements are very basic, very dumbed-down, and in a word, crass. They appeal to people’s base instincts: greed, gluttony, laziness. It has been well noted that “sex sells,” and advertisers use that little gem as much as possible. They know that your gaze is going to drift to that bikini model who has absolutely nothing to do with Quality Dry Cleaning Inc. They teach you to live frivolously, act wastefully, and be shallow. The worst part of it is that it’s a vicious cycle. Advertisers target the group who deal almost exclusively in disposable income: young people. While they’re still forming values and trying to make sense of the world, young Americans are subject to a barrage of these images that tell them drinking a particular soda or wearing a particular designer will make them cool. The advertisers appeal to these base instincts, and when you are constantly faced with these messages, your base instincts come out, which the advertisers in turn take advantage of and perpetuate the cycle on and on. Eventually it becomes an attitude ingrained in our culture.
What’s even worse is how misleading these ads often are; they swindle honest trusting people. And for what? So these purveyors of crap can make an extra buck. I watch House and see prescription drugs being advertised during a medical show. They bring up extremely vague and general possible symptoms for a problem it is very likely you do not have, and tell you to suggest their medication as remedy to your doctor. First of all, shouldn’t a trained medical professional be the one making the assessments about my symptoms? Secondly, shouldn’t my doctor be the one recommending medications to me? Thirdly, isn’t it especially ironic that this is being done during a show whose main character abuses prescription drugs to a ridiculous degree? It boggles the mind.
To paraphrase Fight Club, advertisements try to convince people to spend money they don’t have on things they don’t need. There is so much going on in the world right now and things like Darfur are barely a blip on most people’s radars. Instead of being coaxed to pay attention, to get involved, people are practically screamed at to notice the celebrity using this product, check out this shiny new automobile, or watch the latest episode of promiscuous idiot island. If we as a culture put half as much energy into improving things as we do parting fools with their money, this world would be a much better place.
I, on the other hand, have grown tired over the years of being pelted with messages from every angle imploring me to buy, buy, buy. That’s my initial objection to advertising - that it’s constant and inescapable. I feel like there’s an abundance of advertisements plastered everywhere and on everything. Despite the fact that doing so serves a very useful purpose, heaven knows that I do not enjoy going to the dentist, but at the very least it’s a discomfort I only have to endure for an hour or so every six months. In their defense, advertisements serve a useful purpose as well - more on that later, but unlike your semiannual teeth cleaning, adverting has become both continuous and incessant. You cannot watch television, go to the movies, surf the internet, read the news, or even just walk outside without being told you should do this, see that, buy this other thing, and it’s coming at you from every angle. I have often thought that I would prefer advertising to be like those trips to the dentist; I would gladly sit through a day of nothing but advertising if it meant I did not have to look at a single ad for the next month.
Now as I said, advertisements do serve a legitimate purpose. In essence, you trade time and/or attention for money. This principle is exemplified best in LiveJournal itself. If you want special features on LJ, you can go one of two routes. Either you can pay a yearly fee for a paid account, or you can have a “sponsored” account which has most of the same features in exchange for having banner ads in your journal. Now while I am generally annoyed by most ads, this is a pretty sweet deal in principle, especially if you just ignore them anyway, and this deal is not just limited to LiveJournal. Television is cheaper because of advertising dollars, organizations can make t-shirts for free and all they have to do is paste some company’s logo on the back. In essence, you can get content that’s free of charge in exchange for the inconvenience of the occasional (or persistent) ad. Where this crosses a line for me, and I would speculate that many share this view, is when these ads are made so that they’re impossible to ignore. I do not mean this in the sense of “wow, there’s some fantastic art on that Pepsi poster,” but ads that are, as I described earlier, unavoidable. The advertisements that really irk us are things like pop-ups, spam, talking banner ads, and the like. These techniques of marketing are employed with disturbing frequency. It’s no wonder people would take issue with ads that actually get in the way of the content you’re trying to enjoy.
Yet despite the fact that we are bombarded with advertising already, Madison Avenue is constantly working to find new and creative ways to shill to us. Recently, Facebook decided to open up its user base of millions and millions of active members to the highest bidder, allowing companies to come in and hawk their wares with a greater freedom than ever before. Now that they have access to Facebook in the form of “applications,” building your message into the site itself is easier than ever. When the magic of TiVo came along and advertising firms spent millions in market research to discover that people fast forward through the commercials (what a shock), they also decided to pull out their ace in the hole - product placement. That’s right, now it’s no longer possible to, in the words of Conan O’brien, “just get up and leave the room when the commercials come on,” because now the commercials are the show. I have made my distaste for American Idol quite clear in the past, but every time I see the last five minutes of the show while waiting for House to come on, I think I’ve stumbled into some sort of tribute to Coca Cola. I am told that all the good guys on 24 drive Fords and make calls on Cisco phones. When marketing is mixed with content, the two begin to blend together. Where do you draw the line between when you’re seeing art, when you’re being entertained, and when you’re being sold to? I am a fairly discerning person and sometimes I cannot tell the difference; what chance do less scrutinizing viewers have?
That’s what bothers me more - the blurring between content and advertisement. As far as I am concerned, they should be as separate as church and state. This was another aspect where Nick and I disagreed. When Facebook instituted ads in their news feeds, I started a group in opposition; my reason for doing so was that while I did not object to the banner ads off to the sides, I did not appreciate trying to see what’s new with my friends while having to hear about “Kristin’s Lasik Journey” smack dab in the middle of the updates. Nick’s position was that it was Mark Zuckerberg’s site and if that’s how he wanted to make money, more power to him, and he refused to join the group.
Yet, it was not until recently that I realized why I am truly so resistant to the machinations of advertisers. It is nigh impossible to convey complex or intricate messages in a thirty second spot, a two by six banner ad, or even a fifty foot billboard which will likely catch someone’s attention for a mere blink of an eye. Because of this, most advertisements are very basic, very dumbed-down, and in a word, crass. They appeal to people’s base instincts: greed, gluttony, laziness. It has been well noted that “sex sells,” and advertisers use that little gem as much as possible. They know that your gaze is going to drift to that bikini model who has absolutely nothing to do with Quality Dry Cleaning Inc. They teach you to live frivolously, act wastefully, and be shallow. The worst part of it is that it’s a vicious cycle. Advertisers target the group who deal almost exclusively in disposable income: young people. While they’re still forming values and trying to make sense of the world, young Americans are subject to a barrage of these images that tell them drinking a particular soda or wearing a particular designer will make them cool. The advertisers appeal to these base instincts, and when you are constantly faced with these messages, your base instincts come out, which the advertisers in turn take advantage of and perpetuate the cycle on and on. Eventually it becomes an attitude ingrained in our culture.
What’s even worse is how misleading these ads often are; they swindle honest trusting people. And for what? So these purveyors of crap can make an extra buck. I watch House and see prescription drugs being advertised during a medical show. They bring up extremely vague and general possible symptoms for a problem it is very likely you do not have, and tell you to suggest their medication as remedy to your doctor. First of all, shouldn’t a trained medical professional be the one making the assessments about my symptoms? Secondly, shouldn’t my doctor be the one recommending medications to me? Thirdly, isn’t it especially ironic that this is being done during a show whose main character abuses prescription drugs to a ridiculous degree? It boggles the mind.
To paraphrase Fight Club, advertisements try to convince people to spend money they don’t have on things they don’t need. There is so much going on in the world right now and things like Darfur are barely a blip on most people’s radars. Instead of being coaxed to pay attention, to get involved, people are practically screamed at to notice the celebrity using this product, check out this shiny new automobile, or watch the latest episode of promiscuous idiot island. If we as a culture put half as much energy into improving things as we do parting fools with their money, this world would be a much better place.