Advertising provides the colorful strands of yarn that hold the fabric of our economy together. It is essential, it is a necessary evil. And in the case of the Budweiser frogs, advertising may not necessarily be evil.
When we think of advertising, most of us think of television commercials. Entertaining little pockets of manipulation that bring us the shows we like to watch on TV. Some would argue that television advertising is insidious and evil in the way that it attempts to control the minds of the public, particularly the weak and the ignorant (like children).
I think it’s interesting that the only persons who can afford to buy television advertising are those who are already rich. Their goal in doing so is to become even richer, why else would they bother?
Surprisingly, I have little problem with rich people paying for my television shows so they can slip me a message designed to get me to give my money to them. I find them pretty easy to ignore, especially since I rarely watch TV. Television advertising aimed at my children is a little more sensitive because it preys on our weaknesses: my children’s weakness in not having a mature BS filter with which to ignore advertising and not having learned the value of delayed gratification; and my own weakness in feeling guilty if I don’t give my children every blessed thing they see on TV.
Even so, I can live with commercials. I can take comfort in the fact that each ad has cost some rich person more money than I make in six months and that it will fail in its goal to convince me to buy what that rich person is selling. And that they will have to pay another seventy-five grand to run another ad next month to try again. Sometimes I even like commercials, they’re funny or nostalgic or creative. When I don’t like them, I can turn my attention to something else or change the channel.
The same is true for radio ads, although they are a lot less likely to have any redeeming entertainment value. But if hearing an obnoxious radio ad is the price I pay for listening to music I like or my favorite morning DJ while I work or drive, it’s a small sacrifice. Once again, quite easy to tune it out or turn it off.
Print ads, they’re okay too. They often provide useful consumer information, or they present interesting images for my eye to appreciate. They can certainly be ignored or avoided by a simple turning of the page.
But the rules are different for the most insidious and intrusive kinds of marketing. These are the ads that cost the advertiser next to nothing to circulate--telemarketing, email spam and fax marketing. Because it’s cheap, there’s no incentive to make the ad entertaining nor even any reason to believe the product or service is worth any more than the cost to market it in this way. This kind of marketing is nearly impossible to fight from a consumer point of view because even if only ONE person responds to it (out of a billion or so potential customers reached), it’s a pay-off.
Last year my home telephone number somehow found its way onto a fax marketing list. For months I dealt with beeep-beeeep-beeep calls at all hours of the day, and usually in the middle of the night. I spoke to the phone company and learned the only thing they could do about it was to change my number. I should change my home phone number so that I can avoid being blasted with beep-beep-beep electronic advertising in a language I can’t even understand.
I thought perhaps it was just one misguided person or company who had my number. I pictured some poor secretary growing more and more frantic as the days go by, wondering why she can’t get the darn fax to go through, even when she’s tried it at all hours of the day!
So I picked up a cheap fax machine at a pawn shop and plugged it in, anxious to see who had been trying so urgently to fax me. Must be a very important message.
Affordable interest rates, get a second mortgage on your house! Get Cheap Prescription Drugs! Enlarge your penis! (okay, not really that one, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see that one come rolling off the ol’ fax machine any day.)
I politely called each company and informed them that they were faxing to a residential number and asked them to help me fix it by tracking down the source of the marketing list. I was assured by one and all, my number would be removed. I would never receive another fax from them.
Sometimes the ads come with an automatic "remove me" line, an 800 number you call and put in your fax number and it’s automatically removed. I called about a dozen of those--and the frequency of the faxes doubled, then tripled.
You see, when you call that number that appears on the fax you just received, and you enter in your fax number, you’ve just informed them that it’s a working fax and that a real live person is on the other end receiving the messages. Bonanza! That’s a good fax number to keep selling on that marketing list!
Unlike paid ads in other media, fax ads and telemarketing can not be ignored. Nor do you "get" anything back from your participation--no music, no tv show, no entertainment. It’s like a date with a man who takes you directly to his house and points to the bed and says "I’d like some sex now, please. How bout a blowjob?" without even bothering to offer dinner or conversation as an incentive.
It’s insulting and it’s rude. I hope to see some laws put in place to curb this terrible trend. Maybe now that the election’s over, our glorious president can make this his top priority, right after he finishes taking care of those filthy terrorists.
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