The omnipresence and meaninglessness of advertising
There is advertising everywhere. It surrounds me… on walls… on cars… on screens and buses and urinals… everywhere. I have become numb to it. I don’t even see it anymore… don’t read it… don’t comprehend it… don’t process it as part of anything other than a piece of nature. It has become as ubiquitous as green leaves and as prevalent as air. It surrounds like water. It is the modern landscape and it makes me wonder… does it work anymore? Can it have anywhere near the effect that it is designed to have? Could it ever be as compelling on the street as it is when it gets the go in the boardroom? Can it ever achieve its intended effect? Perhaps… maybe… sometimes… with the right mix of pertinence and wit an advertisement may actually inform and direct a purchasing decision… but I would bet that it happens infrequently at best… sporadically and without any real way to predict how, why, where, or when it will make somebody take an action that they would not have taken normally. Meaningless… abstract… everywhere.
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Isn’t the ad-overkill another way to get past the fact that we *do* automatically ignore it all? Because we don’t “see” the torrent of ads, only our subconcious is affected now - but thats all that matters to them, right? When it’s time to buy some airline tickets or look into new car insurance they hope we dont even go seaching anymore, we don’t have to, since we’ve absorbed so much without even thinking, we simply “remember” the gnome or the lizard.