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Rage Against the Advertising - #2
By ReDact207
I'm not sure whether there is more advertising on a day-to-day basis, or if I'm simply noticing it more.
I haven't thought too much on this topic though recently I've been pretty worked up about it, so I'll just try to voice my feelings as much as possible. I don't believe I am affected by advertising. Perhaps I am on a subconscious level, or perhaps I am on a conscious level - however subliminal messages which play in the back of each commercial delve into my subconscious and tell me to merely accept my understanding of them on a conscious level.
I don't think anyone here likes ads. To me, bad ads make me feel that I bought a worthless television, and good ads are like someone who wants to be your friend for insinscere reasons. Many people don't even distinguish between 'good' and 'bad' advertising, so I'll humour you with my viewpoint examples:BAD:Harvey NormanRetravisionMcDonaldsSuper AMartBigW
GOOD:'Visit Melbourne'Brisbane Treasury Casino (afro-man groove)Optus ads (without sound)
Basically it's just a distinguishing feature between the blatant 'hard sell' and the 'themes with alterior motives' commercial.
I'm sure everyone has, at some point, been subject to network 7's 'Greatest commercials' hosted by never-would-be B-grade-celebrity Andrew Daddo. Firstly, this show isn't even hosted by Daddo, as he's superceded by a DOG, and even then the dog still was able to sell-out and get a role in selling Daewoo cars (who ironically closed their factories in a dog-eating nation). Secondly, the show in its essence is commercials seperated by commercials. The only way they can make it sell is to do an 'adults only' spiel and then somehow go from that to a 'family special' 'worlds funniest commercials'. I'm certain this show, contrary to every commercial, has no target. Thirdly why are there so many B-grade celebrities suddenly doing comebacks nowadays?? Andrew Daddo had a couple of weeks fame for no reason, then everybody suddenly loved Bert Newton around the same time that network 10 was rolling over some pre-washed up celebrities for celeb big brother (3 weeks on, I haven't heard anything from any of them).
This is all coming at a time where last night I was watching SG-1 (not a huge sci-fi fan, but a somewhat decent show nonetheless). Anyway, at about 7:45pm, right on the commercial break a new evolution of advertising dawned. In order to overpower a commercial break, you need to buy the entire block and dedicate it to your advertising? Right? Wrong. You simply purchase two 'hip' early-twenty year olds, give the guy a punce hair cut, buy the chick some bigger boobs and a smaller top, and get them to knock on my door. I hate hawkers or canvasses or whatever they're called. I especially hate it when they refer to me as the 'bill-payer', '18+' entity or in laymans terms, 'able to give money without legal retribution.' I also hate when advertising tries to target me as being a hip early-twenty year old. Sure, all the perfect bodied early-twenty year olds are being corporately purchased in an effort to orient product sales to an influencial age bracket, but I'm pretty certain the rest of us hip early-twenty year olds don't modern line dance in the middle of the outback.
This said, I've recently bought myself a starving child in columbia. I wonder if this has been due to the subconscious conditioning of my mind, or just that my sister has my bank account details. Either way I know this is going against my charity beliefs, however now I feel I've ironically 'bought' my way out of giving charity to some degree.
Anot
her of the ads I really hate are ads for universities (especially ones for my QUT). Who believes that just because ONE person out of an anual 22,000 student intake gets a 'job' (probably office clerk) at accenture will somehow improve their chances of getting their dream-job?
Universities are so screwed up it's unbelievable. I swear if I'm ever required to make a university it will be the best one ever. We've got Queensland university NSW university, Victorian uni etc, but surely if I call mine Australian university (au.edu.au), then it will be renowned as being the best? That said, my plans would be to raise the entry requirements so only those in the OP 1-4 range are elligible. From there i'd make everything 'independant learning', 'required readings' etc, so I wouldn't need any lecturers or tutors. And exams? I figure if they were able to get an OP 1-4, then they are a dilligant worker or somehow guessed 2 years worth of standardised testing. So they either know their stuff or have an enourmous bout of good luck. Either way this means they'll pass all their exams regardless on how hard it is. But writing the exams requires staff which is what I won't have. I've noticed that a number of exams are multiple choice. I noticed that there are two types, mainly:
BIT stands for ___:
a) BInary digiTb) Bachelor of Information Technologyc) Bacon lettuce Tomatod) Woman liberationistse) All of the above/li>
and:
BIT stands for Binary Digit:
a) trueb) false
I devised a system which still makes the student 'think' the exam is legitamate and testing their knowledge hence encouraging them to learn the study material, whist in reality a computer randomly selects a number of sentances from their text and reconstructs it in the following way:
BIT stands for ____:
a) Binary Digitb) all of the above
Of course, all this can be done using the 'power' of the internet so I wouldn't need any start-up capital. This way, people wouldn't hate coming to uni because it wouldn't physically exist, I wouldn't be overhead on buildings and maintenance, and that businesses like accenture will buy my students because they're from a prestigeous sounding university which in turn:
a) attracts more unwitting students andb) as graduates get older, they employ students from AU as they have fond memories of it (or rather lack of bad memories), whilst also hating uni's like QUT due to annoying advertising.
Anyway back on topic, here's my surefire way for preventing advertising infiltration to your head. After seeing some form of advertising, do the following:(Here's one with McDonalds 'new taste menu')
1: State the company selling it to you (McDonalds)2: State the product they're trying to sell you (Hamburgers)3: State the target audience (teens)4: State the weakness they're targeting (fat people who are unpopular)5: State how they target that weakness, in an abstract manner (Get some hip early-twenty year olds to eat hamburgers and dance to show how your life could be if you bought McDonalds)
I guarantee that adhering to the above will ensure you won't buy because of their advertising. In fact you will probably end up laughing each time you look at the people in a McDonalds 'restaraunt'.
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