Weasels

Over the years, I've noticed a few disturbing trends in advertising. They are more or less obvious, but I'm going to point them out anyway.

The first and most obvious trend is advertising pollution. Apart from when outdoors, it's growing increasingly difficult to find something at which to stare, which is not sporting some sort of advertising.

Just in my lifetime, there has been a huge explosion in the amount of advertising to which we are exposed. Print, radio and television were already advertising media; but now we have the Internet; this post is probably surrounded by ads.

Just on a quick glance around the room here, I notice the following brand names: Lenovo, HP, Epson, Grand & Toy, Bell, Fluid, LCBO, Band-Aid, Friskies, Kleenex, Samsung, Tensor, McDonald's, Logitech, C. Crane--and I'll stop there. It's not a big room; maybe four metres square.

We really can't escape it. Even our clothing carries brand logos.

It's only going to get worse.

Second up, I don't appreciate the number of weasel words and phrases that advertisers use. "My husband was showing the signs of a heart attack, so he chewed..." They carefully don't state that he was, in fact, having a heart attack; only that he had the symptoms. Another good (and recent) example is a particular website touting its price reviews. "When I see the Good Price badge, I absolutely trust that." That's nice; you must be a trusting soul to give it a thumbs-up without any supporting evidence.

The third trend, and the one that I find most unreasonable, is the use of "simulations" of the product in action. Wait a minute. If you are advertising for a product, shouldn't you actually have to show the product in actual use? There is currently a cleaning product using that method; and I'm sorry, but there ought to be a law about that. Show the actual product, under real-life conditions, in realtime.

What I do infer, when I see that kind of advertising, is that the product obviously can't cut it in real life; and I add that product to my Do Not Buy list. Their attempt to induce me to buy the product has backfired. I can't believe that nobody out there realizes this. It's not, to borrow the vernacular, rocket science.

There. I feel better. This better moment was sponsored by Pfizer.

Be well,

-Bill