ads and marketing rage

So our lives are becoming suffused by the infernal noise of advertising. What can we do about this curse? REVOLT!

One example of the horrors of marketing occurs in the goofy American cartoon The Simpsons. As shown in the UK, the show features a sneaky little ad for a pizza company, which I'll refer to as Fatbastardo Pizza, so as not to further expose the brand and to deflect attacks from legal hyenas. (Interestingly, the ad features the clueless, corpulent Homer Simpson himself apparently dialling for some of Fastbastardo's waist-expanding grub, at least they're honest). This type of marketing is intrusive because it is virtually product placement. It is difficult to avoid being exposed to the ad for Fatbastardo Pizza because it is directly concatenated to the cartoon, before the real ad break. As a modest token protest, I dodge Fatbastardo's products, and politely ask others do so. (Which will do our collective blood pressures and waistlines no harm into the bargain).

Incidentally, it hardly came as a shock to learn from a friend that Fatbastardo Pizza is unfit for human consumption and tastes like pigeon shit.

The above revelation is anecdotal evidence that supports an obvious concept: the more a corporation forks out for advertising, the less it spends on the quality of the actual product they are trying to flog. Indeed the product, if dreadful, can only be sold through aggressive marketing. So a decent rule of thumb is that the more a product is advertised and hyped, the worse value for money it is. (The exception is that genuinely innovative and novel products may need to be advertised to raise awareness of the innovation, but is rarely the case).

Many ads are responsible for dumbing down our society. Some adverts are responsible for ruining our health. McShit burger marketing contributes directly to obesity and related health problems. Not only are McShit burgers reducing the proportion of people that are physically attractive by transforming them into pig-ugly lard arses, but they are increasing depression, heart attacks, and are generally causing hospital and medical resources to be consumed by self-inflicted fatties.

There is an effort underway in England, at time of writing, to get unhealthy, addictive food ads banned from children's TV slots, and have warning signs put on chocolate/candy bars and snacks. Nice to see the government trying to do something useful for a change, albeit belatedly. Have you seen the number of porkie kids around lately (in the West)? It's incredible. Their parents should be ashamed (and charged with child abuse), and so should the corporations that pay the ponytails in some queer marketing shop to hype their fattening puddings, fast food and other crap upon innocent children. Oh, I forgot corporations have no shame, only share prices. Silly me.

Why is fast food so evil? Fast food has higher concentrations of energy than normal food, thus providing an incredible intake of calories in a relatively small and unfilling meal. Fast food is also rich in simple carbohydrates. Simple carbs flood the body with insulin. It is no coincidence that Insulin is the messenger hormone that tells the body to pile on layers of fat.

And who benefits from a society full of blubbery losers? Marketers and the scamming weight loss industry! The deluge of bullshit weight loss schemes that the unscrupulous marketers are pedalling gives an idea of this sheer size of this plague, the market is worth countless guzzlillions. Nice business model: make 'em fat, put 'em on diets and screw 'em royally. Advertise fast food, push sugary food, make them fat again. (Naively ideological note: aren't all Western governments supposed to protect their subjects from this cynical exploitation/extortion?)

On a more subtle note, any ads that reduce health albeit in a counter intuitive way should be forced to provide warnings. For example, promotion of poisonous food is not the only way that the marketing ponytails our savaging our brats, see Clean Rage.

Indeed, most marketing damages individuals, the environment, society or all three. Ads for cigarettes are merely the most obvious example. Fortunately ciggie ads are increasingly outlawed in the West. Many other types of ad should suffer the same fate, such as SUV ads (see SUV rage). SUV's are being pitched at us relentlessly through marketing. Madness.

Then you have the plague of ads for loans and ads that encourage you to sue people for "accidents" (creating our costly and loathsome compensation culture). These ads are evil: they serve corrupt, parasitic organisations to the detriment of everyone else, and should be illegal. Such organisations do not create useful things, or even wealth. They are leeches that suck cash from the needy; from the innocent; even from benevolent organisations that are financed through the tax we pay in good (or bad) faith. Carol Vordemann (a tacky leach; third rate celeb in the UK; an ageing graduate with a 3rd class degree from Cambridge, whose smug, scabrous mug appears in quadrillions of loans ads) and her ilk should be ashamed for whoring themselves out to such unscrupulous bottom feeders. The best way to stop this disastrous rise of compensation culture is to make it illegal (as it was in the UK, in the 1990's and earlier) for lawyers and solicitors to advertise. A similar constraint on loans companies would do much needed good.

Ads sell form and style, not substance. A horrendous side effect of our increasingly litigation-frenzied society is that companies will rarely make genuine, informative claims for their products that might expose them to the wroth of a lawyer on the make. Nowadays it is rare to see ads that meaningfully declare, "Our product looks/sounds/ moves/tastes/ smells/endures/ feels/performs better because...". Instead you see ads that present subtle, indirectly-announced and vague claims: claims that are almost immune to legal attack. Ironically such ads are devoid of useful information, and worse, many are tangential to fraud, in my opinion. "Our product will make you more popular!!!!! Our product will cause godlike men and women to positively fawn over you!!!!! Our product will make you disgorge joyous song (don't ask why, it just will)!!!!!!!!" These insinuating ads can be extremely seductive and are aimed at your subliminal mind.

After watching ads that brim with (usually computer-enhanced) beautiful people, the average viewer feels ugly, insecure and glum. The ambition of these ads is to make us envy their awesome, grinning Olympian creatures that burble and pout: creatures for whom idyllic life revolves around a brand; creatures that flourish in a faux marketing utopia. (The same loss of self-esteem is not confined to ads, it is also induced by the increasingly self-promotional shite on TV and other mass media). I doubt it is a coincidence that, in the UK, the levels of debt in the population have soared over the past few years, the situation is desperate and worsening.

Believe it or not, ads quell the masses from rebelling against our political leaders, and our leaders have engineered this situation for a long time. Japan was deliberately transformed and tamed into a consumerist nation by Western leaders following WWII. One of the drivers behind the "Western" philosophy of consumerism is that the consumer is too preoccupied with consuming to actually notice or care much about what is going on around him. If Joe Sixpack is diverted into an unfulfilling quest to earn more; to buy more; to keep up with the Joneses, then he can't or won't, devote himself to political issues, he becomes safely apathetic. Revolutions in the West are seldom these days! By encouraging consumerism (chiefly through advertising), governments can control and manipulate their distracted and subjugated populaces. Corruption is the logical endpoint of this superfluous political power, because unhealthy laws get passed that benefit those in power (or more accurately, the increasingly rich and powerful corporations that lobby for them) rather than the populace.

I'm certainly not advocating violent revolution by the peasants, but I am arguing for reducing incentives that cause corruption in government. Recently there are many laws being passed that erode our rights, privacy and freedoms, often at the behest of obnoxious lobby corporations. Microsoft via the BSA etc; the music industry through the RIAA; and the movie industry through the MPAA, to name a few, are all tirelessly lobbying worldwide governments for evermore draconian laws that remove our freedoms for free speech, to innovate, to use our computers in reasonable ways, and so on. A classic example is the catastrophic DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), and their slightly more sane and reasonable EU equivalents. Such laws are making corporations litigation-crazed in their efforts to abuse them in the name of profits.

For example, the RIAA is, in my view, extorting money from adults and children, by accusing them of P2P file sharing, then threatening them with ultra-expensive DMCA court cases and threaten fines of millions dollars. Such people invariably have to cough up the RIAA "settlements" out of court (merely thousands of $$$) because they cannot afford to defend themselves against the RIAA. Extortion, plain and simple.

The trend is worsening as bullshit "Intellectual Property" legal claims are being used as a weapon by corporate Goliaths to systematically pulverise its less loaded customers and competition. These outrageous laws are being passed in the West with worryingly little debate, indignation or resistance from the people and press alike. If only ads were financed by governments to raise awareness of these crucial issues, but we'll be snowballing Satan in Hell before that happens. The corporations, whose only goal and duty is to make money, have far too much control of governments. This is corruption, there can be no kinder word for it.

People are extraordinarily tolerant of ads. I often hear people affectionately joke in the UK that ads are better than the programs, but then again, most TV is so bad this jest may well be true. As an interesting sideline, people are beginning to abandon TV in droves, especially male yoof, the marketing sector that the ponytails are most obsessed about. I've oft heard Americans complain that US TV is unwatchable due to the sheer flood of ads. The signal-to-noise ratio is stratospheric.

Corporations are increasingly turning to product placement to sell their brands. There are many shameful examples in movies and TV. This pisses me off so deeply that I avoid many modern Hollywood movies and much TV now on principle. (That and the principle that they are generally crap). Talking of movies, in England, as elsewhere, the MPAA controls the distribution of virtually all movies. Thanks to this business model, even though I forked out for an expensive cinema ticket (in England), I am expected to sit through ads, which shred my time and my sanity in equal measure. I try to schedule things so that I arrive at the cinema after the ads have finished, and the trailers are playing. But now the bastards insert another ad between the trailers and the movie. Fuck you, MPAA. It may be a matter of time before I virtually boycott all Hollywood movies out of exasperation.

So how do we combat ads? This will get harder as advertisers find more and more intrusive methods to pollute our minds and environment with their ghastly "messages", "campaigns" and "promotions". My own approach is to boycott brands that use product placement (Dr Coke, McShit, etc, which are shit anyway, but you see what I mean). I don't do this in the hope of changing anything, I simply do this for ethical reasons. I decline to give my hard-earned to people that piss me off. In this spirit I'm also boycotting all RIAA-associated labels' music, and many MPAA movies I'd otherwise watch or buy on DVD.

Not all ads are unreasonable or evil. If I watch a TV programme on a UK commercial channel (a rare event these days), I might watch a few ads, as they're in their rightful place. i.e. they are contained in "commercial breaks" that are at least 15 to 25 minutes apart, depending on the length of the programme. (Having said that, there are limits. I couldn't bear to endure ad-saturated American TV, I was shocked at the sheer quantity of ads when I witnessed it in '87, and I'd wager it is now even worse).

The greatest annoyance with commercial breaks is that the ads are very loud relative to the proggies. Advertisers use audio tricks to make their ads as loud-sounding to the human ear as possible without breaking the strict decibel limits imposed by the TV regulators. In response, I either: turn down the volume; hit the mute button and do something else; switch channels; or switch the damned box off. It's a bloody nuisance. If the ads didn't sound louder than the programmes then I'd have less incentive to avoid both. (It's the same with radio). As if ads are not excruciating enough, the marketers strive to increase the unpleasantness of their wares. TV ads are not only like having a salesman intrude into your life, they are like having the moron dementedly scream and bark at you.

On the web, as with TV, there are good ads and bad ads. Mind you, nearly all ads are bad in the sense that they infect and pollute your brain and your environment alike. Good web ads are unintrusive and non-animated. I don't mind static banner ads (which I'll click on, to support sites I like), or static ads clearly labeled as "advertisement". Search engine text ads that are clearly marked, and not masquerading as genuine search-results, are fine, they can be useful if you're looking to buy something, an example of benevolent marketing.

Bad web adverts are a surefire way to convince me avoid the hosting website. Examples are animated gifs, flash ads, or Active-X ads (a security nightmare if you're insane enough to use the god-awful Microsoft I.E. Browser. Hint, try Mozilla instead). Flickering animations make it harder to concentrate on the bona fide content of the page. Bad ads might also disguise themselves as a user interface widget, such as an "OK" button, to trick hapless newbies into clicking it.

The Mozilla browser is good at weeding out annoying ads. It kills those pesky pop-up ads (unless you tell it not to) and has some configurable ad-filtering tools. Mozilla also has good anti-spam features for email.

Ah yes, spam. For me, spam (junk email) is a time waster: even with good anti-spam tools, you still have to delete some of the relentless junk manually. Politicians are failing us in their slow response to outlawing this priority problem. Most of the laws they have passed so far are woefully ineffectual, some actually make things worse, such as the disastrous American "CAN SPAM" law of December 2003. That law actually legalises spam, so expect spam misery to worsen. Folly. That's the sort of debacle you see when Microsoft and other furtively pro-spam lobby groups buy politicians. Corruption affects us in all kinds of horrible ways.

In my opinion, spam is so evil that legislation with teeth is needed to punish the spammers, even if the law can't cure this complex spam disease completely. This is happening in some enlightened countries, but it is happening too slowly and too incompetently where most spam originates: the USA.

Returning to offline life: I wish people wouldn't buy clothes and accessories with brands/logos writ large upon them. The poverty stricken aside, only tasteless losers wear clothes that brandish logos, logos that turn them into walking ads. These lame victims of the ponytails are undoubtedly oblivious to the fact they are gobbling corporate dick in public. Suckers.

I saw a tip on the web about how to deal with another type of marketing parasite: the home caller. A while ago, I'd receive these annoying calls from a double glazing windows company, asking for the previous occupant of my house. Indignantly, I'd instruct them to remove my number from their database, in accordance to the UK's data protection act. But they would ring again, every few months. So, acting upon the aforementioned tip, I told the woman on the other end of the phone that there was someone at the door and I'd be right back. Then I left her there awaiting my "return" and carried on with what I was doing before she interrupted me. I'm not sure how long she waited in vain for me to return; what her time and phone call cost her employer; or even if she knew what my game was. But the double glazing windows company hasn't disturbed me since. It's a satisfying gem of a defence, and it only works because the marketer has to pay for the privilege of annoying me.

The above is a good hint as to how to solve the bulk emailing spam problem. At the moment, if some idiot sends us spam, WE pay to download it. To redress the balance, ISP's should be mandated by law to bill the sender of emails with a strictly tiny charge, say a penny per recipient - like phone texts only much cheaper. This anti-spam charge would make no real difference to you and me in terms of ISP bills, but it would kick spammers mortally where it hurts most (their wallets). A spam-free Internet would save us all bandwidth and time, which equates to saving cash and sanity.

To conclude: advertising is becoming ever more pervasive and intrusive. Ads are increasingly noisy, unethical, obstructive, inconvenient, time wasting, offensive, dishonest and dumb. My own strategy to deal with this plague is give and take. I'll willingly evaluate a small quantity of well behaved, polite advertising when using a service that the ads help to finance. Conversely, I avoid badly behaved (overly intrusive) ads, and routinely boycott the both brands that they sell, and any media that contains the buggers through product placement, etc.

If people would only boycott products behind annoying and deceptive marketing, then the sleazy corporations behind those products will find themselves suffocating in a pleasant yet unforgiving ecosystem. There are a couple of fine ways to inflict revenge upon those tireless, manipulative, ponytailed bastards in marketing that pester you. Firstly, boycott, complain and protest. Secondly, our tormentors fear one fate above all others, that their stupid, grating campaigns will backfire. Smile grimly as their nauseating screams become deafening and ubiquitous. Yes I know I'm gazing through rose-tinted lenses, but it's a pleasant thought that If we play it right, then all the screeching may die down to hoarse whispers.


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From:	Alex	Subject:	The Good Old 'British' Burger	2003-12-28 10:34:57
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