Advertising Works
We all know that advertisers want to manipulate us into buying their products. It’s easy to get pulled into their grasp.
The good ones are usually subtle, they attract you with some humor, convey their message, and… the next thing you know… you’re actively thinking about buying the product or actually reaching for your wallet to pay for the purchase.
The bad ones just pound you over the head with their message. Even if you hate the jingle or despise the product, you later find yourself stuck in traffic and suddenly the stupid jingle pops into your head. You can’t escape it!!
Conscious purchasers recognize when outside influences are being exerted, and make an effort to resist. Just because someone plants a seed doesn’t mean you become a zombie and have to do its bidding. Some people don’t stop to think, though… they just blindly find themselves doing things and suffer the consequences of their actions afterward.
It’s all just a numbers game to the advertisers, though. If a message gets put in front of enough people enough times, it WILL have an effect… it’s generally just a business matter of whether you can do it economically or not.
The same thing happens in politics. One candidate is behind the other in the polls, releases a massive advertising campaign and, voila, better rankings in the polls. While its not a sure thing, there are some exceptions, but its fast become almost a given that the candidate with the most funds is the winner in the race. And the supposed “campaign reform” that was put in place a few years ago not only failed to solve the problem but introduced many others.
But there’s an even darker aspect to this: media meddling by those who are not candidates but have political or social agendas… and we are exposed to their work almost every day. It comes in the form of systematic “news” (with amazing unity, even in the wording!) on TV, radio, newspapers, and magazines that:
- lament the state of the economy with a calculated “glass half empty” perspective of most any new statistics released by experts or the government.
- predict a calamity caused by global warming despite the lack of consistent, reliable scientific evidence that it is anything but a natural course of events and has very, very little to do with human actions.
- pound on some big corporation for some minor perceived misdeed without examining other aspects of the business and the huge amount of good it does.
- insist the U.S. needs to consider the opinions of other nations when making our own domestic laws.
- defend the actions of people who have been convicted of crimes while persecuting others who have been accused of no crimes at all.
- warn loudly about the latest manufactured crisis, meant primarily to divert the attention of the public from some other truly newsworthy event.
If the same things were going on but targeting certain other areas, this activity would be treated as a conspiracy to defraud. But I don’t believe there are any smoke-filled back room where the decisions are made, no secret meetings of an elite group of bosses… it is just a like-mindedness of a wide range of people who happen to have influence or control within the media organizations. They don’t have to meet and make group decisions since they have largely come to think alike and can arrive at their actions independently or just by following each other’s lead.
Just as with product advertisements, each of us should be wary of ALL the messages we are exposed to. More than ever before, WE MUST be vigilant and THINK about what we’re being told… and by whom. It is foolish to simply accept what is being said/written as it is RARELY the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
WE cannot allow others to twist our beliefs, we must think for ourselves. Left on our own, I believe most of us know “in our heart” what’s right… and what’s wrong. Sadly, we are often being convinced that we are wrong and don’t follow our instincts.
