Ad-Attack: How Marketers Annoy Us Today and will Really Piss Us Off in the Future
Advertising, we all hate it, but show us a country with no advertising and we’ll show you a country you don’t want to live in. We’ll never be rid of it (the average person is exposed to around 6000 marketing messages a day) but we have been getting much craftier about avoiding it. Advertisers are far from defeated though. We may not have a cure for cancer or flying cars yet, but when it comes to something important like selling us shoes or Captain Crunch, technology and human ingenuity are coming together in ways most science fiction writers would never have dreamed of.
Buying and Selling Culture
Once upon a time advertising consisted a busty woman or rugged man’s man exaggerating the qualities of a product and slandering the competition while a catchy tune played in the background. Hell, back in the day even STDs were fair game for a toe-tapping jingle.
Eventually though the public started to get cynical and advertisers could no longer stick a couple ads featuring nicotine-addicted cavemen on TV during prime time and expect to have father, mother and junior all rush out to indulge in the rich full-bodied tobacco flavor. Outside of that loveable old-school huckster Ron Popeil not a lot of companies are selling anything today by simply extolling the virtues of the product.
Today advertisers sell us their crap by telling us how the item is supposed to make us feel or, more importantly, by making their product an accessory to a certain trend or lifestyle. For years Mountain Dew didn’t exactly set the world on fire with it’s series of odd, vaguely sexual sounding slogans (“Dew it To it”, “Get Vertical” and the near-pornographic classic “Mountain Dew...It'll Tickle Your Innards”) but then they decided to latch themselves onto the burgeoning extreme sports culture. Suddenly you couldn’t turn on your TV without seeing some guy doing something incredibly retarded with a Mountain Dew in his hand, and it worked. Today, despite it tasting like piss mixed with orange juice, Mountain Dew is the most popular soft drink after Coke and Pepsi.
What Marketers are Doing Now
Now from a marketing perspective glomming onto existing culture is fine, but the real money lies in creating and building your own cultural trend with your products woven inseparably into its fabric. For example look no further than current “urban” culture, most of which has been carefully concocted in corporate offices about 100 stories up from street level. The process has been refined to a science. Discover a new movement or trend at the grassroots level, carefully pick out and eliminate any meaningful or challenging messages like raisins from an oatmeal cookie, replace them with marketing messages then sell the culture back to the masses. Rap has headed straight out of Compton directly to Madison Avenue as today’s top hip-hop stars are at the center of mini-media empires leveraged by marketers to sell everything from laptops to cars more expensive than the houses of some of their fans.
Where’s all this Going and How Freaked Out Should I Be?
The idea is to have every trend and movement concocted or co-opted by marketers and defined by what you buy, not ideas or philosophies. Products and brands are no longer sold to enhance your lifestyle they define your lifestyle.
“Bullshit! I’m an iconoclast, I’m hip and I reject your mainstream culture! You can’t market to me.” you say as you read this on your Apple laptop, sip Pabst Blue Ribbon and dream about what color of Converse Chuck Taylors you’re going to buy next. Sorry, but you could sell all your belongings and move to a cave in the hills and marketers would still find a way to make sure there was only one socially acceptable brand of burlap sack for hermits to wear this season.
Getting to Know You
Okay, so marketers are looking to slap their brand labels all over any new trend that comes down the pipe, but how do they know what the next trend is going to be? How do they know what specific niche they should be trying to sell their junk to? Market research used to be relatively simple, you just put, for example, a new hamburger in front of a group of people and had them fill out a questionnaire asking if they liked it, didn’t like it, and what degree of diarrhea it gave them. The problem with this approach is that most human beings are lying scumbags. People will fill out questionnaires based on who they wish they were, rather than on reality.
At first the solution to this problem was to send out “cool hunters” who would try to speak to kids on the street or infiltrate social events, but unsurprisingly not many people talked to the guys in suits and backwards hats diligently taking notes on clipboards. So how’s a poor market researcher supposed to get a straight answer out of us assholes? It’s actually quite simple; you collect the information you need without people knowing. Don’t worry, it’s not creepy, it’s just business.
What Marketers are Doing Now
On one hand the new digital world has reduced the average person’s attention span to that of a squirrel with ADD, on the other hand though this new technology provides powerful tools to learn about and exploit us. Your fancy new digital TV, the TIVo box granting you the miracle of advertising-free television, your debit card you bought it with and your cell phone you used to call your wife to tell her you sold your first-born to buy your new 80-inch screen is all constantly feeding information back to advertisers. The TV and TIVo log your viewing habits, the debit card your buying habits and the cell phone tracks who you call, text and even your present location with it’s built-in GPS. It’s Orwellian-tastic!
Of course the real haven for personal data mining is the Internet where practically every keystroke you make is recorded, saved and hoarded like a furry hoards pictures of Chuck E. Cheese. Ever wondered how Google made 4 billion dollars last year running a search engine? Where’s the cash in telling people where to find pictures of Lindsay Lohan’s vagina? Well Google’s real purpose is to collect and organize all the world’s information, and every depraved request you type is like mana from heaven for them. They know a lot more than just the embarrassing amount of times you’ve typed “Hanna Montana” into the search box though.
The major web companies have gone on drunken buying sprees as of late, snatching up any online advertising or behavioral targeting firms they can. “Behavioral targeting” is what companies like the AOL-owned Tacoda do. Tacoda’s technology is used on around 4000 websites (which reach around 70% of the total Internet audience). Every letter typed, every click or move of the mouse on the websites they’re associated with is tracked, and they’re hardly the only player in this game. Between the top Internet companies you never have to feel lonely or unappreciated. They’re always there for you and they find you fascinating.
Oh, and how about BuzzMetrics? If you’re still clinging to hopelessly antiquated notions like “privacy”, prepare to feel vaguely nauseous. Blogs, Facebook pages, message boards, chatrooms, Usenet groups or anywhere Internet denizens can post their Leet-speak filled opinions are being monitored, the conversation fed into computer programs that calculate the current buzz or trends. Yes, believe it or not someone out there does find your 20-page message board debate on whether the crunchy or puffy kind of Cheetos are better worthwhile.
Where’s all this Going and How Freaked Out Should I Be?
The constant information gathering already rampant on the Internet is set to seep into every area of our lives as digital, network connected technology is being integrated into everything possible these days. We’ve already covered TVs, phones and computers, but what about vehicle diagnostic systems like OnStar packed into all new cars? How about your PDA or MP3 player? Hell, they’re even coming out with a wide range of “smart clothes” with computer functions built in. Soon vital data on testicular bunching, shifting and chafing can constantly be beamed straight from your boxers to sack-specialized advertisers. The ultimate goal of marketers is to have a constant stream of information on our behavior, buying habits, entertainment choices and even location being collected at all times and they’re not far from their goal.
Custom Made Shilling
So marketers know your habits, opinions and about the time you wet your pants in class back in 2nd grade, but what good is all this information? No matter how much data they collect there’s no way to craft an ad campaign to appeal to everybody. You may be able to grab one customer with an ad campaign promoting how fuel efficient your new car is, but what about his next door neighbor who leaves his car idling in the driveway 24-hours a day to avoid having to turn the key in the ignition? How do you snare him? With addressable advertising, that’s how.
What Marketers are Doing Now
Advertisers have been tailoring unique versions of ads for different demographics for some time now. If you live in a high-income area you might get an ad showing a man buying his wife a new diamond necklace, and if you live in a poor area you get the same ad except a bit where the guy pawns his TV and sells a kidney to buy the necklace is added to the beginning. This is just the beginning.
Marketers want to be able to send a different message to every house on the street and companies like Visible World are making that dream a reality. Ads are broken into interchangeable segments that can be recombined by your cable company based on data they’ve collected into countless variations on the same commercial. For example, this classic line from a current Bowflex commercial…
…could be swapped out for households not populated by gigantic cockheads.
Where’s all this Going and How Freaked Out Should I Be?
Your cell phone rings, you answer it and it’s Starbucks offering you a dollar off on a white chocolate, pumpkin and whiskey frappuccino. Why that’s what you always order, and you just passed a Starbucks a second ago. What’s going on here? Well as we mentioned earlier, all your purchasing habits are being tracked, so they know what your favorite overpriced beverage is and the GPS in your phone told them you just passed the Starbucks.
The electronic devices collecting data on you, can be turned around and used to serve you highly specialized ads whenever, wherever. Your spending habits seem to indicate less money is being spent on fancy restaurants lately and more on buying drinks in singles bars. Maybe you’ve had a recent break-up? Well the marketing machine is there for you, your OnStar providing you with directions to Frank’s Discount Used-Porn Emporium, your cell phone sending you deals for malt liquor and your TIVo suggesting you download that classic ode to breakups and misogyny, Swingers. There’s even plans in the works for a fridge that will deliver ads based on what goes in and out of the fridge, and who’s standing in front of it. Advertising is set to become a one-on-one communication between you and marketers who know more about you than any friend you’ve ever had.
Going Undercover
There are always going to be those who hiss and recoil at the first sight of any ad. These people hate advertising out of principle. You could attach your ad to a puppy and they’d still refuse to read it and give the puppy a boot for good measure. How do you market to these stubborn bastards?
What Marketers are Doing Now
Most of us distrust advertisers, but we’re generally much more trusting of our peers. We’ll roll our eyes at a vodka ad on TV, but if your buddy declares it “the shit” 30 times in an evening before passing out on your kitchen table there’s a good chance you’ll be convinced it’s worth trying. Marketers hire plants to generate buzz anywhere they can, on messageboards, in chatrooms, at bars, in clubs or at parties. Like money-hungry zombies they’ll worm their way in anywhere, break down any door to try and convince us that blue cheese Doritos aren’t a completely revolting notion.
An attractive girl walks up to you in the street, tells you she’s from out of town and asks if you would take a picture of her in front of a local landmark. As your brain desperately races to come up with something witty to say to her, you raise the camera to take the picture and notice that it’s actually pretty damn nice. They just got you. That girl was hired by Sony to promote the new camera you’re holding. This is just one of countless examples as marketers have raised being annoying and invasive to the level of true art.
On the Internet front advertisers have found a new best friend in YouTube. Numerous companies have launched new ad campaigns with YouTube videos, some more stealthily than others. Take this video for instance…
…featuring a girl going nuts before her wedding and cutting off her hair. Despite not featuring any skateboarding animals or guys humping living room sets, it went on to garner around 3 to 4 million hits around the Web. Well this precious candid moment was in fact completely staged, intended to establish the term “wig out” as part of a new ad campaign for Sunsilk hair care products. Last year’s Spoiled Rich Girl viral videos staring an obnoxious teenage girl complaining the sports car she got for her birthday were also fake, staged by Dominos Pizza. Could the viral video your friend just sent you be part of an undercover advertising campaign? It’s entirely possible. From now on just play it safe and don’t watch anything online that isn’t porn.
Where’s all this Going and How Freaked Out Should I Be?
By now it’s fairly safe to say everyone on the planet has watched this video…
The Diet Coke and Mentos guys weren’t paid to create their original video, but you’d better believe Coke and Mentos were eager to jump on the trend like poodle on leg, quickly releasing official commercials to tie in with the fad. Suddenly it dawned on marketers “hey, we can get the idiots out there to sell stuff to themselves!” and thus consumer generated advertising was born. Today numerous company websites allow people to create their own custom commercials, Doritos has even turned 2 million dollar, 30 second spots on the Super Bowl over to consumer produced spots.
Increasingly marketers are going to be using people just like us as tools. The regular folks on the street, sitting at their computers or even you yourself. You’ll sell your next-door neighbor something and then he’ll turn around and sell you something right back. Marketers want to do the unthinkable; they want to make you one of them.
Getting In Your Head
So, how much more invasive can marketing get? Where else could they possibly stick their nose in? Well, how about inside your skull? Tracking our habits is all fine and good, but for ad-men it’s not enough to merely get in your head figuratively, they want in there literally.
What Marketers are Doing Now
Using FMRI scans researchers are probing our grey matter to find out why we buy and they’ve found that it’s tied to the most primitive part of our brains, known at the “Reptilian Brain” (which explains why you always end up stuck in a line behind a couple gila monsters and a box-turtle at the supermarket). Researchers have identified which neurons in our brain fire when ads are effective and which neurons fire when they’re not.
But not everyone has an FMRI machine in their back pocket to scan their customer’s brains with. That’s okay, as marketers are using advanced behavioral studies and ethnography (the study of human behavior) to find out what we’re thinking. Take for example the marketers who gave a group of people money to allow them to film them showering for weeks. It wasn’t just a creepy excuse to gawk at soapy breasts, they were closely studying people’s habits in order help market a new line of Moen showerheads. Most of us don’t have cameras in our showers (at least not ones put there by marketers) but the cameras overhead in every store you go into these days see a lot more than the pack of tube socks you just shoved under your shirt.
Where’s all this Going and How Freaked Out Should I Be?
Okay, let’s tie all this shit together. The goal is a world made of marketing, where every new trend or cultural movement is controlled and contorted by marketers to sell you the latest new, improved, whiter, brighter and better tasting products. The marketing machine will be your constant companion, one that knows you better than you know yourself and is always there to sell you something through your TV, computer, kitchen appliances, friends or family and when you’re not being sold something to you’ll be selling to others.
It all sounds a bit scary, doesn’t it? Well before you fashion yourself a tinfoil hat and start stocking the isolation bunker, just remember that no matter how advanced advertiser’s techniques become you ultimately still have the power in this relationship. You’re the one who decides when and where your money is spent and the onus will be on all of us to become increasingly discerning about plunking down our cash. With knowledge and a healthy dose of cynicism we should always be able to stay a step ahead of the marketers. Well, until they unleash the adverbots…
