"Asking for permission [to mess with advertising] is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head."
"Asking for permission [to mess with advertising] is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head."
"Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It's yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don't owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs."
-Banksy
I'd be curious to know if ads actually work as much as they are supposed to since they're basically shoved down our throats. How many people have really gone and seen an ad and then said 'that, I'm going to buy that'?
It's more subtle than that. Marketing costs some companies millions of dollars per year. They wouldn't be spending that money if marketing weren't effective.
They have entire teams of full time employees whose job it is to try and psychologically manipulate you out of your money. Which honestly wouldn't be so bad if it was just telling you about their product/service, but they know that the most effective way to sell you shit is to make you feel bad about yourself and your life, so you have to spend money to feel better.
And even that wouldn't be so bad, except that the sheer amount of advertising that we get dumped on us daily at every turn effects us psychologically in ways that we don't understand.
Anyways, I could go on and on - I really hate advertising - but I'll try and find some resources written by professionals who can explain this better.
That's what I wonder though, are those marketing teams really being effective or is it by coincidence that numbers go up on sales (maybe due to other factors like product quality or word of mouth - way more effective IMO than just forced ads; hell, ubiquity of things like coke could be a factor, too - and then just flooding the market is more effective than advertising) and then at the end of the year the marketing department just shows some progress it appropriates. Like firemen at a fire - them being there didn't cause it.
Maybe if people believe something for long enough (in this case the effectiveness of plastering ads everywhere) they start seeing connections where there are none and start a whole field of study on this matter and drawing more non existant connections in an effort to self-preserve, conscious or not.
I may be living in a bubble trying to avoid ads and actively rebelling against them but I sort of refuse to believe that seeing somevody drink a coke in a commercial makes people go like 'Hmm... that's something I really want now'.