We went to the movies last night. You know the routine of trying to get there early and getting good seats. Then you are stuck watching commercials for 30 + minuets before you get to the coming attractions… Then FINALLY, after all that, the movie! So what you’re also paying to see besides the movie is a bunch of commercials. Don’t we get enough of that from TV, magazines, billboards, radio, product placements and just walking down the street to name a few. Just think how many times you watch the same commercial during a half hour sitcom, heaven forbid a 3 hour movie! “Why do the mega corporations do this?”, you may ask. The answer is easy. People have a short attention span and repetition helps to make it stick in your head. They, the corporations, want to program you to think about their product, so when you see it, you buy it… The good adverts can even make you go out and actively seek the product. The message is: consume, consume, consume! What drives me crazy about commercials are how they make the product bigger than life. They also make it seem like it’s the most fun you will ever have and if you don’t buy it your missing out. They also show you the product with all the other accessories but slip it in really fast at the end “they are sold separately”. Don’t forget about the emotional music they use to try and tie in an emotional response to their product. How many times have you brought a product home only to be let down. Dose it ever really look as good as the picture on the cover, or is it as fun as the commercial made it out to be? For example I bought a pizza home the other day and the picture on the cover look delicious not to mention the box was big. I got home and the pizza was no where the size of the box and didn’t look anything like the cover (although it did taste quite like cardboard). Talk about smoke and mirrors! But this is the case for just about everything these days. We as a consumer just except we are going to watch the same commercials over and over again hearing the same jingle or catch phrase. We just except it will be stuck in our heads. We just except the fact that products never really hold true to what we are told they do.
WHY?
Really be honest and ask yourself, ”Why do we just except this?” Do we really need all of these products? How many times have you gone through your place and thrown out garbage bags of stuff. (How stuffed are your closets and storage spaces, anyway?) I know we have done it many times over… and every time I ask myself as I’m pitching it out, “Did I really use that?” It was fun for a minute, a novelty and then just sat there collecting dust until years later it got thrown away.
DID YOU RECYCLE?
More than likely, no, it just went to the trash can. Out of site out of mind. I never stopped to think about what kind of damage I was doing to the environment with this act, let a lone future generations to come. ”How did we get here?”, you make ask yourself. In my opinion, letting business grow into mega corporations with hundreds of products you don’t really need is a big part of it. They either buy out the little business owner or squash them financially… eventually leaving you with no choice but the mega-corp products. Essentially, they take over your thought process and restrict your choices, only leaving you with what they tell you to buy. I know what your thinking… “No one tells me what to buy”, but think again. Often your family passes on brand preferences (or prejudices) to you. You have been programed from a early age with jingles, flashy pictures, catch phrases, great sound effects over and over again for years. They want you to attach good memories to their products so they have a consumer for life. This is why they target the ”TWEEN” (8-14 year olds) so hard !
