Side Effects of Marketing Madness

Give it to me! I need it now!  I want it badly!  I thought I was strong enough to fend off the desire but I only craved more.  I don’t know how to stop! I need help and the sooner the better.

It’s true, the world of advertising, print media and subliminal messages has profoundly affected me and I don’t know how to prevent it from happening again.  The magnetism of brightly colored ads and promises of results beyond anyone’s belief has captured my heart and my soul.  The influence is both attention grabbing and commanding and I am like a little lamb being led to slaughter.  I have been hypnotized by the promises of younger skin, entranced by losing 80 pounds in ten days and held spellbound that if I purchase this new, improved cooking device, all my romantic desires will be fulfilled.

Over the airwaves and through the magazines, tantalizing products call out to you.  Bigger!  Better!  Happier!  Thinner!  More, more, more!  The weavers of words know their market and do their job well.  They capture you without permission and with rapt precision compel you to action.  The need for the hottest Capri cuffed pants of the season motivates you – never mind your behind will not look like the toothpick models on TV (and the camera is supposed to add ten pounds) – you need them now, to be hip, happening and in style this season.

My particular favorites have to be the non-stop promotion for pharmaceuticals that promise to increase, enhance, or enlarge.  These noteworthy endorsements are all the rage in the 8PM and after TV show commercial slots and in most of the ladies magazines I mindlessly flip through.  If it wasn’t for all the “side-effects” that are obligatorily listed, the product might be worth considering.  But after they announce all that could go wrong if you take this antidote for all that ails you, it might just be better to live with your original malady.

I sometimes have to ask “can they say that on TV?”, “can they print that in this magazine for all to read?”  There was a time, not too long ago, that the censors would be out in force policing the use of certain words.  Not anymore, the more alluring and provocative the advertisement, I suppose the more successful the campaign, although at times it is complicated to grasp what is really being sold.

The psychology behind all of the marketing is a complex look into the buyer’s psyche.  They know more about us than we know about ourselves.  “Seniors”, “Baby-Boomers”, “Gen-X’ers”… we have all been labeled and the push is on to find out what the most efficient way to part us from our monies will be.  The one good note is that these companies really have to work hard to harness our buying power because we, as consumers, are constantly shifting our desires and they must keep up with this ever-evolving target.  Or is it that we are adapting to what they are advertising?  I see a whole new twist on the chicken and egg and what came first.  Only, I wonder, will the chicken be wearing the hottest fashion and is the egg truly organic and happy within its own skin?

Stay strong.  The force that is out there wants you.  Succumb only when you must, hold out and maintain control over your buying authority.  It’s rather fun to mess with the powers to be sometimes, so don’t purchase when the advertisement says you must, acquire things on your own time frame and give the heave to the ad people who sit in their cubicles trying to control our spending.

Cynthia A. McClelland, curious observer of the obvious with interpretations of the oddities of daily life. Mother, wife and lover of the furry, resides in the north Lake Tahoe area.

Cynthia A. McClelland © 2003-