Absurd Adversiting

It's incredible how many products are on the market.  It's even more astonishing to consider how bombarded we are with advertisements for them.  Newspapers, magazines, TV shows, billboards, fliers, airplane banner-flying-things, and so many other outlets function as harbors for companies to shove their brand names in our faces.  Some do it with catchy jingles, clever mottoes, or images of famous people sporting their products.  Then, there are those advertisements which function merely to catch our attention, and do so in very obscure ways.  Many seem to advertise completely unrelated to what's actually being sold.

It's interesting to consider how businesses make their pitches.  No matter how ridiculous or unrelated some advertisement campaigns may seem, it's often the most obscure concepts than win us over.

Old Spice sells their soap by hitting you with this image.  Buy their suds and you're guaranteed feelings of shirtless bliss--riding a white horse, in tight capris, on the beach, glamorously striking a flamboyant pose.  Manly?

I love everything about Geico commercials.  Give them credit--they put huge googly eyes on a stack of fives and we think insurance.  They also use cavemen, geckos, and men who talk funny.  Brilliant.

A well-dressed, Jewish man in his sixties can only mean one thing:  Mexican beer!  Stay thirsty my friends.

Babies cracking jokes in their highchairs with adult voices.  Online stock broking, obviously.  Snaps to E*TRADE for pulling this one off.

Unfortunately the band is no longer together, but their random lyrics were catchy as ever, and they somehow managed to go electric in the most bizarre settings--unplugged, too!.  Interesting way to sell a credit score website.  "Freecreditreport.com...Tell your friends, tell your dad, tell your mom..."

"My name is Peggy".  Some people find these ones funny.  I'm not a fan.  Peggy plays the annoying phone operator, who bothers the caller for 20 seconds and then somehow we arrive at a Discover Card logo.  Go figure.

I've never been sure how to classify these barbaric vikings, or why they're the spokespeople for Capital One, so I did a little research. Apparently they're "Visigoths".  Do they make you want to drop everything and switch card companies?  "What's in your wallet?"

Those are just a few.  It's amazing how much our attention is worth, and just how far people will go to get a minute of it.

Got more?  Post away..

Emancipate Your-cell-f

You're a slave to it.  You are!  You have hundreds of owners demanding your attention, and you give it to them.  When you don't, they get mad at you.  They blame you.  You're committed to them.  You're owned.

You wake up in the morning and you check it.  You have emails and messages waiting for you, and their senders are awaiting your reply.  The clock's ticking.

If you're like most people, your shower is one of the few times of the day where you don't have it with you.  Maybe you feel free during your shower, or maybe you need to take a quick one so you can check it again when you get out.  What will happen when they invent a waterproof one?  It's only a matter of time.

If you own a "Smart" one, you have more than just emails and messages screaming for your time.  You have Facebook posts, Twitter feeds, new "app" updates and BBM conversations.  Your attention is demanded through any of these medium so your pocket vibrates, you put your head down, and you're glued until your reply is sent.  Then it burns in your pocket while you wait for another buzz.

Amazing how it sucks you in, isn't it?  It captivates you and steals you from the rest of the world.  You'll look down on a beautiful sunny day to use it.  You'll abruptly pause a conversation with your friend to answer to it; face-to-face interactions take a back seat.  You'll keep steady eyes on it when crossing the street, giving it priority over your alertness to oncoming automobiles, pedestrians, and bikers.  You'll let it join you on a dinner date and place it on the table right next to your entree.  What does it contribute to your discussion?  Does it enhance your dining experience?  You'll formulate a crafty way of hiding under your classroom desk to hide it from your teacher so it doesn't get taken (well worth the risk 'cause you can't bear waiting until the end of the period, even if it is only ten more minutes).  You'll switch it to "vibrate" when asked to turn it off so you don't miss anything.  You'll have "face-time" on it, rather than in real life.  You'll put your life in danger by using it behind the wheel.

It's not your fault for being obsessed.  We all are to some extent.  It's a product of our culture.  Better yet, it's thrilling to be connected, to have access.  We walk around with the world in our hands, a world smaller now than ever before.  And we like it because it empowers us to project to infinity and beyond.  It's hard to blame ourselves for being intrigued, and it's o.k. to be.  We should be able to utilize our luxuries.  But are we too dependent?  Are we addicted?

It's when we abuse our phones that problems arise.  Consider the text message for a moment.  It's quick, it's easy, and it's practical in times where a phone conversation isn't ideal.  Yet it all-too-often functions as a replacement for actual conversations.  We're uncomfortable to bring up a topic in person, so we vent our feelings in tone-less text that can be edited a thousand times over before being sent.  This isn't how real interactions take place, in fact, it is how we have come to avoid them altogether.  No relationship of any kind can last with such impersonal communication.

So how can we improve?

Try weaning off of yours for a little while, as has become my newest effort.  You'll notice how much more freedom you feel, how much more observant you become, and how much more time you have to think for yourself.  Turn it to "silent" when you're in class, and you'll notice how much less your attention is diverted.  Turn it off when you go to sleep, and respond to your messages another time.  Avoid its constant presence in your life, and you'll be free to focus on yourself.  You'll see how many people everywhere are hypnotized by theirs, while they look down and miss the world and you look up and take it in.

You don't have to be a slave to it if you don't want to be.  All you have to do is leave it behind.



(The "observing other people hypnotized by their phones" experiment is actually very entertaining.  Try it while walking to class, shopping in a store, or in any public place.  Once you aren't thinking about your phone all the time, look around you and notice the staggering amount of people either talking, texting, or simply holding their phone while they go through their daily routine.  Look at how much they aren't paying attention to what's around them.  Why haven't you ever noticed these cell phone addicts before?  You've been one of them.)

Twitter and the "Brain Pick"

Last year I made a Twitter account.  For a while I had resisted the new social media phenomenon, with the popular justification that I now despise:  "I don't care when Justin Timberlake is going to the bathroom or about what Chad Ochocinco had for breakfast."  I didn't then, and I don't now.  So why hop on the bandwagon?

The inspiration came from a conversation I had with a close friend of mine at school.  A journalism major and social media fanatic, Michael told me a story about a paper he needed to write for a class.  The prompt was vague--"what makes you happy?"  Rather than ponder his happiest days, fondest activities, or favorite flavors of ice cream, he decided to review his Twitter posts for answers.  Michael was able to write an entire academic paper using his daily feed of personal tid-bits.  This was enough for me to create an account.  For all the times where I realized something about myself and never wrote it down, or had a new idea to ponder, I now had a method of conveying my thoughts to whoever wanted to listen.  Twitter would be my new running journal of single-sentence realizations.

So I set out on a journey through the Twitterverse, and soon changed the way I thought about the world around me.  In time, Twitter became a reflective outlet, along with a customized news source and a real-time view into the lives of my favorite friends, athletes, writers, and organizations.  My goal was to provide something meaningful every time I pressed "Tweet".  I sought out witty, observant, and thought-provoking ideas daily, and then worked to formulate them into perfectly-crafted sentences in 140 characters or less.  It was new-wave.  It was educational.  It was fun!  

A guitarist's (concrete) brain pick.

I'm convinced that this process of transforming reflection into brief, creative prose is a skill.  It forces you to live each day in search of brain picks.  When you find one, it's exciting.  You become motivated to think, and eager to share.  This is how social media can be a positive force for society.  (Follow me on Twitter: @cory_meyer).

So, why blog?

Reason 1:  I'm approaching the one-year anniversary of my first tweet (April 21, 2010), and have since discovered that the art of condensing thoughts into 140-character nuggets doesn't suffice all the time.  Brain picks aren't meant to be contemplated with such brevity.

Reason 2:  I recently came back from a ten-day service trip to Rwanda which reshaped my perspective on life in many ways.  I'm thinking about the way society and the world operate.

Reason 3:  Diaries are supposedly childish and girly, but ironically social media has made it cool by adding pictures, allowing people to comment, and letting readers "like" entries with a cyber thumbs-up.  Now they're all the rage.  They're in.  Why not share my thoughts with the world? I might just give someone a brain pick.