The Joy of Advertising

Generally speaking, I consider advertising evil, though necessary. The WSJ ran two stories this week that laid out a vision of the future that is a bit ugly.

On Wednesday, in "Night of the Living Debt," Jesse Eisinger talks about how in 2005 the personal savings rate went negative (i.e., we spent more than we earned) for the first time since the Great Depression. So as always doing the right, ethical thing, companies are advertising deep discounts and/or cash-back deals to keep American consumers buying, despite being in debt over their eyeballs.

The hell with the average American's $8,000 plus in high-interest credit-card debt alone. Let's do what we can to entice them to spend more.

This while CEO pay is soaring beyond mortal belief and the average worker is worse off than they were in Nov. 2001!

Eisenger's article refers to spending "zombies" and makes comparisons to Romero's film, "Dawn of the Dead" from 30 years ago. I think a better comparison flick is 'The Matrix," in which humans exist only to feed the machine: American consumers' sole value seems to be in funding CEO pay and shareholder profits, even at the expense of their own financial well-being.

In a Tuesday article, the WSJ pointed out how the splintering of the mass audience on radio and TV is leading to the demise of the 30-second spot (The demise of the 60-second spot was years ago when it was discovered that American TV-watchers have the attention span of an over-caffeinated squirrel.).

So companies are looking at different ways to get out their message of spend, spend, spend, and the hell with tomorrow.

I am reminded of another movie, "Minority Report," in which consumers are identified by retinal scans as they walk by store windows and then are bombarded by personalized audio messages to spend, spend, spend.

Advertising and marketing folks are probably heartened by these movies. They scare the hell out of me.

Now back to my regularly scheduled job, which is -- you guessed it -- teaching advertising design. I promise to do my best to instill a sense of social responsibility along with creative thinking.