Thursday 4/8

Your Ad Here

Chances are, if you are alive, and perceptive to the cultured world, you are being advertised to.  Everywhere you look, someone or something is trying to persuade you to take action, whether it be buying a product or believing an idea.  As a matter of fact, you don’t even have to look.  Your ears are just as bombarded.  Those who are deaf and blind should be safe, right?  Wrong.  You can walk down the street in a shopping district in just about any big city and smell each store as you pass them.  Yes, some stores and brands are even developing signature scents to waft your way.  What will they think of next?

Want to make a buck?  Find a new place for businesses to advertise (and be prepared for others to copy you because good ideas aren’t proprietary for long).  Think of some odd places you see ads.  Here’s a few:  the little bar thing that separates your groceries from the person’s in front of you in the checkout lane, shopping cart handles, fortune cookie paper, toilet paper, the sides of the phonebook, on the garbage truck, popsicle sticks (under the ice cream), and with a tattoo.

On of my all-time favorites is the ad within another ad.  I wish I would have been the one to come up with this.  Some supermarket ads on TV tell you how nice it is to shop there and how they carry certain brands.  They’ll show a particular maker of paper towels or ice creams and maybe even tell you the price up front.  Why is this so genius?  Well, advertisements cost money.  And what better way to pay for them than to sell advertising space within their own advertisement?  I guarantee those highlighted items aren’t being shown for free.  Those paper towel and ice cream companies cough up some serious dough to be featured.

I’m ok with advertising until it hits me in places I can’t avoid, like the gas station.  At some pumps, a microphone starts blaring ads at you as soon as you start the pump.  Other stations even have TVs squawking at you!  And you can’t get back in your car to ignore it, either (or at least you’re not supposed to.  Read the sign).  I mean give me a break.  Can’t people just peacefully pump their petroleum purchases?

Want to escape the every day ad blitz?  Well, you could try visiting the vacuum of space, but good luck with that.  I hate to break it to you, but that sweet ride is gonna cost you upwards of $20 to $100 million.  (Maybe you can sell all the ad space on your rocket to fund the trip. . . Just a thought.)

By: S. Cole Garrett