I vividly remember the days before the advent of internet and mobile phones. The plain old black dial up telephone sitting on top of tomes of Yellow and White pages, its ring tone sounded exactly like our neighbour's. One landline shared between the entire family. There wasn't any call waiting service back then and you just had to keep dialing until you got through. And of course, voice mail was unheard of so leaving a message with your sibling was as reliable as the weather forecast.
20 odd years later. The advertising industry is making megabucks from us. The mentality of consumers has changed for the worse. There are advertisement of all formats unceasingly attacking our optical nerves, our hearing organs and the rationality of our brains. Advertisement creates false needs by putting the need in our heads. The billboards and TV commercials make you think you need something i.e. what they sell; without which your life is incomplete and you are no longer en vogue. Didn't you survive all the same without the latest iphone back then? I don't possess the latest version of tablets on the market but I don't feel in any way deprived of it or that I am a lesser person.
Companies are paying astronomical prices for our attention in order to get us buy what they are selling. Fair enough from a commercial business point of view but advertisements make our lives worse as long as we believe in the messages conveyed to us in a nice neat package. They win and we lose the minute we even contemplate of spending on what they are selling. I have a start up business myself but I don't like the idea of spending money on advertising on social media platforms, or buying spaces in glossy magazines for that matter. I do believe in substance, providing my potential clients with resourceful and educational contents and getting business referrals by word of mouth.
I was in a computer shop the other day getting my portable wifi sim card when a camera caught my attention. I thought of my upcoming trip to Iceland and wondered if the new gadget would be something that I'd need to capture better photos for my travel journal. Nah, I have this Olympus camera which is working fine thus far and taking better photos is all about the skills and techniques and something newer is not going to make my photos gallery-worthy. I believe being mindful and living in the moment is far more important and rewarding than focusing on taking pictures with a new camera even of an advanced mode of specification.
Advertisement is the fatal weapon that lures us mortals into a world of fantasy, the apple in the Garden of Eden. We don't need the fantasy to be happy. It's always better to face the reality and be content with what we already have and live with it. Just as my job requires my knowledge of fashion trends and predictions, I am not going to follow every step of the way! You won't have the false need of something if you don't know it exists. Out of sight, out of mind. How about if we let go of the need to know, which means not keeping up with the Joneses and stop comparing to Facebookers / Instagrammers whom we don't even know and be free from the traps advertising has set for gullible consumers once and for all?
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