What may appear as marketing to most people who have become accustomed to the bombardment of adverts inflicted on us daily may soon be light pollution and crass materialism to those of us who do our best to dodge the pitches that come as fast as major league high “cheese” toward our heads.
Billboards, radio and television spots, flyers, newspaper spreads, popups on our computers, embedded messages on Facebook and Google, robot calls, and brands slapped on our shoes, on our cars, on our stadia, on damn near everything—there is no end to the hard sell. The captains of marketing maintain they entry into our wallets and purses, and they will attempt to do just that with nauseating frequency. We are interrupted and assaulted by those messages so often that we no longer know what to think. That may be the intent, actually. Please, people, do not think about what we do. Just remember the images and sounds we jam into your heads.
So now, a Japanese company has plans to launch a can of soda into space (Magnaleno). And space billboard ideas have popped up before.
Imagine you are camping high in the Cascade Mountains, a trout stream nearby, a night sky replete with innumerable stars. As you search for the Little Dipper, a big space banner comes slowly into view. It may pitch a particular car brand, a pharmaceutical product, or an Insurance company, whatever. Your heart will take a big dip because no matter what you do you cannot escape them, the pimps of commerce.
Get this. Say you travel in a train, place your head against the window, and close your eyes. A commercial sounds through the glass—no one else can hear it but you—and you marvel at the magic of the interruption while trying to nap. (Trotman) The sneaky invention uses “Bone Conduction,” and a German company now goes all out to hook up its creation in likely places.
When you invoke an app on your smart phone, ever wonder why a message pops up asking permission to know your location? The message might as well read: “Do you mind if we stalk you so we can feed you ads when you get close to one of our sponsors?” Your phone will insist that you pay attention if you walk near one of their tempting offers.
What will come next? It used to be that the salesman would put his foot in your door so you would have to listen to the spiel. Now the pirates of commerce may insinuate themselves into your dreams. A discounted article from Google appeared several years ago suggesting that if a person were to wear a “dream helmet” then a forward-thinking company could insert ads into your REM sleep. It probably won’t happen, but people have sold a spot on their skin (allowing a commercial tattoo) for the right price. Oh, no, no place to find sanctuary from the money predators.
The discomforting part of our culture is that we do not seem to mind when others insinuate themselves into every private area of our lives. The phone rings when we sit down to dinner. The doorbell chimes when we take a bath. The commercial breaks in when we settle in with a bag of popcorn in a darkened theater. And the newspaper falls apart each morning with inserts, flyers, and front page wraps that demand attention when we simply want to enjoy our coffee and sweet roll.
Would anyone object to the premise that our culture runs on high-octane greed? We have gotten used to the shills, the flimflam artist, and the fast-talkers. They want just a moment of our time, and we regularly succumb to their wishes. They use sexual come-ons, vapid jingles, and rapidly changing images to get our attention.
Once when staying in Newfoundland for a winter, we suffered privations as an ice storm blow through. The island locked down, the harbor iced over. The power went down. All our devices went dark: no television, no internet, no radio, no newspaper, and no safe travel to Wal-Mart and Costco in Saint John’s.
We opened fat books and read by candlelight. We watched the blizzard haunt the woods.
Abandoned by the commercial world and caved in a storm, we loved every minute, distractions gone, silence filling us, at last a world without stalkers and manipulators.
Magnaleno, Max. "One Small Step for a Sports Drink, One Giant Leap for Advertising." 18 May 2014. Mashable. 22 May 2014.
Trotman, Andrew. "The Telegraph." 3 July 2013. Article. 25 May 2014.