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This topic is merely inspired by the pop-up situation here and not directed towards SR.
But I do detest pop-up ads.
I dont see they do anything.
It's hard, my immediate reaction was to be my usual "Corporate evil marketing demons!" ranty self.
But, I can see why you'd do it.
Xmas is coming, parents are scoping for a console, and the price-drop does make it a more realistic proposition.
But still...unwelcome adverts appearing on my monitor without me being able to have any say or not.
It's just me, but if offends me.
I know I have the choice of not coming here, but I enjoy posting here and annoying with my self-righteous indignation and movie-stuff.
I loathe adverts, it's part of the reason I don't watch television. I don't appreciate people trying to hock their wares to me.
Pop-ups are no different to the people that lurk on the streets and come up to you to sell you religious tracts.
You're doing your own thing, minding your own business when "HELLO! CAN I DISTURB YOU IN YOUR EVERYDAY BUSINESS TO TRY AND GET YOU TO SPEND MONEY?".
I find marketing to be an inherently soul-destroying business. To break people down into demographics and try to influence their behaviour to encourage them to spend.
Supermarkets are designed to a science, nice fruit and flowers at the front, aromas piped through the store to entice you.
Garages have tv on the forecourt now to sell you stuff even when you stop to get petrol.
Clothes are festooned with logos, adverts for companies.
And people seek status from them?
Why advertise a company for free? Why wear their corporate logo and do their marketing work for them? I don't understand that one little bit.
I'm not an advertising billboard, a space for rent.
You want me to advertise your company, you pay me.
You are not seen as a person to marketing people, you are a demographic to be quantified, partitioned into groups and sold to.
Naomi Klein's book "No Logo" is all about the idea of marketing and brand-name recognition.
Companies strive for instant recognition, to hammer that brand home into your brain.
When you want a soft-drink, what do you say?
"Coke". Not Caffeine-based soft drink with vegetable extracts.
Nike don't even put their name on their stuff, it's just the swoosh symbol.
That is a marketing dream, when your logo is instantly recognisable.
Companies spend millions on asserting brand-awareness, the dream of having someone know your product from a colour or a symbol.
And I see people walking about wearing clothes with logos and being proud of the fact they are nothing more than a walking billboard.
But that's just me. I'd rather buy nondescript clothes and retain my personal identity than look like an employee of a Nike store.
It's like those companies sponsor your life-style.
And the must amusing/disgusting thing I've seen of late is the "Skate" fashion thing, the "alternative style".
You know the one, baggy jeans and hoodies, key-chains and carefully messed up hair.
That look has been designed carefully and sold back to people that just want to look cool.
The skate culture has always been one of refusal to buy into the 9-5 marketing dream mindset.
Loud music, operating outside the normal run of things.
Except now you can go into a store and buy the clothes, as if that somehow gives you street-cred when you've never been near a board in your life.
People posing out in alternative lifestyle clothing, but they miss the point.
It's not about dressing scruffy and going to buy McDonalds, it's about being aware of things like marketing forces, trends and fashions and choosing to not partake in that.
THAT is the skate-punk ethos.
It's not about spending £50 on a top and then going down to Wembley to watch a "punk" band play an enormodome.
If you buy into that whole "Urban" image, then that means you go to local venues to watch bands, laugh at eMpTyV for asserting the notion that you need a uniform to look cool and steadfastly refuse to buy brand-name clothing, because that makes you as bad as the guy in a suit that works in a bank.
It's ironic as hell and nobody is talking about it.
(Oh christ, Goatboy's off on another long-winded pompous chant..I know, I know)
Sweden.
They have banned any adverts aimed towards kids. No toy commercials, no adverts in kids magazines at all.
I applaud that act, thank god Sweden has sense.
Do you know the most desirable market to sell to?
8-12 year olds.
Little kids are targetted with laser-accurate promotion.
They even have their own demographic target name, "Tweens".
Parent-Pester Power, or "I want I want I want I want" until the parent relents and buys the products.
You see kids with mobile phones at school now????
That's not right.
Kids are sold to relentlessly and I find that utterly abhorrent.
Leave them alone, they're kids not target-market statistics for chrissakes.
Marketing and advertising are responsible for all manner of social-ills.
Women (as young as 7 from when I worked in a pysch hospital) suffer from self-image problems.
Why?
Because magazines present a ridiculous notion of what is appealing to the eye.
They strive for the size 8 figure, and worry that they look fat and go on crash-diets to attain some mythical ideal of what a person should look like.
Wrong.
Utterly wrong that you should behave like that to fit in with an image presented to you in a magazine.
"Supermodels", paid thousands and thousands of pounds to parade around like bony coat-hangers and make everyone else feel insecure.
We are presented with what we are told is "How to look". Guys are suffering from things like Anorexia and Bulimnia now, unless you have a six-pack stomach and rippling muscles, you are a failure as a man.
Just as if you are female and, god forbid, have curves and soft bits, you must be some heiffer that everyone hates.
Utter bilge, nobody is perfect, everyone worries about how they look (why do you think supermodels have drug habits?), simply because we are presented with a stereo-typical body image and are brainwashed into thinking you must look like that to attract a mate/be successful at work/do well in society.
I, for one, say that is morally corrupt that companies continue to make you feel insecure so you'll buy their products.
There is no cream that can "reverse the signs of ageing".
There is no fragrance that will "send them wild with desire" (well, there is one but I ain't saying which).
These are unattainable standards set by the advertising industry to justify their continued raping of your pysche and feeding your self-image fears.
Be proud dammit of who you are.
So you don't look like a male model, so you may have cellulite some places.
It doesn't matter, being attractive is a mental thing.
Learn to love yourself and be comfortable in yourself.
And the 1st step is to reject the images you see in Vogue etc, they are lies designed to sell you their products.
Nothing more.
Just relax and believe your boyfriend/girlfriend when they tells you that you are beautiful.
You dont need expensive accsessories to be a good person.
But don't mention the internet, he'll just nod and 'hmm/aha/phft' at everything you say. But get him started on how advertising is used in every way possible and that you can't get away from it even in your own home - and you'll natter away 'till the cows some home ;-)
Shocky.
I hate advertising and logos and stuff.
All stupid kids wear Nike tracksuits made in sweatshops somewhere in the world for £2.
Why?!
Advertising and taking over the market. You don't have a logo tracksuit as a kid you get made fun of... happened to me and mates because were far too bloody mature for our age.
I buy no logo stuff...
1. You get more for the cash
2. I feel better wearing no logo stuff
3. I just hate bloody sheep (;-)) that follow each other.
As I have been saying and Goatboy just said.
You go to a restuarant...
Anything to drink...
emmmm Coke, not Coca Cola but coke.
I hate it... it is horrible stuff, so I go out my way to say anything but coke.
Anyway I've strayed from subject :D
Yeah so emmm hate adverts, no logo man, needs sleep.
I blame the increasing price of Dole brand Bananas!
It had the potential to allow people the world over access to information on anything they wanted to know, the power to educate and enlighten.
But it's gone the same way as television.
Crass commercials fill the corners of the most obscure sites, your email account gets flooded with junk-mail for things you don't care about and don't want, sites want you to subscribe to them, when you can just as easily find the info you want somewhere else.
I just get so angry (surprise surprise) that everywhere I look, I see efforts at selling to me.
Billboards by roadsides, pages in magazines, on people's clothes, videos now come with ads on as well as trailers...everything has been turned into a £ sign and that's not the world I can feel comfortable in.
I know I go on and on about stuff like this, but I have no choice. I'm not shouting at SR for having 1 pop-up for a PS2, this is directed towards every facet of my life that is under-seige from marketing efforts to persuade me to buy things I don't need or want.
This is a world where everything comes with a price-tag and you are bombarded daily with slick campaigns to get you to shell out for the bigger/better/shinier version of the thing you have already.
It sucks, personally.
I had a battle with Vodaphone (here's a tip for anyone with a similar problem).
I kept getting text messages to my phone, I check them and its crap about how I can save £££ on long-distance calls or some other nonsense.
I had to, in the end, threaten legal action if they kept doing that.
I took the phone, I signed no contract allowing them to advertise to me without my express consent. Nothing in the fine-print said that I wished to be sold to when I am driving in my car or at work when my phone goes off.
So they relented and stopped doing it, but it took the threat of suing them to make them stop it.
That isn't right, a method of communication is hijacked for selling purposes?
No thank you very much.
I suppose it's a 'dog eat dog world' and there's no room for little poodles... people have to advertise... they have something to sell... either they sell and eat or don't sell and don't eat...
Advertisements aren't that bad... some can be funny, but most are annoying.
I hate those camera ones that come up through PGC and IGN... IGN is really bad now... you have to filter through a ship load of adverts just to get to the post... not all are triggered mind...
Alot of adverts are from the sited themselves... like IGN will advertise 'INSIDER' through cube.ign.com...
Anyway.... i've lost the plot a bit so i'll stop now...
Game
This topic is merely inspired by the pop-up situation here and not directed towards SR.
But I do detest pop-up ads.
I dont see they do anything.
It's hard, my immediate reaction was to be my usual "Corporate evil marketing demons!" ranty self.
But, I can see why you'd do it.
Xmas is coming, parents are scoping for a console, and the price-drop does make it a more realistic proposition.
But still...unwelcome adverts appearing on my monitor without me being able to have any say or not.
It's just me, but if offends me.
I know I have the choice of not coming here, but I enjoy posting here and annoying with my self-righteous indignation and movie-stuff.
I loathe adverts, it's part of the reason I don't watch television. I don't appreciate people trying to hock their wares to me.
Pop-ups are no different to the people that lurk on the streets and come up to you to sell you religious tracts.
You're doing your own thing, minding your own business when "HELLO! CAN I DISTURB YOU IN YOUR EVERYDAY BUSINESS TO TRY AND GET YOU TO SPEND MONEY?".
I find marketing to be an inherently soul-destroying business. To break people down into demographics and try to influence their behaviour to encourage them to spend.
Supermarkets are designed to a science, nice fruit and flowers at the front, aromas piped through the store to entice you.
Garages have tv on the forecourt now to sell you stuff even when you stop to get petrol.
Clothes are festooned with logos, adverts for companies.
And people seek status from them?
Why advertise a company for free? Why wear their corporate logo and do their marketing work for them? I don't understand that one little bit.
I'm not an advertising billboard, a space for rent.
You want me to advertise your company, you pay me.
You are not seen as a person to marketing people, you are a demographic to be quantified, partitioned into groups and sold to.
Naomi Klein's book "No Logo" is all about the idea of marketing and brand-name recognition.
Companies strive for instant recognition, to hammer that brand home into your brain.
When you want a soft-drink, what do you say?
"Coke". Not Caffeine-based soft drink with vegetable extracts.
Nike don't even put their name on their stuff, it's just the swoosh symbol.
That is a marketing dream, when your logo is instantly recognisable.
Companies spend millions on asserting brand-awareness, the dream of having someone know your product from a colour or a symbol.
And I see people walking about wearing clothes with logos and being proud of the fact they are nothing more than a walking billboard.
But that's just me. I'd rather buy nondescript clothes and retain my personal identity than look like an employee of a Nike store.
It's like those companies sponsor your life-style.
And the must amusing/disgusting thing I've seen of late is the "Skate" fashion thing, the "alternative style".
You know the one, baggy jeans and hoodies, key-chains and carefully messed up hair.
That look has been designed carefully and sold back to people that just want to look cool.
The skate culture has always been one of refusal to buy into the 9-5 marketing dream mindset.
Loud music, operating outside the normal run of things.
Except now you can go into a store and buy the clothes, as if that somehow gives you street-cred when you've never been near a board in your life.
People posing out in alternative lifestyle clothing, but they miss the point.
It's not about dressing scruffy and going to buy McDonalds, it's about being aware of things like marketing forces, trends and fashions and choosing to not partake in that.
THAT is the skate-punk ethos.
It's not about spending £50 on a top and then going down to Wembley to watch a "punk" band play an enormodome.
If you buy into that whole "Urban" image, then that means you go to local venues to watch bands, laugh at eMpTyV for asserting the notion that you need a uniform to look cool and steadfastly refuse to buy brand-name clothing, because that makes you as bad as the guy in a suit that works in a bank.
It's ironic as hell and nobody is talking about it.