the new luxuries · 2008-10-13 13:02
Way back at Eurooscon in 2006, I gave a talk in which one of the main messages was ‘privacy is a luxury’. Only those that can afford to miss out on offers, savings and discounts will be able to keep their privacy – perfectly illustrated in a recent catandgirl cartoon:
I’ve been speaking to Russell a lot about where advertising is going. Firstly, as he mentioned in his designengaged talk, advertising is appearing in loads more places than it used to, and there’s little or no civic discussion about if this is a good thing or not. Screens in buses? Screens in train tunnels? Screens in shops? Screens as facades? Screens everywhere. Will everywhere become like Times Square? What seem like well intentioned digital extensions of future buildings, will, rather, become vast square kilometers of new ad space per city. Should every building be used as an advertising hoarding?
When targeted messages are present in everything you do – on your buildings, on your screen, on your phone – you’ll get the advertising you deserve. Literally. One of the remaining web business models – freemium – puts a price on how much you need to spend to remove advertising from a ‘media property’, which is no longer where you’d expect to find adverts, but anywhere you spend time and attention, such as computer apps and websites.
And the final kick in the teeth is the complexity of the ads themselves. Clarity is a luxury. Ads that present a brand message tend to be simple. Ads that convey a monetary offer or benefit, are not only hard to decipher, full of words, small print, competing offers, but take extra cognition to even dismiss. “Will this be good for me?” “Will this make my life better?”. They also tend to be more cynically designed, with added lizard brain semantics. “These great offers won’t last” “Call us today.” Time, effort and worry are the price you pay for having to make hard financial decisions constantly.
comments
Isn’t it a little unfair to say, re. screens, that “little or no civic discussion about if this is a good thing or not”?
[Massive generalisation, but] Most people hate them: the problem isn’t that this is not discussed, but that people have no say in the situation.
Councils permit billboards, phoneboxes are covered in adsheets, some of us have to take the bus… but ad revenues seem to trump any consideration of the aesthetics, or the overload.
Taken to the kinds of extremes that advertising is currently approaching, it’s little short of psychological abuse. Given that advertising is so prevalent in media and media itself is so widespread I think it’s necessary to be far more strict with regulation on advertising in (quasi-) public places to enable a degree of balance.
Some of the worst threats come not from the possibilities of high-tech but from cash-strapped councils doing revenue-sharing deals with the likes of Bay Media to hang adverts off lampposts or place them on street names and litter bins.
Left unregulated, space will always be allocated to the most profitable uses. Perhaps the economic downturn will temporarily slow this trend in its tracks but longer term we need a much better quality debate about what ubiquitous advertising means for our cultures and most probably campaigns like this Norwegian one against it.
— Adrian Short 13.10.08 #
And there I was thinking that it didn’t quite look like how I remembered the Venetian in Vegas. Close, though, as I’m sure you’re aware.
Vermont’s billboard ban feels like a cool breeze. But that’s a small, proudly defiant state.
(On the clarity-as-luxury thing, which I do think is a very smart observation: take photos of the independent retail establishments on TCR, or on the Oxford Street/TCR junction, as opposed to the ones where Bond Street meets Conduit Street.)
On the other hand, I think of the intense — and intensely textual — advertising landscape that Christopher Nolan created for The Prestige, and wonder where we are in the cycle ever since Gutenberg’s truly world-altering product — not the printed Bible, but the printed flyer.
because this isn’t as much a joke as an observed dramatisation…
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=xwqPYeTSYng
— mac morrison 23.10.08 #
The city of Sao Paulo responded to this trend by completely banning outdoor advertising – http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/jun2007/id20070618_505580.htm.
— Ryan Moede 24.10.08 #
>Ads that present a brand message tend to be simple
I’m not sure this is the meaningful distinction… what’s simple in the 2 “brand” ads you have above? Are those ads really clearer than the direct offers below them?
Would you really argue that “This Offer Won’t Last” is more reptile-brain than a photoshopped model, submissively posed?
PS: grab a drink?