Friday, June 18, 2010

Say No to Irritating Advertisers

Advertisers from the world … disunite!

Guess advertising is going from one height to the other. They can kill you for your lack of patience, but they will never make the advertisers impatient. Good or bad, we need advertising, or how else you know about a product (or concept)?

Man likes to brag about something that he makes or owns, and other men fall for it. Sheer jealousy, or being trapped under the act of hard selling.

One would never know.

I understand the way advertisers work overnight to do a promo, and then come out with the target consumer segment to work on their thought process. This is a artistically carved out scientific process (enough to get someone mad!). A noted bank recently targeted the senior citizen customer segment, and in the process, made them look a lot younger.

Looked like they lost the point. Good for people like us, who are on the verge of getting senior soon!

But then, I still don’t understand whether there’s enough data with advertisers for us to really fall for. Having seen the advertising styles from the days of black and white billboards and ad prints, to the chic and glaze of today’s ads, I have hardly been encouraged by this ‘professional bragging’.

A recent case has been a few advertisers who are actively trying to promote some medical products as comments to my blog posts. I deleted a few last week, but they come back.

Let me honestly tell these advertisers: No use pal, please look out for some other place, I am not a great consumer of medicines, neither will I encourage people to use medication.

For me, a great health is the one which stays fit naturally.

The question still remains. Why are we so annoyed at the callers, the TV ad slots and the occasional ad ‘outburst’ that we see on the web pages?

Even though we like to fall for these traps, we also detest them since they always end up being over-hyped, and sometime even feel stupid. Competition in market place is fine, but this random use of selling skills to hype up the product (or concept) is definitely not fool-proof. They just seem to be man’s stupid sense at work, and sometimes we get irritated at the way they are carried out.

Negative publicity is also good, they will still argue.

One would never know, but then there was a time when consumption was definitely not guided by advertisements. The only ‘advertisement’ could be roadside sellers hawking for their goods. Think a few centuries back, business was wholesome. And the cost to advertising was never added as part of the costing for the product (or concept).

Goods could be cheap, in case we spend less on selling them on the internet, media or on roadsides. Our irritation at ads will be on a lesser curve.

Mr. Finance Minister, in this times of extreme price rise, will you just spend a few minutes going through this post of mine?

Some cost can be effectively reduced. I am scared of over-publicity, and so in case there are quite a few men and women like me, we can collectively voice our apprehensions over those who promote hard selling.

This will reduce costs, and can effectively bring down prices, even if marginally.

14 comments:

vicious said...

these ads , be it unwanted comments on posts , unwanted messages on phone or unwanted posters on walls ..they all are a pain !

well though Tv ads are the ones that i really like coz of the story they tell ..though they cant influence me to buy a product !

Maya said...

i generally like ads, unless they become too repetitive...

regarding spam comments, they are not advertising, they are just building links for better results in search engines

swapnanjali said...

yes these adds are really irritating...but do you know these are all due to so many products...for one variety so many product...yes even sometime in the medical shop the they just give another medicine instead of written one...when i asked them they told same only ...i told how come i know...let me talk to my Dr...as that medicine is for my kid...then Dr told strictly no to that medicine...as that was much more higher dose than that Dr had prescribed...so better not to go for all these advertise products and i'm fully agreed with your opinion abt medication...a great health is the one which stays fit naturally.

IdleMind said...

@ vicious - you add a nice dimension, watching ads for their story value.

@ Uncommon Sense - Got it, it's just that we need to understand the broad meaning of the word 'advertise'.

@ swapnanjali - nice one, guess some medical products don't need public advertising. May be, they can be targeted only at specialists, like doctors to make their prescriptions.

I am Alive said...

hey, this means you are making big moves in Blog world :) Generally such advertisements are spams and would not appear on a place which is bland and boring :)
But yeah, I agree with your view point.

IdleMind said...

@ I am Alive - thanks, buddy ... you are being a great optimist! :D

Dr. Tripat Mehta said...

agreed

http://sparkledaroma.blogspot.com/

Anonymous said...

super idea to bring down the inflation rate..
you say if you go back 20 yrs then there were fewer ads. but then then were fewer products too. There were, say, 1-2 companies manufacturing scooters... now there are so many companies + brands.. if they don't advertise.. how would they carry on their business? over publicity would increase by the day.
next, it is because of advertising that television is running, newspapers are running, people are getting jobs and furthermore the those companies are running.
even govt. spends a lot of funds in advertising.

anyway... advertising should reduce to some extent... 'aam aadmi's desire'...

m sorry i ahve not been reading any of the posts... and not keeping in touch too.. will write a mail later..

IdleMind said...

@ Tripat "Prerna" - thx

@ abanerji - I agree that advertisements are required, but those that irritate may not be satisfying their objectives, right?

Glad to see you after such a long time, seems the online bonding is not there as it used to be. :(

Nikki... said...

Thee ads can be quite irritating.. I get ads oon my cell asking to buy a flat in gurgaon, or some such stupid stuff.. I have not idea what they gain by this mass messaging.. Am sure not one individual will be intersted.. but then I guess, thee guys too have their target.. afterall sales and marketing is entirely target drivein.. Maybe they follow the law of average.. Our of 10 ad, atleast one will generate an enquiry.. I really don't knwo if it works.. but I would definitely love to find some ways and means to ban these unwanted ads on cells, emails and blogs..

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Anonymous said...

Hi! The ibibo guys reminded me of some contacts today. So i saw ur blogspot link and i thought i shd leave a msg.

I'm not active on ibibo anymore. So how're u doing?

yatra-tatra (naresh)

Premanshu said...

Hello Idle mind,

I don't expect you to remember me. We interacted on ibibo blogger hunt a few years back.

So here's to a start of new friendship. I would like to invite you to my recently started blog

http://premislove.blogspot.com/

Looking forward to your analytical comments.

Regards,
Premanshu.

IdleMind said...

@ Nareshbhai (yatra-tatra): Glad to see your footprints, but you could have left a link too ... that's all matters.

Nice to see you around, give a chance to explore more about your creations. How's Ahmedabad?