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Saturday 8 June 2013

Is Advertising a disincentive?

Many times in blog posts over a year or two I have remarked that advertising does not work on me.

Maybe it's just natural contrariness, a determination not to be influenced, or simply weariness with the whole process, but ad's fail to suck me  in.

Television advertising as I've said often, unless it has a quirky, or cute appeal, Meerkats, cats with thumbs, the very strange Pilgrim cheese ad, or something similar, make no impression on me and I never know what the product is that is being pushed.

Telephone cold calling rouses me to fury rather than enthusiasm and my only response is at best, indifference, at worst, rudeness.

Paper through the door is, as far as I am concerned, simply a stage on the journey to the recycling bin.

Last evening, it must have been fairly late, since I was out at choir practice and it awaited me on my return, a huge wad of leaflets had been shoved through the letter-box.

For once, since I was sitting with cuppa, I decided to look at them before binning the lot.

I was invited to sell my house - yes certainly, why hadn't  I thought of that.
I was invited to a local hair salon to have my hair coloured, highlighted and or cut, does no-one in the world still not realise that my last visit to a hairdresser was in 1975 - I cut my hair with nail-scissors, have never had it coloured nor wished to and don't care what the fashion is.
The least inviting ad of all was to take tea - lovely expression that - at a local would be posh hotel for the princely sum of thirty pounds.
I don't do posh and if I did, it would be the real thing, not an urban fake.

To top it all, for the past ten days or so I have been bombarded with phone calls from people wanting to buy the camper-van I have advertised for sale.

I don't own a camper or any other type of van.  Do not drive, have no vehicle and never advertise anything for sale.

To make it more irritating the people calling are all from the Birmingham area and when I ask where they got my number, find they are calling a different number completely, but it is apparently being transferred, either electronically or via Mars to my number.

To date I have had nine calls and am rapidly running out of patience.

I would love to live in a world where there was no advertising, but don't fancy the move (in my camper-van) to another planet.

7 comments:

  1. I feel your pain, Ray, and am another who normally bins junk mail without even looking at it. The wrong number saga is something else and it might be worth ringing your phone provider, whether BT or anyone else, and asking them to investigate why this is happening. Make the blighters work for all the money we pay them every month. :-)

    It looks as though you're managing to insert images, which is great. Has anything changed in the way you do it or is it just that your normal method is working properly again?

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  2. No Perpetua, the images are downloaded direct from Google Images, it is my own photos which are too shy to wish to appear for some reason.
    The word pictures, which used to coax them out of hiding no longer does so, but I found the word 'libraries' produced the goods.
    Cannot imagine that is the correct way to go about it but at least it worked.

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  3. I don't like advertising either Ray...it's one of the many reasons I gave up TV...I dislike all the junk mail I receive and become quite emotional about all the trees that have to die just so I can put my junk mail in the recycling pile. Now that there's caller ID and I use a cell phone...I seldom receive calls from anyone selling something. I consider advertising a sometimes not so subtle form of propaganda and brainwashing.

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  4. I agree in theory Theanne, but in practice since all advertising fails with me it remains just a theory.
    Even the few TV ads's I do enjoy, those I mentioned and one or two others, I only enjoy for their appealing characters. The product still goes unnoticed.
    Like you, however, I regret the number of forests which are depleted to produce the glossy rubbish which pours through our letter-boxes. (sorry, mail boxes).

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  5. I too bin at sight but there are embarrassments in that. Someone last week said they had sent me info twice....had I not got it? My reply was that it had probably been binned. The sorry fell on deaf ears!

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  6. Hmmm. Not so good.
    I do actually read (skim) anything addressed to me by name, but the rest gets shredded almost before it lands on the mat.

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