Category Archives: Advertising

It’s not all bad, you know

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A comment on a cartoon:

Given the reality we live in now, “the bad news” always has a greater impact on anyone than “the good news”

My response:

That’s because of how the media works.  Basic principle: “If it bleeds, it leads“. They only report bad news because it is exciting and creates fear, both of which make you want to return later to see how that thing is turning out.  Good news does not have that effect, so there is no incentive for them to include good news stories.

To get you to return – and see the ads, which is the only reason news outlets exist: to sell advertising space – they have to make you anxious, fearful or concerned. Which means bad news, over and over again, every single day.

So we get the impression other cultures are dangerous and scary (they are actually just other people), that other nations are out to get us (they are mostly just trying to run themselves), that an asteroid is going to wipe us out (they mostly are just in their orbit), that a virus will suddenly appear and kill us all (we are riddled with them all the time).

They do not report the billions (yes, billions) of acts of generosity that happen every day.  People giving money or gifts to charity, helping a friend or colleague, giving assistance to a stranger, doing voluntary work, caring for a relative.  Nations collaborate, trade, share knowledge and work on resolving conflict.  Every day people smile, laugh, share, give and care. But that’s not news.

And it should be.

The media give a very false, fear-making, scary impression of what the world is really like.

Remember: they are not giving you the news, they are selling advertising by making you addicted to the drip, drip, drip of titbits about threats and danger that mostly will never affect you anyway.

Understand the market

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When constructing your product, consider what the market it looking for and to what they apply value.

The purveyors of hot dogs sell hot dog sausages that are longer than the bread rolls so the sausage sticks out at both ends.  Delighted people say “Look how generous they are with their sausages!“, rather than miserably mutter “Look how stingy and mean they are with their bread rolls“.

They use under-sized rolls to give the impression of adding extra in the component where the punter sees value: the sausage.

But by being mean with the bread, the punter remains hungry and returns for more, sooner.

It is not enough to know hat you are selling: you also need to know what the customer values and tailor your product and marketing accordingly.

Searching for peace sector jobs

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It can be difficult finding jobs in any sector, but searching for those relating to peace has extra problems.  For example:

  • Just what is the sector called?
  • What qualifications can one search for?
  • What licensing requirements can one search for?

A search for ‘peace’ on the UK government’s job web site Universal Jobmatch highlights these problems for those wanting paid work working for peace:

  • Agencies who include ‘peace of mind’ as boilerplate text in every advert such as:
    • “Our aim is to ensure that people have a job that is satisfying and rewarding, which in turn gives clients an enhanced service, as well as total peace of mind” (for a Healthcare Assistant role);
    • “Our 20 year “Total Peace of Mind”guaranteeprovides a unique offering and we have RECC membership, MCS accreditation and a financefacility” (for a solar panels sales role for a company that cannot find the keyboard’s space bar);
  • Arbitrary use of ‘peace’:
    • “Northampton is a thriving, colourful and developing town that offers affordable housing and is situated in Northamptonshire, and offers the restful peace of the countryside” although how a city of ¼ million people counts as ‘countryside’ I don’t know and there hasn’t been any affordable housing in Britain for over 30 years;
    • “Youll be at peace developing cross-browser AJAX web applications” for a ‘C / ASP .Net Software Developer’ meaning the candidate will be told to do stuff they are not qualified to do but won’t complain;
  • Using ‘peace’ to mean the opposite of peace:
    • “Ministry of Defence, Unit Photographer.  Provide photographic images to support, enhance, train and protect the unit’s reputation during times of conflict and peace” (note I had to correct the grammar in that advert);
    • WTF is a ‘Protection Insurance Adviser‘?  Isn’t that what the Mafia use to run their protection rackets?  “As a Protection Adviser you will be on hand [fist?] to recommend the very best suite of protection insurance products to our clients to give them peace of mind“;
    • “For the peace of mind of our customers and our colleagues, we will carry out screening checks as part of our recruitment process” when they really mean their own security;
  • ‘peace’ in the recruitment agency’s name, such as Peace Recruitment who work “within the construction, property and engineering sectors” — so why are they called Peace Recruitment? (they currently need bricklayers in Edinburgh, BTW);
  • employers with ‘peace’ in the name such as GreenPeace who are recruiting door-to-door fund-raisers (“FULL INSPIRING TRAINING GIVEN“, poor sods) and chuggers which, in my book, is about as peaceful as a smack in the mouth;
  • companies oddly using WW2 to define their age:
    • a bus company: “through wartime and peace, we have improved the day-to-day lives of generations of people” !;
  • roles requiring a Moslem and so tangentially refer to ‘peace’, such as:
    • “Imam.  Provide Islamic guidance according to Mohammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him)“.
  • roles with a peaceful environment, which are a nice distraction to read about, such as:
    • “Greenkeeper.  For those seeking peace and quiet, the site also offers solitude and privacy” – lovely;
  • recruiters such as Leah Peace who have ‘peace’ in their given name, with which I cannot get upset;
  • jobs where the word ‘peace’ does not appear anywhere, which are just a mystery.

But most of them are sales jobs selling insurance as ‘peace of mind’, meaning ringing people up and frightening them until they give you money.  How is that promoting peace in society?

It seems the people who want to be associated with the word ‘peace’ in their advertising do so because they are so far detached from the concept.

Of the 584 jobs returned today, two are actually related to peace: a lecturer and a research analyst.

From the above analysis one can assume that if you want to work in the peace sector, the odds are over 200:1 against success when searching for ‘peace’.  So a bit like real life, then.

Dinosaur poets

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A fellow Open University student wrote in Dinosaur poets TM:

what is/are Poets

Can they die and emerge again

like Dinosaurians

?

which made me think of some of the First World War poets and haiku in response.

Brooke.  Grenfell.  Munro.
Owen.  Rosenberg.  Sorley.
Thomas.  Wilson.  Wyn. 

The Great War is history, and the poets above did not survive it.  But fragments of their work live on, typically preserved in stone, like the fossils of creatures who lived at a time before ours when great beasts roared across the earth, ripping gentler souls limb from limb in the quest for blood to spill and flesh to consume.

Which got me thinking about the metaphor of Hollywood B-movie dinosaurs as great monsters, roaring and killing like the great guns of the artillery blasting away at the soldiers in the trenches.

Children love to see reconstructed dinosaurs and stomp about roaring and pretending to be a T-Rex, chomping great chunks out of authority figures like parents and teachers and elder siblings.  Being so big and powerful that they can do as they like, ruling the earth.

Is this the childish, base desire that prompts people to like to watch war being made on the news?  Gore-porn as entertainment?  How advertisers are clamouring to get their products promoted alongside clips of people being beheaded, blown up, burning alive, shot and gently rotting in the sun?  The advertisers and media know what we like.

Civilisation is a transparently thin veneer.

Manipulation is at stake

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I attended a couple of very good lectures on personal and business marketing yesterday by Jonathan Horlock of Home Finder People and sausages were given as an example: “Don’t sell the sausage, sell the sizzle!” — a variation on Elmer Wheeler’s original example which used steak.

An attendee said how he can turn these pink tubes of processed animal off-cuts into a delicious casserole using a Jamie Oliver recipe and in so doing gave an excellent example of marketing: by associating the jamieoliver.com© brand with bangers he magically turned them into a feast.

Like a fully-grown Harry Potter, he cast a spell on us with the invocation Jamie Oliver!

And that is what marketing does: change what we think and feel and modify our behaviour by manipulation using images, associations, tokens and special words of power. We innocent mortals are influenced by these agents of change, the wizards and witches of marketing. They bend us to their will by the power of their minds, by showing us images and by whispering messages to us whenever and wherever we go.

In medieval times, such people with the power to turn milk sour, would themselves be tied to the steak and made to sizzle!

No New Wars – but what does that mean?

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No New Wars 11 11 2018.  Meaning, “let’s ensure No New Wars start as from 11th November 2018“.

How?  By making it clear we expect our leaders to use other means to achieve change.  It will have been a hundred years since the Armistice, a hundred years in which we have learned an awful lot not just people’s ability to harm other, innocent, people, but also about communication, reconciliation, change management, energy creation, environmental management, understanding, and sharing.

In our name, and with our financial support through taxes, people are dropping air-bombs, firing guided missiles, shooting long-range heavy-calibre machine-gun fire, remotely-controlling armed drones … to kill people including civilians.  And is a person who picks up a gun to defend their home a soldier or an armed civilian?  Much of the 20th century involved the deaths of tens of millions of civilians; the 21st century so far has comprised the deaths of 100,000s of civilians, and if you include civilians carrying guns, it is already in the millions.  And the media is glorying in the “Arab Spring” ignoring that it is the worst kind of war: a civil war.  A civil war that is being armed, funded, supported and maintained by external forces who benefit financially or politically from the suffering and deaths of those involved.

Wars are the principle cause of this suffering, and it is time they stopped.  They are not necessary for peace. There are other means, and not just financial sanctions which are only a feeble exercise in trying to show the futility of peaceful solutions. Governments and politicians are just not trying to end war; it neither adds to their power nor is it financially attractive for their sponsors.

Wars are started by politicians being manipulated and promoted by the media.  If politicians can be made to see that war-mongering is no longer going to create votes, they will become peace-makers.  And if the media are hit financially by not getting readers and web page hits, they will lose advertising revenue and so will cease that behaviour.

The trite cliché “War is the continuation of politics by other means” is not only facile, but also two hundred years out of date and inappropriate in a nuclear-energy, internet connected, post-empire world.

I am not so naïve as to think existing wars can be just stopped.  But we can do out bit to create a world where it is not necessary or politically wise to start any new wars.

  • We – that means you – can tell politicians they will lose their jobs if they start down the path of war.
  • We – that means you – can tell the media they will lose advertising revenue and sales if they promote war.

I am not saying we should not support our troops nor have a defence facility.  I am not saying the campaign to stop population growth is wrong.  But I am saying we must actively prevent our leaders from starting down paths that lead to the deaths of thousands of civilians just because that is easier and more attractive to them than any alternatives.

We must make peace more attractive.