Posted on: Thursday, March 15, 2001
Annoying ads part of our history
By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Staff Writer
Commercials, it seems, have become the hot new commodity in the ever-changing I'm-Really-Worried-About-Nothing crowd.
On talk shows, in People magazine, on Internet chat lines, and all over the Fox News Network it seems that a lot of people have noticed a new wave of creeping commercialism in their lives. They seem to be worried about new advertisements showing up in previously commercial-free zones. They wring their hands (figuratively) and would wring (real) necks, if they could, to blot this new blight from their lives.
Here's what they're complaining about: • Cute come-ons painted on the floor of supermarket aisles, urging you to buy this dog food or that ice cream.
• Those little "Aren't you thirsty for a Coke?" videos that loop endlessly while you're pumping $1.91-per-gallon gas.
• The really annoying pop-up ads on the Internet that urge you to click YES now. Then when you click NO, they still transport you to the advertising site.
• The inevitable coming of cell phones with Global Positioning Systems that will alert you to a discount best-seller inside when you are walking past a Borders bookstore, or a half-off special on your
favorite Thai delight when you're driving near a Starbucks cafe.
Granted, all of these may be annoying, even invasive, features of the Modern Condition. They're part of the continuing economic forces that are bending our society in new, not always pleasant, ways. But they're hardly the stuff that's going to bring civilization as we know it to its knees in the 21st century, as one National Public Radio commentator suggested recently.
Advertising has been around for a long time and probably rubbed some people wrong right from the very beginning.
The first printed ad appeared in Boston in 1709, seeking buyers for a large house. Thus was born the
creative world of real estate advertising. In 1850, Phineas T. Barnum used newspaper ads, handbills and broadsides to make a previously unknown Swedish singer, Jenny Lind, a commercial sensation, even though the critics said she was awful.
For more than 100 years, tobacco companies used celebrity endorsements, movie placements and millions of advertising dollars to keep Americans smoking till they died. So what we're getting today is pretty much just more of the same.
People have a right to be skeptical of advertising (buyer beware!) and are right to worry about where it's all going to end.
Just so we understand each other, though: It's just an extension of civilization as we know it, not the end of it.
Mike Leidemann's columns appear in The Advertiser Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached by phone (525-5460) or e-mail (mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com).
