Perhaps you’ve heard this one from David Foster Wallace. I find it totally amusing.
“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”
Really quickly, think about what influences you when you are trying to determine your wants and needs? Is it your biological needs, your family, your friends, the people at work, you spiritual community? Perhaps it is your ever-growing social network, or perhaps it’s the government? As I have mentioned already, and as I am sure you already know, our environment and community can have an enormous impact on our ability to change our behaviors or to grow economically.
Today, we’re going to be taking a look at an aspect of our culture that impacts all of our different communities. Marketing! Over the next couple of posts we’ll dive more deeply into this topic and how it impacts us.
Before we dive right in, I feel that I must preface this section. The point here is not to place any sort of judgment or blame about the environment in which we live or the players involved in creating it. Nor is it intended to prescribe measures to be taken to change it. There are plenty of people out there who are infinitely smarter and more qualified than I, who have much better strategies and ideas about how best to change the environment in which we live. The point of this discussion is merely to describe, as objectively and neutrally as possible, the “water” in which we all “swim” so that perhaps we may all begin to “swim” with a tab bit more awareness.
You, my friend, are being bombarded. In 1971, the average American was subjected to approximately 560 advertisements a day. Today, that number is over 3,000. That’s over 1 million advertisements a year. In his book, “Buy – ology” Martin Lindstrom asserts that “by the time we reach the age of sixty-six, most of us will have seen approximately two million television commercials. Time-wise, that’s equivalent to watching eight hours of ads seven days a week for six straight years.”
According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average American, including children, watches more than 4 hours of TV each day (or 28 hours/week, or 2 months of nonstop TV-watching per year). In a 65-year life, this so-called average person will have spent 9 years staring at a box.
In addition to the good ol’ day stand-bys of television and radio, we now have computers, the Internet, smart phones, cell phones, tablets and gaming devices. Our televisions now frequently have 6 million channels and the Internet is open 24/7. The plethora of places accessible to and frequented by marketers, advertisers and consumers alike is incredible. And it continues to grow – fast.
Hold on, I know what you are thinking. “But I record/TIVO most of my shows now and I can just skip over the commercials or I can just change the channel or get up and leave the room when commercials come on.” Yes, we all use these little tricks in an attempt to escape the seemingly relentless grasp of advertisers, but guess what? They know that we are skipping commercials and TIVO’ing shows. They know we turn the channel or leave the room when commercials come on. They know all of our tricks and they have ways around them. For every new trick we come up with, they come up with another effective solution.
More to come…
MEANINGFUL CONSUMERISM 