Online Shoppers Blog - Become's Pocket Change

We here at Pocket Change tend to be a fairly happy bunch. Our posts are full of well-wishing and all the happy things. Sure we sometimes find a product or service to be less than stellar, but on the whole we have a very positive outlook. This is in stark contrast with the vast majority of the blogging world which is full of rants raves and all things angry. Therefore in an attempt to bring Pocket Change more in line with those around us, and to get the ire up of our wonderful readers, I will now produce the first of what I hope will be a series of "Pocket Change Picks a Fight." I am sure those who are the targets of these rants will all feel scorned and shamed and not be able to go on as they have before.

Today's Topic: But that's not all...

Shoppers are a very interesting breed. Vast amounts of money change hands every day based on how we act. If we decide to buy more clothes, or more electronics, or more toys, there is a huge boost in the markets for those products. If we decide to hold back our money and put it aside for other things, then "consumer confidence is down" and the stock market drops. We control quite a bit with our hard earned dollars. It is quite possible to say that the Shopping industry as a whole is what drives the fabric of American Society. That is a very big claim to make, but with the amount of money that changes hands every day in this industry it isn't far from the truth.

So why is it that Advertisers think that the shopping public have a collective age of 8 and half. With all of the money and time spent on marketing we still end up with the same advertisements spewed at us over and over again. I'm not sure who these advertisements are fooling, or why there is a belief that these are going to trick people into buying the product or using the service, but their transparency is so bad that it is often painful. Let me list out some of the archetypes so you can see what I'm talking about.

The Radio Conversation:

This one bothers me to no end. Here in the Bay Area we have a jewelry store that loves to do this. In this ad the "owner" of the company (who I believe actually is the CEO) is having a little conversation with someone who wants to buy a wedding ring, or jewelry for herself, or whatever. The whole thing plays out like we just happened to tune into a little conversation that they are having at the store. There are a few things which really bother me about this commercial. First of all, the time it takes to figure out that these people are paid actors is about .5 seconds. Second, why did whoever produced these things feel the need to have the side of the conversation who isn't talking chime in with "uh huh," "ya," "I see." I am almost positive that if the same ad was played with just the "owner" giving us the same information it would have the same results.

Related: The DJ and the Guest.

Oh my. This one actually gets me into a rage when I hear it. Do advertisers think that we forget who we were listening to on the radio? "Hey we're back and we're here with Bob Jackson and he has some great information to tell us about key chains." The"DJ" then goes on to talk about how, "this sounds like a great deal and I'm sure all my listeners will want to take advantage of it, the number is..." No, we don't want to take advantage of it. Why? Because we aren't your listeners. We are people who are upset with you for trying to pretend to be the DJ that you're interrupting in order to waste our time.

Television Commercials in General

I'm being very broad with this one, and I will admit there have been a few quite good ads coming out of TV land (Geico's cavemen commercials for instance). However, TV ads are very often either blatantly insulting to one social group, or so bland and worthless that they may as well have played a black screen for 30 seconds. An example of the first type is the recent ad for Subway (video after the break). They show a young kid playing a Pac-man like game (at least they are up to date). They then ask, "what eating habits are your kids learning."Ok, first of all the video games industry had enough problems to begin with without parents thinking that Pac-man is making their kids have weight problems. Secondly, I don't think the solution to this problem is shoving a sandwich at your kid. TV ads seem to do the best when you look at their good to bad ratio, but when a TV ad is bad it is just plain awful.

Spam, SPAM, SPPPPAAAAAAAAAAAM.

My hatred of spam is nothing new. Everyone hates the 100,000 emails, websites, IMs, and whatever else we get every day to tell us to try the new xyz product to make our lives 10 times better. At this point I think nearly the entire population of the Interwebs knows that clicking on a link in spam is equivalent to tossing your computer out of a 5 story window. Yet, somehow this stuff is making people money. Part of me wants to say that a large portion of this money is spambots clicking other spambots to spam the people who are sending it, thus generating clicks which charge the advertisers. I would love to see the numbers of actual flesh and blood people who click on these links. These are of course the single most deceptive advertisements.

Hey friend,
We spoke the other day and i have a link for you... http://thislinkwillmakeyourcomputergrowwingsandflyaway.com.net.org.ll.rr.qq.tt.vrs
love,
Spambot9000..now with more spam.

Conclusion:

Obviously these things are somewhat profitable, so maybe we truly are this massive horde of sheep who will be lead astray by any wandering scammer. I would like to have some hope in my brothers and sisters in the shopping world. We are better than that right? We are smarter than that? We don't actually say "hey, if I go into that jewelry store I can have a heart to heart with the owner," or "Oh my lord, my kids are learning bad eating habits from Pac-man?" Right?...

Kris