Why has advertising on personal products become so popular? Products bearing advertising, such as the ubiquitous T-shirt, are sold by the millions. In other words, I must buy a product to have the privilege of advertising it. Theres something fundamentally wrong here. If a company wants me to wear a T-shirt advertising their products, they should have to pay me because I am acting as an advertising agent. I will not wear a T-shirt that advertises any company or its products or services in which I do not have a financial interest. Furthermore, I believe that personal advertising is vulgar and cheapens our lives.
We, especially the young, identify with companies and their products. They call attention to class and lifestyle. Companies promote this packaged lifestyle creating a corporate world that intertwines business and private lives. Perhaps that is why we are willing to advertise for free. We are not safe from commercialism even in the most intimate parts of our lives.
For the most part, advertising is such a waste. Mass advertising is ubiquitous. It has to be widely disseminated to an audience whose majority will not buy the product in order to reach the few who will. Therefore, advertising costs are enormous and are reflected in a substantial percentage of the cost of most products and services. That is why advertisers are now pursuing target marketing and gathering personal information on each of us to tailor it to our interests and needs. It will reduce the amount of mass advertising and its cost. But they will manipulate these targeted personal interests as strongly as they can to get us to buy. On top of this, our personal privacy is threatened because of this information gathering. Advertisers have enormous technical, personnel and financial resources against which individual consumers have little power.
Its probably not possible, but I would like to live in a society that shuns advertising and blatant commercialism. What would that world be like? I wouldn't want advertising to be illegal because that is a violation of individual rights, but I would prefer it to be distasteful. There are many other ways to present and provide information about products and services than advertising. People should seek out information rather than it coming to them unbidden. With worldwide networking this is becoming very easy. What do you think?