Adverts don't affect me
Once I was having lunch in London’s Soho area with an advertising guy, and I told him ‘Adverts don’t affect me much’. He laughed and said:
‘Everyone thinks that!’
I know what he was thinking. He meant that advertising is designed to reach us without us realising. Or if we realise it we dont like to think we are being duped, so we say, ‘Huh, not me!’
However, in some cases, for some people, it’s really is true — adverts have very little affect on what they buy. Not because X person is so smart, not because they have got beyond the lies of adverts, but because there are simply very few areas in their lifestyle for adverts to squeeze themselves into. They don’t buy enough of the things that 90% of adverts are focused on.
In my case I don’t drive, so car adverts have no influence on my buying behaviour. For transport the only thing I’ve ever bought is old vintage Vespa scooters from the 1950s/60s/70s. Who makes adverts for them? Certainly no big modern advertising agencies. It’s a subculture mod/scooter boy thing that someone picks up by being IN that subculture. At the most they may see an advert from the 50s or 60s (like the one below) and think ‘That’s cool, I fancy one of them.’ But that advert is a ‘dead advert’ in that it does not bring any money to the company advertised in it, because either they no longer trade, like Douglas Scooters in that advert (I had a lovely Douglas scooter from 1959. But two guys nicked it in Kilburn area of London!) or the company no longer makes that product. Vespa scooters are still being made, but not those old models. So the advert has died and being reborn as a piece of cultural history.
I also very rarely go to see mainstream films when they come out (perhaps I’ve only done that 3 or 4 times in the last 2o years) so adverts for them almost never influence my buying behaviour. Same goes for music, books, clothes, furniture etc. The things I buy are not the kinds of things that new adverts are made for since I’m into a retro style that next to no adverts are made for. Therefore advertising really does have very little affect on my buying because their are next to no adverts made for what I buy!
The exception to that is food. I may like music and fashion and scooters from the 1960s, but I find that eating food 40 years past its sell by date to be somewhat less than healthy! So, perhaps food and drink adverts get to me? I suppose they do to some small extent. But its probably very small, since I’m not especially interested in food as a subject, and I only drink a moderate amount. I’m happy to stick to what I know already, to just buying tuna and breakfast cereal or having a whisky, etc. I’m not really interested to try new food and drink much. I don’t care about the whisky being rare or fashionable. So adverts luring folk to try X new food/drink have very little affect on me. Probably the main affect on me are the little signs in a shop saying ‘Special offer/50% off’ etc.
I’m a professional comic book writer and often buy comics and even ‘real’ books! So, here is the one area of my life that I can think of in which adverts affect me. Amazon and other sites throw lots of ‘You bought this crap, now here’s some other crap just like it!’ adverts at me. And I think that I have bought some books on that basis. Though it not much, maybe 10 books in the last 5 years or so? Not more than that. And I have to laugh when amazon sends me adverts suggesting that I buy my OWN books!
In fact, quite often the affect of advertising is exactly the opposite of what they intend. Because I’m anti-capitalist, I object to capitalist advertising in general. So, if I’m subjected to some advert, for instance those annoying ones that come up on youtube, or the huge billboards for some product etc that we are forced into seeing on streets (and why are they allowed to pollute our public areas with their adverts?), then, quite often I’m annoyed at the intrusion into my life and I say to myself:
‘Right, I’m NEVER buying that bloody thing!’
So, I guess there is quite a significant section of people who, like me, are genuinely not much affected by adverts in their buying behaviour, based on lifestyle and political choices. However, the title of this article is wrong — because all of us are affected by the type of society that adverts help create and are a product of. THAT affects me a lot — and it’s influence is very unwelcome.
What da ya think of them apples, Mr advertising man? Can you buy that?
Sean, you have just described me. I guess there are few people who are as little interested in shopping as I am. And I find those TV adverts so annoying. But I think we are a rare breed, and anyway there are times when we also fall victim to advertising, though we may not realize it.