marketing

For work today, I went to an all-day session on writing web content. The presenters talked about how everything we write has to be geared toward our "customer" to sell them on our product. In addition, they told us about emotional triggers that cause people to want to buy things, such as
* being the first one to have something
* wanting to belong
* that the thing will make you happier/ thinner/ smarter/ richer

So I'm sitting there, and I'm listening to this, and I'm feeling like I'm an Earth First-er sitting in on an Exxon marketing campaign meeting. It's just so blatant how we are manipulated by advertising, and yet we still fall for it.

One presenter said that as we watch tv, we lay there, passively waiting for ads to come and rub our bellies with things we might want to buy. Perhaps that's why its so difficult to resist the temptation to consume, because we're assaulted by these ads when we're feeling passive, vulnerable. In order to stay unaffected, we have to become active when it seems unnatural.

So, I fight the good fight. And I renamed frugal people. No more dorky images of coupon clippers with salvation army clothes. Now, we're frugalistas.