Blog #9 Shmethics

If you can't convince them they need it, make the feel like they deserve it.

Or

 Is advertising unethical?  Buy your vote here #yes #no

Blog #8 Sneaky Cheaty Businesses and their Ads.

Advertsing for the likes of Ashley Madison. Should they be allowed to do it?

Ugh.  I guess.

Ashley Madison eh?  A company that is immoral, reckless, cold-hearted, cruel, deceitful, sneaky, I don't like it, and it's legal.

It's a legal business. It pays taxes. People subscribe and pay. 

Legal businesses have the right to advertise whether or not I personally agree with their mandate.  And here is why:

If people are inclined to cheat on their partners, they don't really need pushing over the edge. It will happen, because they want it to happen and no advertising telling them to do it, or telling them not to do it will change that.

Guilt doesn't work.  Reasoning doesn't work.  Encouraging doesn't work.  All Ashley Madison et al does is provide another venue for jerks to legally behave like jerks. People will do what they do, and what they've always done.  I don't have to like it, but I'm not the boss of everyone, am I? I also don't like sports, but I'm not trying to ban sports advertising, and I can justifiably say that sports makes people behave like jerks sometimes.  The point is valid. 

It's dangerous to tell businesses they can't advertise based on moral grounds.  Cheating doesn't directly link to heart disease, obesity, cancer.. (that I'm aware of?  Being hurt is difficult, it's hard to see your family hurting, but it's better to get these kinds of things over with in my experience).  It's just an icky thing to do and anyone who claims to have been swayed to hurt the ones they love by a billboard were going to do it anyway.  That doesn't mean the business can't advertise their services. 

If a business can legally operate, they should legally be allowed to advertise, lest these rules based on perceived morality spill over into other areas of scrutinized principals—  because what's good for the goose is good for the gander, so to speak.  

I like my freedom, and if that means there will have to be be jerks sprinkled around, I'll still take it. 

Blog #7: Should we ban outdoor advertsing?

I went to a local Remembrance Day ceremony on Wednesday.  It was solemn, lovely.  My son’s choir sang. I watched as wreathes were laid to honour the dead.  Or were they? 

Lowes…
The Royal Bank…

No mention of any soldiers, no commemoration of bereaved parents or heroes.

Bank of Montreal…
ReMax…

I won’t mention any of the smaller businesses, at least they are local and maybe tied to the small ceremony in some ways.  Mom & Pops are people. But I couldn’t help but feel like I was at a corporate parade.  It felt like people were laying wreaths in order to advertise themselves.  No mention of who they were honouring or why. 

The kids’ choir stood patiently waiting for the list of names to be rattled off like it was a sports sponsorship appreciation gala so they could sing what they'd practiced. These box store names didn’t mean anything to them. They didn’t mean really anything to me. On some level, maybe they even tie these corporations with the Wars that have happened in their young minds who can't know yet what it all means. Some weird subconscious level… But wreath after wreath was placed.  For companies.  For businesses.  It felt like it was for nobody. It felt like it was putting the meaning of the day aside.

I’ve never seen this before, or didn’t I notice?  I go every year. I haven't noticed.

When did advertising like this become acceptable?  Is it because we’re so used to being bombarded with ads, and name dropping, and corporate sponsorship that it has become so normal that we will flock to a Santa Claus parade that has become little more than big business shoving its way in in disguise?

It really bothered me.  It really bothered me that the wreaths were laid for nobody.

Will banning outdoor advertisements make this kind of behaviour more common? Ads are important, but need to be relegated to appropriate locations. I say this because I like the manipulation game in advertising. I really like it. My brain goes to dark places.  What if we placed the ad inside the coffin?  It could cut down on funeral expenses for families.  My brain went there.  I banished the thought, but other people might not. Would not. Haven’t.  People who stand to make money or improve their public image might not.  Always in the name of progress.  Always in the name of good(?).

Our ideas sometimes come from sinister places, and we by nature push every limit past its breaking point.  Then we set a new breaking point to aim for and break.  It can be a really great thing, and it can be destructive and disturbing. 

So banning outright, no.  I don’t think so.  I think there are interesting places to advertise.  Murals, beautiful things.  Posts filled with decades of staples and art, inviting us to this or that.  Billboards on long boring drives. Motion graphics that someone made, toiling over typography and easing and copyright law, and brand guides.   It’s a cacophony of ideas and opportunities that say look at us, look at what we can do for you. It's a beautiful mess.

But when these things start to intrude on the sacred places, maybe it’s time to halt and reexamine our humanity.

Blog #6 Making Memes

See what I did there?  'Cuz I'm 300 years old by the standards of my classmates.  That's why it's funny, Readers.

It's fair though, I got pretty excited this week when I visited a new cinema to watch a movie about a man with dementia, and pretty much couldn't get over how wonderful it was that the theatre had rocking seats.  In the actual theatre.  My knees didn't even creak.  It's my new go-to theatre for when I run out of puzzles or there are no Peter Falk movies-of-the-week to watch. 

Did you know that they cancelled Murder She Wrote?  Also, Christopher Plummer is the original John Hamm and nobody can tell me it isn't true.

What.