Thursday, January 24, 2002 |
23:39 - Well, there's good news and there's bad news...
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Three or four years ago, I was convinced that the most hideous form of evil on TV was long-distance phone ads. Quite apart from AT&T's telemarketers calling up and reading me a spiel to try to convince me to switch from MCI or whatever (which nobody ever did), just the TV ads drove me absolutely bonkers. "Just 20 cents a minute for the first fifteen minutes during nights and weekends, and just 35 cents afterwards or after 9AM or on holidays!" some scantily-clad buxom model or matriarchal former leading lady or freaky alternative comic would say. You know how much time I spend making long-distance phone calls? Approximately five minutes per year. These divas in their diaphanous gowns standing under oak trees with rosebushes and antebellum porch swings stand to drum up a cool ten bucks a year for their employers if they can convince me to do whatever the hell it is one has to do to change phone companies.
(Yes, I know. I'm not the target demographic. Which brings up a question: What if every ad I saw was specifically targeted towards me-- was something I would be interested in seeing? Isn't that the impossible dream for both the advertisers and the consumers? Or do consumers depend for the sake of their sanity on the fact that most advertising is not aimed at them?)
Er, ahem. Back to the original point: While long-distance phone company ads are still obnoxious, they don't seem to be as prevalent anymore. In their place, though, are ads for debt consolidation agencies. Debt consolidation agencies. Modern-day loan sharks who will get your creditors off your back and make things niiice and easy for you-- for a nominal fee, a mere pittance. A credit agency who will give you a buffer so you can make progress on the credit agencies whose buffer enables you to pay off the buffer you filled up on all your credit cards and loans.
That's right: our society has reached a second and third level of indirection when it comes to our money. It's been so long since we considered using cash and our real buying power at any given moment to buy anything bigger than a cheeseburger that this makes sense to us.
And the debt consolidation agencies realize that this market is a huge one. A gold mine. A giant untapped well of willing profit. So much more lucrative than persuading people to make more phone calls through a different service from the one they're currently using.
The next step: TV ads saying "INCREASE YOUR WINDOWS RELIABILITY!" and "HOT TEEN XXX SLUTS!!!" and "MAKE $$$ FAST!"
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