One day ago

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 24 September 2007 15:01:24

I realized how advertisements create happiness.

As with many of my realizations it is borne out of a strong conviction that is entirely opposite. I don't, basically, like adverts. It's not that seeing them is painful, it's just that they are so pointless and parasitic. Look, take an industry, say a bunch of different companies making beer. One of them decides to pay a ton of money to advertise their particular beer. Their sales go up. So then every other company decides to pay a similar amount to advertise. Their sales recover from the dip they suffered when the first company advertised. End result: nobody's sales are any higher than they were at the start, but everybody is now paying a wopping sum (a "tax" you might call it because that's effectively what it is) to fund the advertising industry. All those adverts effectively cancel each other out, leaving no net benefit to the beer companies.

Now some clever soul is going to point out that, actually, everybody's sales will be slightly higher than before because of those adverts. Well just expand this model to encompass all industries, not just beer. If beer companies advertise and people end up buying more beer, then that'll be less cider or wine, or maybe books or clothes that they buy. What the beer companies gain somebody else loses - what comes around goes around. If you look at a big enough picture then you'll see that there is no overall benefit from advertising.

That is my background view on advertising and I still basically adhere to it, but possibly only because I haven't fully internalized this new revelation about happiness. Hmm, adverts and happiness - even talk of such a connection seems distasteful, let alone the suggestion that adverts actually create happiness. Yet that really is what I've come to think. Here's why.

I've been thinking about getting an iPod. This is how I work: I think, and think, and think and think, and maybe a while later (a month in some cases, 10 years in some cases) I'll actually go and buy the thing I've been thinking about. This gives me plenty of time for my snail-paced brain to chew over the pros and cons. Well, in this instance this thinking time enabled somebody to come in and question whether that was really the best use of my money and whether I shouldn't be giving it to support some poor starving orphan in Africa. I wish I wasn't, but I'm someone who takes those sorts of questions seriously. And on one level of course it's a no-brainer - how could I possibly justify buying an iPod and leaving that poor orphan to starve. How could I possibly? I wish I wasn't, but I'm someone who takes those sorts of questions seriously, and tries to find an answer. As an exercise in logic if nothing else, how would I go about justifying buying an iPod instead of giving the money away? Why on earth, in fact, am I even considering buying an iPod? Why do I want one? It'll provide a means of playing music that I already have - the music is on CDs that I can listen to at home, at work, or on my walkman already, so it's just providing an alternative device for listening to stuff I already have. It'll be slightly more convenient in some ways, but that's a minor gain. And then it came to me that it would give me pleasure to own an iPod. Pleasure that is not directly attributable to being able to listen to music in a certain way, nor attributable to the modest extra convenience that the device itself will bring. No, that shiny plastic box will, just by dint of being in my hand or in my pocket, or even just by being on my mantlepiece at home even when I'm not there, just by being mine that box will give me pleasure. I can see it now - that warm feeling I will have by thinking that I own such a thing. I have the same feeling about the last guitar I bought - even though I don't have it here with me as I type, even though it's in its case and out of sight most of the day - I still get pleasure out of knowing that it's mine. It makes me happy. And why do I associate an electronic device for reproducing music with happiness? Yes, because of the adverts. And the point is that those adverts haven't just translated that happiness and moved it from one context to another, no they've created that happiness out of nothing. Without those adverts that iPod wouldn't make me happy. Thanks to them there is some happiness to be had which would not otherwise exist.

Happiness is an elusive thing; we all know that. We know how easily it can evaporate. What we tend to forget (in our negativity) is how magically it can also appear out of nowhere. And what is more magical still is that the advertising industry seemed to have come up with some tools for actually creating it. It isn't an accident that those iPod adverts have created an association of iPods with happiness - that was craft not inspiration. The ability of adverts to create happiness is not quite straightforward or mechanical enough to be called a machine, but you can see how maybe they're heading in that direction. Maybe one day the advertising industry will have matured to the point where they can claim to have a machine for producing happiness. But that's making it sound like I've lost the plot even more than I had at the start of this post, so I'll stop here.

Oh, and in case you're wondering whether I'm going to buy an iPod or not ...... so am I.