commercials | 2nd march 22
I think about the concept of commercials a lot. The idea that (typically) you create this twenty to thirty-second thing and within it, it tells you what you need, when you need it and how to get it. We are told what we need frequently by people who don’t know what we need yet often they manage to convince us otherwise. I think of how it is less about selling a good product and more purely about selling. The quality of the product isn’t actually important at all but rather how good you can make something sound. Blurbs are particularly interesting because they are stagnant commercials. Some feature snippets of writing whether that’s poetry or some longer form and others contain nothing but a description of the story and we let that sway us despite a good story not being a good story unless it is written well (I think we can debate this statement at a later date). It is fascinating how swayable we are as human beings. How all it takes is a gentle strum of the right note and we have a certain level of investment. Then there comes brand identity and other things that I would place under the category of ‘fake importance’. Place the right logo in the right position and the value increases by a million or so percent and isn’t that madness? Sometimes it isn’t even a logo but people too. Humans become brands. Some humans hold more of that fake importance than others.
Commercials are companies trying to survive essentially. Quality matters for the return. If what you got is good, you probably want more of it, however, in my time I have seen enough ‘new and improved’ adverts to know there are ways around a product being good and making custom off one person twice. It is ever so fascinating how swayable we are as human beings. Then the question becomes ‘when does making a living’ become greed?’ - once you have made your large sum of money and can then charge more money for your stuff, is this the definition of success? And can you be oversuccessful? As I age I magnet more towards minimalism. I want to dress nice but not expensively per say. I care not for the logo on my tees and even though I enjoy the occasional sneaker purchase, I don’t buy them based on the tick but I am paying tick prices which peeves me always. I am trying to say that the world is constantly spinning and whilst it spins, there is a little hamster in the mind of some corporate giant responsible for keeping the lights on in the ‘how to make people buy what they don’t need room’. Alongside the money issue, there is also the social pressures that the companies bestow upon everybody, especially the youth. How some feel lesser for being unable to rock the latest iPhone or wear target shirts as opposed to some fancy brand that at the end of the day, makes the same shit. I could say all of this far more poetically but I have so much hurt over things that don’t matter, I just wanted to say my piece. As I am running an episodic newsletter and we are back to mind noise I thought it was the perfect time to segway into commercials and discuss it. I am ten times over all of us being defined by our pockets. How deep they go and how far our riches stretch. How laughable that there are people mocked for not being able to afford smartphones that exceed a thousand dollars. That there are families putting rooves over heads and food on tables and working multiple jobs to support their children and the child is being judged because of their material not by the hard-working hands of their mothers and fathers. Then there are the childrenless who damn near slave to make ends meet. Who don’t sleep enough and give all they have for little leftovers after paying for a house and bills. And I feel it getting worse. And I see everything getting more expensive and in a lot of places, unnecessarily so. How dope would it be to see a commercial that once praised these families and made some awareness of how far a thousand dollars could actually get a family like this. What we want is transformed into a need too often. We are convinced we need this and that when really love is enough. A loving family, a place to sleep and a meal to fill your stomach is plenty. It is so gosh darn fascinating how swayable we are as human beings. It is so fascinating.
I have no idea why this song feels relevant but it does. It doesn’t have words. Get lost in it a little.