Marketers vs. My Mother

I trust I am not alone in noticing, and detesting, the preponderance of advertising that has, in the last few years, begun to appear in all sorts of places one might not expect it, much less desire it.

Billboards that cover up bus windows... Big ol' text-based ads that have replaced the once pictorial bottom half of the newspaper TV section... The front page of the newspaper replaced with a full-page ad! An ad plastered on the cover of the phone book, for crying out loud...

And on envelopes. I mean, on envelopes that contain something other than more advertising. Like bills. Take Comcast, for example (which has, for some inexplicable reason, exchanged for another "word" that doesn't even make sense, Xfinity, but I'll let that go for now).

My elderly mother recently discovered (with my sleuthing) that her Comcast cable TV was shut off because she (that is, I) hadn't paid her bill in three months. My theory: the envelope was so covered in unnecessary advertising that it no longer looked like a bill — it looked like, well, an ad! And thus it got recycled.

I mean, she already subscribes to cable, why should she need to see more ads? Oh, I know, it's Capitalism at its best. But she got whacked with suspension of service AND a late fee because of, essentially, the bad design of the envelope. Oh, and Comcast's well known greed.

Bentley's Rule of Singularity of Purpose: If you want the user to complete Task A, don't throw them off track by a big gaudy 'Task B' label (e.g., the ad) that has nothing to do with the real controls (e.g., the bill payment stub). There are places where advertising simply is not necessary, much less appropriate.

This kind of bait and switch happens constantly on web sites, where you click one thing, thinking it's another, simply because it's big and bright and flashing at you. Or, more to the point, you don't click what you ought to click, because it looks like — or is totally overshadowed by — spam.

Do we really, really, have to be bombarded with marketing during every miniscule action, every place we happen to cast our eyes? Does anyone — and I even mean the companies these ads represent! — really, really benefit from constant advertising? There needs to be some downtime for the user, some time to reflect, to — let's go out on a limb here — to use our minds!

I stopped watching TV several years ago because the advertising was simply unbearable. Maybe I'm just neurotically sensitive, but I like to immerse myself in what I'm doing, whether it's reading, watching a film, talking to someone... I don't want to be interrupted every 30 seconds. My kids are grown up and I don't have to endure that any more, thanks very much, I paid my dues!

And for those folks who have a hard time figuring out reality in the first place, such as my mom, can we just give them a break and stop polluting the message? A bill should be a bill. An ad should be an ad.