The dubious pen

Re-think=Re-use=Recycle is what this little green and white pen says on it's side, along with a recycle symbol and the name of the purveyor of this paradoxical piece of pollution.

Marketing - is it really necessary? I read a book a long time ago which posited that the beginning of the modern advertising age was between 1880 and 1920. Sure, a 40 year span is a long time, but the point as I remember it is that this is when advertising progressed (declined) from simply 'advertising' the availability of a product or a store to touting its benefits and aggrandizing to sell. It was very common to lie about a product - or, more precisely, to make claims that hadn't been proven, and were not required to be proven.

What this era of advertising morphed into is a well disguised machine using psychology (mind games) to get you and me to buy products. Lots of people insist that nobody is convincing them to buy anything, but that does not explain why those same people are buying products that

1. They never use
2. Poison them slowly
3. Don't work
4. are generally unnecessary

I am not claiming that there is a big conspiracy - few advertisers believe their mission is to hurt people, but they do usually agree that their mission is to sell product. In my opinion, the two often intersect. Which will lead to another, later blog. I perpetually maintain that if this were not true, the corporations would not be spending so much money doing it. Insipient plot or not, advertising is designed to sell product which means product gets pumped into our lives according to how successfully the advertisers sell it. This is as simple as the ABC's, in my opinion.

Here is a resource for information on the ways the media has affected social values and habits over the last several decades. The organization is called the Media Education Foundation and is based in Northampton, MA. They are connected to the University of Massachusetts Communications Department which is more theoretical than practical at the graduate level. They study the impact of the media on our lives, and they do an excellent job of doing so. Visit MEF - their videos are available in many libraries around the country. I have no personal stake or interest in MEF.

Back to the pen. I find this dubious pen to be an ironic reminder of what has really gone wrong. We've allowed common sense to be supplanted by marketing. We are convinced that new products are better, that getting messages out with devices like this pen is OK. It is not. This pen will also pollute when it is disposed of, so it is really a reminder of what is wrong, rather than what is right.

Comments welcome, as always.