If you’ve been reading any of these posts you might be able to guess my reaction when ever I see some product in a store with the label on it “As Seen On TV,” as if that’s a selling point.
In case it isn’t obvious, what’s my reaction? I move on to another product, or even to another aisle, hopefully a less predatory one.
As Seen on TV: so what? Perhaps it was also seen in any number of magazines. Perhaps it was also seen on a billboard along highway umpty-ump. Perhaps it’s also advertised in half a billion places on the internet. I don’t see those getting mentioned, with bright, kindergarten-like labels.
Actually, it’s a piece of programming they have installed in you; you are supposed to instantly trust the product that much more. Pavlov’s consumers.
It’s like taking out an insurance policy and getting a free calculator with it. Why would that matter? Keep the calculator, take back all the money you spent (wasted — money from all the insurance policies) buying those calculators in the first place, and lower the rates by that amount instead.
Or like AARP… not to pick on any one specifically just to pick on them, but because they offer such a handy and stellar example of wastefulness in advertising. Every month for years on end I have gotten at least one quite expensive looking advertising package in the mail, glossy full-color printing, plastic(1) “id” cards, and so on. Very expensive stuff. I happen to know, also, that even folks who are members of AARP keep getting these “please join us” packages on a regular basis (no idea if that means every member gets the package every month or not, but it’s massive waste either way).
Nonsense! AARP: filter your mailing list to remove those who are are already members, and cut the elaborateness (and thereby the cost) of the advertising package(2), and return that savings as reduced rates. Come on, folks! What you are currently doing looks amateurish and certainly is wasteful. In one action, you get two marks against you.
Why would I invest in or join or sign up with any outfit that so clearly and so freely wastes its members’ / customers’ money this way? I wouldn’t. I don’t.
Again, I am NOT picking on AARP as such. They actually offer an excellent product, and are (as far as I can tell) an ethical company, save for this one utter idiocy; it could cost a little less than it does, though, and it could also feel like a more sane and friendly product without the BS, wasteful advertising and health and environmental damage there-from.
For me this line of thinking started back in the 1970’s with the TV commercials for what-evers that always came with a “free set of Ginsu knives.” My thinking on that, after short pondering of all those commercials ran like this:
- If they’re free, how good can they be?
- If I have to pay for that product, how is it you can call the knives free?
- If the knives are free, just send those to me and forget that other thing.
- Maybe the knives are the real product and the other thing is misdirection?
- How much less would the actual thing cost without the knives promotional?
At that point I had arrived at the proper objection to the whole thing, I thought.
The cost of advertising is always paid by the consumer.
How many annoying commercials & suspicious slogans will you keep paying for?
Never doubt it; never forget it: the fancier the advertising, the more you are paying for it.
But back to the original thought, the “as seen on TV,” thing. I have also found almost invariably that those products that show that to-me-insulting label are nearly always of last or lowest quality, nearly always also a product that doesn’t even provide a true service or solve a real problem.
So, for me (and your mileage has already varied), those labels are a warning flag clearly stating “stay away from this; it’s just a waste of public resources that could have been used on something of greater utility.”
To be sure, not every such product is actually reprehensible. Possibly not even half of them; I have no hard data on how many of those fit my admitted preconception. Sometimes I look at such products again, deliberately, in hope of finding a worthy product nevertheless bearing that label.
I keep trying to update my data, to stay open minded as much as possible, as much as I can conceive of(3). That is how life works best, in my experience: keep looking; keep questioning; don’t do rules, especially not “just because.”
Caution: your mileage may vary; this website may be hot after heating; I am not a doctor; no user serviceable parts inside; do not read this web page during an electrical storm, under a tree or while in your bathtub. All of which means: form your own opinions; I am suggesting nothing else, in this or any other posting on this website. Your own opinions; not the opinions of the Herd, God bless them.
Not as seen on TV
(1) Sometimes those advertising packets from AARP don’t involve actual plastic credit-card like membership cards any more, but something more like plasticized paper. From the point of waste — and this massive waste — this is worse. It’s neither plastic nor paper and so can not be recycled at all, at all. I hope I’m wrong about that one.
(2) Besides, full color advertising pages involve ink containing heavy metals, the plastic in the throw-away “id” cards will only rarely get recycled by most of the recipients (and besides, America isn’t doing plastic recycling at this time… shame on you!) and 99% of these will simply get thrown away, anyway. Bad, bad, bad. All the way around. Glossy, full color print always involves heavy metals that are toxic to the customer handling the pages [controversial – don’t accept my word on that] and to the environment. Even a garbage dump can get seriously poisoned — and such poisons do not stay in the confined areas set up by People. “Garbage! Are you listening? Stay inside this fence! Got it?” That just never happens, even though it is the hidden assumption in the very fact of having a “Garbage Dump.”
(3) Therein lies an entire ‘nother posting, really. How “open” is open minded? How would I know if I’m open to new ideas or utterly closed to them? Would I know? I’m also aware that to some people in this bizarre 21st Century “open mindedness” is now equated with Nasty Things, and that also is a whole ‘nother posting, or maybe a whole ‘nother book. To me, if I declare absolutely a thing is thus-and-so, then I have closed off any chance of learning better, of getting any closer to Truth, Happiness or Providence. My opinions are always (to the best I am aware of!) of the moment, and subject to new data and/or new lines of thought. It’s the assumptions I haven’t yet realized are my assumptions (and one can say with certainty they are legion) that I’m always on the look out for. So there…