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Thursday, June 26, 2003
The FTC plans on implementing a national Do Not Call registry. The current plan is to start enforcement in October. One news story I read had this shocking statistic:
In 2001, nearly 185 million people spent $270 billion on purchases that originated from telemarketing calls, according to the Direct Marketing Association.
I have definitely noticed a reduction in telemarketing calls since I signed up for the Massachussetts registry. I still get calls from companies who refuse to tell me who they are and who refuse to take no for an answer. But it seems to me that they don't want to be wasting their time calling someone like me who will never listen. Spam is, of course, a different story. I shudder to think that people would buy something from spam, or even click through a pop-up ad, but it must actually work. Anyone know the statistics for email marketing? Maybe I don't want to know given how much the telemarketing numbers are bumming me out.
9:28:55 AM
In 1963 J.G. Ballard published a short story called The Subliminal Man. That story, like many of his stories, still haunts me to this day. It's about over consumption and subliminal advertising, based around a few products: television, cigarettes and the automobile. One of the details was about how advertising had become so pervasive that certain services were free. For example, phone service was free. But the conversation would be interrupted with ads. For very long distance calls you got about 1 minute of conversation per 10 minutes of call time. Lately I've been using Yahoo for free email, and some Yahoo groups and stuff like that and it occurred to me that this is exactly that same paradigm. Service is free but you have to be interrupted with banner ads plastered right inside your email. I'm going to have to find that story and reread it today. My paranoid mind keeps coming back to the simple question: if subliminal advertising is good enough how would we ever know its there? And why do I keep getting the urge to buy a digital camera and a new cell phone?
