bombs in bottles
After a 32bit.cafe conversation about "relevant" ads, I decided to spend my spring break week assessing whether ads I encountered were "relevant."
Here's a rundown of how the week went.
First: I encountered far fewer ads this week than I would have in an ordinary week. Partly because I wanted to Do Nothing for spring break and partly because my car's brakes took three days to fix, I spent most of spring break at home.
Which isn't to say I did not encounter ads. I definitely did.
Second: If I'd tried to do this on a regular day-job week, I would have quit.
Despite feeling pretty well insulated from ads this week, I still saw more ads that I can catalog here. This post will be a rundown of the ads I (a) remember or (b) that entered my house (mostly in the form of junk mail). If I'd tried to catalog all the ads I get assaulted with over my workplace's adblocker-less Internet, I'd have given it up as hopeless.
To recap, I'll evaluate each ad on two points:
In the second question, I'm examining whether the ad offers a product or service that (1) I will likely need in the next month and (2) I would not otherwise have encountered in the course of my daily life.
More or less in chronological order.
Marketing "relevance": I live in town and require food to live.
Personal "relevance": None. I did not immediately realize the list was a list of brands - that's how little I use the items in question. Clearly I can acquire other foods - and I do.
These offered various events (mystery book club, large trash pickup, blood drive) available to the general public. I'm not counting these as "ads," mostly because they're not trying to part me from my money. Instead, they're offering me access to services I've already paid for.
Marketing "relevance": I'm one of the people who has already paid for access to these services (and/or I have blood).
Personal "relevance": Low. I actually do have large trash that needs to be picked up, but that always happens in the third week of April, so it's already on my calendar. I'm giving this one to city hall, though, as they're the ones who told me when the dates were when I first moved in.
Marketing "relevance": I live here.
Personal "relevance": None. I'm not allowed to run due to having several metal bones. Also, I already knew about said event from overhearing people talking about it at my gym. My gym also offers a way to donate/sponsor a runner right at the counter.
Marketing "relevance": I'm on their mailing list on account of I order stuff from them occasionally.
Personal "relevance": None. I've never ordered anything from the catalog. When I need something, I go on the website, see if they have it, and compare it to other sellers. (I haven't made a Bean order in five years, actually, but they keep sending me catalogs.)
This is a "magazine" Costco sends to its members. I put "magazine" in quotation marks because, while it does contain the occasional article, it's mostly ads for Costco offerings.
Marketing "relevance": I'm a Costco member.
Personal "relevance": Zero. Has to be. I never even read the thing.
The ads on the Sims 4 login screen are getting so annoying that I'm seriously about to re-download TwistedMexi's mod that changes the login screen to the original one from 2014.
Marketing "relevance": I own The Sims 4.
Personal "relevance": None. I have never once learned about, much less purchased a pack from, any of these ads. If I want info on new packs I go looking for it.
Marketing "relevance": I am a credit union member and it is tax season.
Personal "relevance": ...Lower than I first thought. I was ready to give them this one. I don't technically need TurboTax, but I prefer it to doing my taxes manually. And I wouldn't have known about this if I hadn't logged into my account or stopped by a branch.
Then I noticed the deal is for the "federal version only." Okay, but it's the state versions that really cost my business each year. Relevance: not zero, but way lower than expected.
Marketing "relevance": I am the target age demographic for the station ("Gen Xers who still want to feel musically relevant")
Personal "relevance": None. My doctor took care of this one for me.
Marketing "relevance": I, presumably, have a non-zero amount of US dollars to my name, or can acquire some through credit.
Personal "relevance": Can I insert a number less than zero here? These ads make my skin crawl. The one and only time I have ever entered a casino, it was literally to ask for directions for how to get away from the casino. These days, slot machines fascinate me mostly because I am certain they run the same algorithms as the Uber app: they learn how to pay out just enough to keep a person playing, neither more nor less.
I don't remember a lot of the billboards around here, but I remember this one because I still don't know what it's for. It's a muscled dude glowering and the name of a business (I guess?) that sounds like an Axe body spray variety. "Code Wolf" or "Power Predator" or "Steel Balls" or something. The billboard gave no indication at all what the product/service was.
Marketing "relevance": ...????
Personal "relevance": ...???? I'm assuming zero, since I didn't know what the thing was and I still don't.
Marketing "relevance": I live here and presumably want to get high.
Personal "relevance": Zero. First of all, I've known where to get weed around here since I was six (don't ask). Second, I'm allergic to the shit. Third, I know more about growing dank bud than any dispensary person I've ever talked to (yes, this is related to point one). It is indicative of God's twisted sense of humor that I have an encyclopedic knowledge of C. sativa, C. indica, and C. ruderalis, and absolutely no way to exercise it without hospitalizing myself.
Mid-week, a friend and I went to see a musical. I brought home the program, thinking I'd go through all the ads in it.
Reader, I cannot. There are too many.
The program has 18 pages. Six of them are not ads.
A representative sample of the ads:
Marketing "relevance": ...Honestly, I'm not sure. Even my companion, whom I hadn't told about the ad project, said at one point "why are half these ads even here? like, who here needs this?"
Personal "relevance": Zero. All of them. I know most of these places exist already, I know what they do, and I wouldn't visit them if I didn't need them anyway (like the hospital or the financial advisor).
The only ad I might kindasortamaybe give non-zero "relevance" credit to is my credit union's Turbotax offer. Even then, I know where to acquire tax services - and I am capable (though highly unwilling) of doing my taxes manually.
Most of these were not only irrelevant but also made me less willing to buy the product/service - when I could tell what it actually was. Which is the outcome I expected, honestly.
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