I’d like a ban on all forms of advertising.
Marketing is nothing more than getting people to buy stuff they do not need.
It is the reason we live in a consumer culture, and is the force behind some of the biggest problems humanity faces today.
Hell yes!
The world would look so SO much better with advertising gone.
Now we have to deal with 5x50 meters (sigh, 15 by 150 foot) video screens that illuminate the night sky and blind you while you are driving, but hey, BUY NIKE!
This is not even mentioning brands buying up buildings and clubs and hospitals and what-not so that they can plaster their name over it. It sucks.
Brand recognition has been a bane of our existence for the past century
I might be up for a very VERY strictly limited form of advertising, limited to only a few spaces and times, but I’d love it that brands only show up when I ask them to. I need to buy a car? If I search “I want to buy a car” or something like that, then you can show me brands. Hell, even there, screw the shitty commercials, just show me the brand names and that’s it.
Ha! It’s not just that!
Where I live, they’ve got some sort of weird “The Future Is Electric” campaign going on. It’s on the busses, there’s a billboard of one near my place, and hell, that one’s powered so it shines brighter than the street lights at night!
And what is it advertising? I have no idea. Just that our province paid for it. The province. For at least one powered, custom billboard along with who knows how many regular ads. For something that I can’t even start figuring out.
Ads aren’t just ugly and a cheap way to make people spend money on things that they don’t need or even make their lives worse, but our tax dollars are spend on meaningless ads when there’s so many social and economic issues that are being actively ignored or even caused by the current governments.
