I have previously remarked on two things resulting from the credit crunch. One is the increase in advertising on television, and its increase in quality, the other is that advertising now seems to depend more than ever on fear, or psychological instability that is a form of fear. In advertising one needs more than just a description of the product to sell it, you have to justify the need, and what better way is there than the fear of contamination, or destitution.
What has sprung up over the years is advertisers selling us the suspicion that if we don’t use these products we will have illnesses beyond belief, and in some instances the graphics are unbelievably crude, which in turn shows the disrespect the advertisers have for the intelligence of the market they are trying to attract – we are not children, we see the amount of the product that seems to be required to achieve its end, which alone should deter us, but unfortunately advertising is more to do with the subconscious, because it’s so repetitive, that we cease to be critical.
Now we have an army of geriatric, once highly respected TV personalities, being suborned into telling us the benefits of financial products that I suggest they have no technical insight or true knowledge of. What I find particularly aggressive, is the fact that these people are appealing to those of us who are in serious financial difficulty, otherwise they wouldn’t be needed. They are not offering the services out of the kindness of their hearts, but are jumping on yet another gravy train. We hear regularly of the plight of those who have gone to moneylenders with horrendous results. I feel that the government should be advertising and increasingly subsidising the meretricious Citizens Advice Bureau. It should also advise those with little or no financial knowledge, who are in dire financial straights, that the advice is at a cost to the state, in effect free.