Thoughts on Advertising - Theology Online

Mustard Seed · 03:21 PM

Advertising.

Wow. So I just got an idea. In my esotericaly titled "I want to" thread fool reemed me (with some justification) for giving such a limited and well esoteric name to a thread that simply put up a trailer about a movie that chronicles seemingly fictitious palestinian friends that are deciding to become suicide bombers. I got to thinking about advertising and it's role in our lives. I've some experience designing Logos for organizations and businesses and since I've grown up around an advertising business I find it an interesting topic.

Since this could be a really broad topic I'd like to kinda make this a potential brainstorm thread to talk about the ways various advertising mediums and methods effect us personaly. I know alot of us would like to think that we're too intellegent to be duped by image makers but lets try to have an honest discussion about this and how it affects our views and actions on personal levels. Feel free to take items here and make new threads. I mean this could go in all sorts of directions. On the religious side, do you think there'll be work for advertisers in the millenium? Or will we all just have to deal with monostyled type and unflashy communication. On a political/social level, how much are politics about substance and how much is image, and is there a clear divide betwixt the two. Then a Miscelanious one. What advertising do you see as very annoying or very neat or clever or, if it's possible, enlightening.

Now I'll likely not get anyone looking at my threads as they'll all think I'm a corporate advertising hack on some sleek subversive advertising mission (of course plenty of you already thought that's what I was doing for my church).

Maybe the best smear one could dish out here would be to accuse someone of just being here for simply advertising purposes.

dRock · October 8th, 2005, 08:58 AM

Quote:

I'd like to kinda make this a potential brainstorm thread to talk about the ways various advertising mediums and methods effect us personaly

I wanna become a suicide bomber... (

)

fool · October 8th, 2005, 09:59 AM

Credibility is like verginity, you only get to lose it once. I think that straight forwardness is of the utmost importance. When I saw the thread title "I want to" of course I clicked, What does he want to do? I ask myself. Then I see it's a movie and I'm so pissed that I'm not interested any more, and I actually might have been, were it not for the fact that I felt like i'd been had once already. Now I'm that much more reluctant to invest time in watching a trailer. Whereas if the thread was called "suicide bomber movie" I would have been able to focus on the topic rather than my anger.
Also "suicide bomber movie" would bring in people who don't care what Mustard Seed wants. There are some posters who's threads I don't bother to read so if they use terms that lay out the topic they're more likly to draw me in.

Mustard Seed · October 8th, 2005, 03:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fool

Credibility is like verginity, you only get to lose it once. I think that straight forwardness is of the utmost importance. When I saw the thread title "I want to" of course I clicked, What does he want to do? I ask myself. Then I see it's a movie and I'm so pissed that I'm not interested any more, and I actually might have been, were it not for the fact that I felt like i'd been had once already. Now I'm that much more reluctant to invest time in watching a trailer. Whereas if the thread was called "suicide bomber movie" I would have been able to focus on the topic rather than my anger.
Also "suicide bomber movie" would bring in people who don't care what Mustard Seed wants. There are some posters who's threads I don't bother to read so if they use terms that lay out the topic they're more likly to draw me in.

Here's another question for you fool. Do you think that subtlty never has a place? Do you think that all that is communicated has to be straight forward and obvious for the communicator to maintain their credibility?

fool · October 8th, 2005, 08:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mustard Seed

Here's another question for you fool. Do you think that subtlty never has a place? Do you think that all that is communicated has to be straight forward and obvious for the communicator to maintain their credibility?

That all depends on how pissed the person is gonna be when they realize what they've really been sold. It's not like you sold me a time-share or anything, I just read a thread, but it wasen't as juicy as the title implied. I'm just saying it cheapens your threads in my eyes.

Mustard Seed · October 8th, 2005, 08:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fool

That all depends on how pissed the person is gonna be when they realize what they've really been sold. It's not like you sold me a time-share or anything, I just read a thread, but it wasen't as juicy as the title implied. I'm just saying it cheapens your threads in my eyes.

I can see that. I guess I just didn't think the whole thing through as well as I could have.

Shalom · 09:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fool

That all depends on how pissed the person is gonna be when they realize what they've really been sold. It's not like you sold me a time-share or anything, I just read a thread, but it wasen't as juicy as the title implied. I'm just saying it cheapens your threads in my eyes.

I dont see how its that big of a deal........the titles of threads are supposed to sound interesting. "I want to" can insinuate to a lot of different things, but so can many of the other thread titles and I dont know that there are any rules about thread titles being false advertising.