5:46 AM 10/28/2003
This article is about marketing artwork, but it does not begin there... it begins with television ads, spam, and a recent addition to the bag of tricks people use, to market their wares... stealth marketing.
I usually watch television in the evenings... with my laptop computer turned on, so that I am actually trying to do some computing chore, and see my favourite cops shows, or the news, at the same time.
Most of what I wind up seeing, though, are advertisements, and of those ads, most are for various medicines, hospitals, medical services, HMOs, health insurance products, etc. Most of them... to my eye at least, are dishonest. Medicine started out as an honourable profession, whose purpose was to help advance the human condition. It seems to have lost its way, though, because of its having put money before betterment of the human condition, on its priority list. Even great medical advancements serve only a small and shrinking demographic, now. Most of the crap they are selling on television, I would guess is more of a scam, than even an attempt at genuine service, though... enticing people into spending money they can't afford, for medicines they don't really need. It makes me cringe, to see what medicine has become. While the American Medical Establishment gets rich, average human beings more often have to fend for themselves, where their health is concerned, same as their great-grandparents did.
The legal profession has also taken to doing the hard sell on television, selling bankruptcies, personal injury schemes, class action suits... anything they can think of, to get the phones ringing, and the revenues pouring in. These ads are similar to the pharmaceutical company ads that prey upon people with psychosomatic disorders... they appeal to human frailties, except in this case, the lawyers are holding out the promise of easy money, in the form of a settlement, for some trumped up, frivolous suit, instead of selling paranoia, about what incipient diseases might be eating away at the lining of your esophagus, or other internal organs. The field of law, which at some time in the past at least pretended to serve justice, now pursues cases based almost solely on whether or not money can be extracted... deserved or not.
The politicians and the businesses that advertise on TV need only honourable mention here... both claim to be, to different degrees, in service to humanity, and both, more often than not, use the airwaves to disseminate lies, half-truths, and other forms of deception, in the quest to steal money from people in various manners that will afford them (the thieves) plausible deniability, or at the very least... immunity from prosecution.
So... I have to ask myself, when setting up my website, and my eBay auctions, and whatever other means that I employ, to earn a living, selling my paintings... do I want put making money ahead of whatever form of service to the human condition, my profession might be capable of providing... on my priority list?
I don't think so.
I recently saw a news article on 'Stealth Marketing'... where individuals are hired by marketing companies, and what they do, is hang out at places like trendy coffee houses, playing with neat new gadgets like virtual reality game boxes, and fancy digital cameras, and entice people into trying the product they are using... asking them to please take a picture of them with the camera, or if they want to try the game box, etc... as if it is a chance encounter, and not a sales pitch.
This is advertising insinuating its way directly into human interaction... you (the sucker) think you just me a nice person, who is showing you a cool new techno-gadget that they themselves recently purchased, and are thrilled with... but in reality, you are being lied to... the whole relationship is as phony as a three dollar bill... you are a 'mark', being worked by a professional con artist... and for this especially deceptive lie, a special new name had to be invented... 'Stealth Marketing'. The English language (and probably all languages) seem to have a lot of different words for 'lie'... many of which, attempt to deodorize lying, so that it smells like something nicer than the bullshit it is.
On the Internet, advertising has taken a sick, ugly turn, in the form of spam. The people sending out this often demented junk email might be independent thieves and scam artists, or they might be working for major corporations... it is impossible to say who is sending the stuff most of the time, even for a professional email analyst. Recently, I took my spam filter off 'automatic', and let the crap flood into my Inbox, while fixing a conflict between my Bayesian spam filter, and my firewall. I discovered that a lot of the spam was 'ArtSpam'... from websites allegedly promoting the visual arts, and selling the production of artists. I say 'allegedly' because as far as I'm concerned, nothing said in an unsolicited email should ever be considered to be the truth. I find the whole spam situation (hundreds per day, every day) so disgusting, that in my opinion, anyone who sends spam, is by absolute, irredeemable default, a liar and a thief, never to be trusted, never to be communicated with in any fashion.
Thing is... the more I thought about this, the more I realised that I have had this attitude now for some number of years, regarding virtually all forms of advertisement that seek me out, without my asking. If I see a company advertising on TV, I will not purchase its merchandise, unless I see it on sale so dirt cheap that I am positive it is a loss leader. A lifetime of exposure to advertisement, has gone further than simply making me numb to it... the ads have backfired, to the point where my trips to the store net as much 'off-brand' stuff, whose ads I have never seen, as possible. I purchase most of the 'hard goods' I need second hand, in resale shops, and on eBay, from small time sellers. In this way, the money spent for name brand items goes to an individual, not the company that assaulted me with ads. Even if their product is super, I avoid buying from people whose ads I have been bombarded with, directly from them... I don't want them to have a penny of my cash. This is 'payback' for the ads I had to endure. None of this has anything to do with 'rightness' or 'fairness' or anything else... in fact, it was happening under my 'consciousness radar' for a long time, without my even realising I was doing it.
So... I have to ask myself, when setting up my website, and my eBay auctions, and whatever other means that I employ, to earn a living, selling my paintings... do I want to employ methods of promotion that I have been personally selecting against, to the point of backlash?
I don't think so.
I feel that it is a particularly bad idea for professions that are directly involved in (allegedly) influencing the human condition positively, to market themselves and their wares like whores. The American Medical Establishment is a currently glaring case in point... in their quest for money, the profession has compromised the health and physical/ psychological welfare of an entire nation... except for the few who can either afford to pay huge bills out of pocket, or are party to some scheme which permits them to pass the costs onto someone else's shoulders, through some form of financial sleight of hand. As it stands, the average American who becomes seriously sick, must either sell their home, if they have one, go into bankruptcy, endure endless bill collector humiliation and lawsuit... or forgo the medical attention they require, and die. Trading physical illness for psychological and emotional illness, is the best deal the American Medical Establishment is willing to offer all but the rich, and professional thieves, and the politically connected. Yeah... sure... I know... the picture is much more complicated than this... but if you live in the U.S.A. go home, and turn on the TV, and see what hits you in the face, compliments of the medical profession. Then, go on-line, and see what the spammers are sending you. 'Medical spam' has outpaced porn spam.
So... In the end, I have to ask myself, when setting up my website, and my eBay auctions, and whatever other means that I employ, to earn a living, selling my paintings... do I want to employ the methods of promotion currently being used by the American Medical Establishment... both by the TV arm of that profession (if you can still call it that), and also by the spam arm of that profession, on the Internet?
I don't think so. I have too much respect, for my profession, and my self.