New school year marketing

[lordofduct]

High School in my county has either started last week or starts within the next week or two depending the school. All the stores are pumping their back to school sales at full blast right now with fresh new marketing schemes. Their choice of words is what one can call... errr... refreshing in their bluntness?

...

What a joke.

I was at the mall yesterday and got to see the new marketing tactics first hand. The Wellington Green Mall is littered with posters and signs advertising the marriad of stores out your disposal in their over pretentious mall. After only a few moments I was so sick to my stomach I demanded we leave this sespool of brainwashed twits.

"You'll be tested on THEIR first day....
benny's haircuttery
super cuts
betty's salon"

"Just because your clothes are old doesn't make them retro!
Gap
Abercrombie Fitch
Forever 21"

"Hint: Capris are so last year
Forever 21
Express"

are some of the horrific word choices they made... and then the creme ala creme of the bunch. I saw this 10 foot tall poster hanging from over 100 yards away. Adorning the top of this poster was what seemed to be a stylized image of freeze dried ramen noodle. I thought to myself "is that ramen? What does ramen have to do with school?" I stepped closer and closer to realize it truly was ramen... and now I could read the short phrase underneath...

suffice it to say... I about vomited on my own shoes:

"Eat more Ramen...
Buy designer Jeans"

What does this say to you? I know what it says to me! I may be a cynic, but am I wrong for interpreting this as:

Starve yourself to be sexy
trim your wallet of food costs to increase expendable income
self masturbatory satisfaction can be made of name brands

[racketboy]

Gotta love America (and any other comsumer-pressured country)
People now are too obsessed about what others think of them.

I'm guilty of it to a bit, but my priorities are in a much different order.
I'm almost scared to think how today's youth will be in another 20-30 years...

[lordofduct]

I try to think optimisticly about it... the youth are going to be so brainwashed by the time that they are the ones in power to control this that they won't realize HOW it was done and marketing will revert to a more honest reasoning....

slowly though. Because the honesty in people will be shallow. But that shallowness will gain depth and the honesty will hold as general intelligence rises and decent marketing will return.

But alas it will reach a point of genius, money will gain control again and Eureka... some guy in a business suit will say "Hey we can convince people to buy our products by instilling fear and jealousy in them".


Then again... it's all higher power conspiracy theory. The idea that the world initially goes through uncontrolled chaotic spells of evil to good and back to evil. And who is to say that evil is evil... in truth one could say this marketing allows for a smoother economy, a more docile citizen and easier to control society. And in the eyes of some is a good thing. What is evil to one man, is a God sent to another... one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist.

[Mozgus]

Heh, I am so far out of this loop. I've never owned expensive clothes. In fact, right now I'm wearing a 5 year old Metallica - Master of Puppets shirt. It was black for the first year, but now it's pretty much light grey, and 90% of the graphic has washed out, but as long as it still stays together well enough to wrap around myself, I will keep it. I get/buy maybe 2 jeans and 2 t-shirts per year, and 1 pair of shoes every 3-4 years. I just don't see the reason to spend any money on fashion. Just wear some cloth to cover your junk so you can obey the rules of our society, and be done with it. Let your personality and actions be your fashion. Don't make me combust your Nike's.

But anyways, I got off topic. Uh...marketing sucks, amirite?

[lordofduct]

no you stayed right on topic! It is exactly what I want to say in my post...