personalized attention: technology's affect on advertising

Imagine for a moment that you are in the year 2054, what kind of advertisements do you think you would see lining the walls of a mall or street corner. Clearly technology will have advanced much by that time but what kind of new gadgets will dazzle our gaze? The film Minority Report attempts to predict this future of advertising based upon the advancements of technology seen in our present day. Many scenes depict promotional advertisements which are personalized by use of a retinal scan as an individual walks by the digital screen. The information is then processed and displayed for the client by either stating their name within the advertisement or pointing out related items to their needs. Although this concept may seem far-fetched, it is much closer than one can imagine. A technology that has gained much momentum in the past couple of years which may enable a closer actualization of this methodoloy is Bluetooth. Bluetooth is a wireless manner of sending data up to 100 meters away which has been used most popularly with cell phones. With more and more cell phone owners buying these wireless headsets every day, the advertising agencies realized that this a market which can revolutionize how products will be publicized. "By the end of this year, the number of Bluetooth gadgets, still mostly used with mobile phones, will rise to more than a billion from 500 million at the end of 2005," which means it is quite a large upcoming market to consider. Using the same concept as demonstrated in the film Minority Report, individuals have been inspired to use bluetooth recognition to target individuals and personalize advertisements. BluScreen is the project which has had the most success with the creation of such a device. Developed by a group of students in the United Kingdom, the product will conceivably revolutionize the way advertising is executed. There is only one working model which is displayed in a hallway at Electronics and Computer Science at Southampton University. As far as issue of anonymity, one of the creators Alex Rogers commented that "It can uniquely identify devices but keeps the person anonymous" but also stated that users can get more personalized advertisments by "Adding profile information [to] make the display more relevant." This manner of promotion can change many things about advertising, but does this invention overstep the boundaries of the client/promoter relationship? When do we draw the line as to how much advertisers are involved in our lives? Despite blocking of unsolicited telemarketers or privacy settings online, advertisers still find ways to reach their audience with clever personalized messages. What I argue is that although the advertising may be quite taxing at times, the constant bombardment of messages is what makes the civilized world what it is.

No matter where you go, there is always some form of advertisement waiting for an unsuspecting onlooker. Whether it is a billboard, a commercial or just a poster, there is a constant flow of information to the public at all times. The task for the advertiser is to make their advertisement stand out above the majority of advertisements most of which are completely forgotten right after they are seen. and what better way to do this then to place advertisements where the typical consumer would go: the grocery store, bathrooms, coffee stores, malls. The list goes on and on, but where the problems exists is that all advertisers promote in the same locations. This results in an overload of information which may seem overwhelming to an outsider, but the reality is that most people don't even see half of the advertising out there. Advertisements are mostly harmless and contribute greatly to how consumers think and feel. Advertising is a very powerful entity which succeeds in nudging individuals to form opinions of products or concepts and thrives on ensuring those opinions remain. It may be viewed as a negative result but most messages contained in advertisements merely urge us to buy a certain type of pan or car. To demonstrate how greatly advertising has affected all individuals, imagine an individual who owns a mac laptop, drives a bmw convertabile and drinks starbucks every morning. Although there will be slight variations, most people could agree that this individual is most likely a young male who works in an office atmosphere and most likely wears a trendy suit to work everyday. All three products have their own individual brand associations which affects how individuals buy meaning if an individual wants to emulate the image of the brand, they will buy the product to show who they are. How can such a powerful entity be so negative? Given that sometimes advertisements do sometimes overstep boundaries and offend individuals with negative messages towards certain races or body types, the vast majority of advertising just reinforces the ideas that are already spread throughout society. It just allows more persons to realize what is the hip thing to do at the present time.

Although I do believe that advertising does clearly help society, there are definitely times at which they overstep their boundaries and violate privacy issues. The bluetooth technology has already taken precautions to ensure that it is not used to encroach upon the privacy of individuals however it may change in the near future. A technology which does indeed already violate a person's ability not to be advertised is the use of personalized text messages sent to the phone of an individual who walks within a certain radius of a store determined through use of GPS tracking available on most new phones. For example, say an individual walks within 50 feet of a starbucks, they would be sent a messaging urging them to visit the store and possibly offer a coupon to entice them to enter. Another form of this technology is the use of advertising on cellular phones' home page of the internet browser. A larger quantity of phones are now coming standard with internet access, this use of advertisement is a little less intrusive then the text messages which deems it non-controversial. In closing, although technology may allow advertisers to target markets even more effectively, I do not believe the change in the manner of advertising will affect the true aim of advertising: bringing people closer in how they think and feel about products, ideas, and life.