When Advertising Works
Similar to the childhood recipes, when reading All Consuming by Ruby Tandoh, I wondered how social media and the advertising that comes with it influence my day-to-day life. While one would like to think that we are impermeable to adverts, at least sometimes I'm not. The question is: when does this happen and do I get a positive or negative thing out of it?
While I try to avoid ads in my everyday life, there are still some platforms where they are not fully blocked. I've somehow managed to tailor my personal profile so that I mostly see content related to food and restaurants, and surprisingly not many scams. This is probably because I've given them far too much personal information over the years. Instead I get events or restaurants, which are sometimes in places, that are not even close in a remote sense. My other favourite are ads aimed at industry professionals, which even for my hobby level are a far fetch, or events that have already taken place.
This got me thinking about the things I bought or did this year as a direct result of advertising. The main category is events, which is actually useful in a big city where it's impossible to find out everything that's happening and might be interesting to you. From the positive side, these were a couple of food- and drink-related events and one concert. The only item I can directly attribute to ads is a poster. I was already looking for one, but I couldn't find the right one initially. Then I saw an ad for a style that I actually liked. Not worth it were some restaurants, that I checked out because of their ads. As things rarely fall into the not worth it category, my hope is that I can still filter pretty well when it comes to deciding whether or not to follow an ad.
Lastly, there is something that falls between recommendations and traditional advertising. These are posts or recommendations from other people on social media, where the line can easily become blurred. I follow them because I'm generally interested in what they share, and I trust some of their recommendations. Overall, this has worked well so far, from getting recommendations for restaurants to books. Coincidentally, I initially added the book that inspired this post to my reading list after seeing a post about it by Fuchsia Dunlop. Have you ever thought what role ads in combination with your hobbies play a role in your day-to-day life?