Advertising

I have never taken a marketing class, so I'm no expert on how advertising works. However, I find it really interesting how many companies have infiltrated consumers lives to the point where they are advertising on our own identities.

If I start a business, one of my largest expenses would be advertising my product and business name. I would spend money on various forms of advertising, in exchange for name recognition, and hopefully some sales.
So the burden of advertising falls on me, as the business owner. I take that burden, because it's worth the effort and expense.

That sounds reasonable. What I find amazing though, is how marketers have made it so consumers voluntarily take part of that burden upon themselves, to advertise to themselves.

Probably the most common form of this is the selling of T-Shirts. People pay money to see an attraction, then they pay money for a T-shirt that advertises the attraction. This advertises the attraction to the buyer each time they put the shirt on, and it advertises to everyone who see's the shirt. So, the consumer volunteers to pay money to advertise to himself and others.

My car insurance company offers a free logo t-shirt to any customer who brings in another customer to their business. Isn't that nice? They give me the privilege of advertising for them if we advertise enough to give them a sale.

I was teasing a friend, because she became a Facebook 'fan' of dozens of different consumer products. Alot of these 'fan' sites are not even sponsored by the product they're advertising. That means some average person went through the effort to create a fan-site with the logo, and get hundreds of people to attest that they're a 'fan' of this product. All of these people provided a service that a marketer would normally have to pay for, for free. On top of that, fans get regular updates on that product. So they volunteered themselves to be exposed to more advertising of a product they already consume and advertise.

I'm not saying I'm immune to this. I get excited about products and tell others about them as well. I've even bought T-shirts from places I've been. I think the motive for the Facebook 'fan' thing is usually just a way of decorating our profiles. It's not out of a desire to provide a free service to a gigantic corporation.
Yet, the profile is our online identity. In effect, we are advertising anything we put on it, be it ourselves, or for corporate entities. Remember the woman who was going to get a corporate logo tatooed to her forehead to the highest bidder? Profiles can be the online version of the same thing. Except we don't get paid for it.