Setting The Standard
If ever there was a standard set for obnoxious in-your-face advertising and hard-sell ubiquity, that award should go to Rogers Communications. No telecommunications giant works harder at selling its inflated-cost services than this miserable company. It bills itself as 'first' in providing wireless, cable television, high-speed Internet and home telephone services to consumers and businesses in Canada.
It got that way, presumably, by presenting as one huge predator on the Canadian public consciousness.
Their telephone solicitations are a bloody nuisance, and barely a day goes by without some kind of advertising being dropped off by the obliging mailman in our post box. Junk mail from a perniciously sleazy company, providing 'home entertainment' for Canadians, par excellence.
Except, who needs it, really. Only those utterly besotted by imprisoning themselves endlessly in a daily rote of television and gaming and Internet afflictions.
Where at one time, almost twenty years ago, we signed up with them, it didn't take long for us to realize this was a service we could very well do without, and we cancelled after a year of service. They haven't stopped preying on us, since. Nor have they taken a break from preying on the larger Canadian public. Their advertising is so pervasive as to become a nauseating presence.
And the most current half-page advertisements in our daily newspaper demonstrates precisely how morally oblique is their campaign to take over all electronic communications services, quite apart from their blatantly omnivorous avariciousness.
It's a given in most social health and academic circles that people watch too much television, spend too much time on the Internet, and overuse cellphones.
Educators point out time and again that, bad enough as it is that adults don't budge from the couch and the glare of the television screen, children too have become irremediably addicted to the presence of these 'entertainment' features gracing every home in the country.
Various government agencies mount advertising campaigns geared to make people think about how they're wasting opportunities to get about, move a little, expend some energy.
Not only is the general public becoming seriously overweight from engorging itself on the fast foods advertised on television screens they're glued to, incapable of exerting themselves to get up, shut the damn thing off, prepare a decent home-cooked meal, then get out for a post-prandial walk around the neighbourhood, and stave off obesity, but the steadily emerging statistics of grossly overweight children also points to a warped lifestyle.
All proudly brought to you by Rogers Communications. That latest piece of newspaper advertising? Well, how about big bold red letters enticingly claiming: "SUDDENLY, GOING OUT SEEMS SO OVERRATED". And below that, the photograph of a teen-age girl reclined on a sofa, animatedly blabbing on her cellphone, while her little sister, gaming controls in hand, is avidly gaming.
"Find out what's waiting for you at home" the advertisement brags.
Really? Really!
It got that way, presumably, by presenting as one huge predator on the Canadian public consciousness.
Their telephone solicitations are a bloody nuisance, and barely a day goes by without some kind of advertising being dropped off by the obliging mailman in our post box. Junk mail from a perniciously sleazy company, providing 'home entertainment' for Canadians, par excellence.
Except, who needs it, really. Only those utterly besotted by imprisoning themselves endlessly in a daily rote of television and gaming and Internet afflictions.
Where at one time, almost twenty years ago, we signed up with them, it didn't take long for us to realize this was a service we could very well do without, and we cancelled after a year of service. They haven't stopped preying on us, since. Nor have they taken a break from preying on the larger Canadian public. Their advertising is so pervasive as to become a nauseating presence.
And the most current half-page advertisements in our daily newspaper demonstrates precisely how morally oblique is their campaign to take over all electronic communications services, quite apart from their blatantly omnivorous avariciousness.
It's a given in most social health and academic circles that people watch too much television, spend too much time on the Internet, and overuse cellphones.
Educators point out time and again that, bad enough as it is that adults don't budge from the couch and the glare of the television screen, children too have become irremediably addicted to the presence of these 'entertainment' features gracing every home in the country.
Various government agencies mount advertising campaigns geared to make people think about how they're wasting opportunities to get about, move a little, expend some energy.
Not only is the general public becoming seriously overweight from engorging itself on the fast foods advertised on television screens they're glued to, incapable of exerting themselves to get up, shut the damn thing off, prepare a decent home-cooked meal, then get out for a post-prandial walk around the neighbourhood, and stave off obesity, but the steadily emerging statistics of grossly overweight children also points to a warped lifestyle.
All proudly brought to you by Rogers Communications. That latest piece of newspaper advertising? Well, how about big bold red letters enticingly claiming: "SUDDENLY, GOING OUT SEEMS SO OVERRATED". And below that, the photograph of a teen-age girl reclined on a sofa, animatedly blabbing on her cellphone, while her little sister, gaming controls in hand, is avidly gaming.
"Find out what's waiting for you at home" the advertisement brags.
TV On Demand
Safe surfing
Even voice mail's dialed up
Really? Really!
Labels: Environment, Health, Social-Cultural Deviations
posted by Pieface @ 5:52 PM
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