The Season’s adverts have started!

Hugh MacLeod

It’s barely the 1st November and I saw my very first Christmas advert on TV. I was having some lunch in the kitchen, whilst ‘Loose Women’ was playing on the TV. As this was on a commercial station, I saw and heard my first 2018 Christmas advert.

It’s only the 1st of November!!

This means we nearly have 2 months of Christmas adverts ahead of us. And that’s why I try to avoid any commercial TV or radio stations, because the adverts drive me insane.

The trouble is with the digital world we live in, it’s going to be almost impossible for me to avoid seeing and hearing adverts, especially the Christmas ones. Whenever I deliver any kind of talk or presentation about storytelling I ask the audience if they like the adverts. Usually I have just a few hands that go up and that’s because they work in the marketing industry, most of the room keep their hands down. 99.9% of everyone dislikes the adverts.

I work in the industry too and I can’t bear (or is it bare?) them.

Why?

Imagine a large rock and think of that rock as your brain. Now take a hammer, doesn’t matter what size, think of that hammer being the advert. Pound the hammer on the rock multiple times, what do you get?

A dent on the rock, that will stay there forever. And that’s what’s happening in your brain when the advertising industry continually repeat their adverts on all the possible channels and networks they can think of. You know the ones I’m talking about right?

Whether you’re browsing on the web or walking through the high street or shopping mall, notice what you are looking at. Might some of those items be the exact items that were being advertised?

Did you ever experience a phenomenon called ‘Amazon Amnesia’? Made up word of course, it’s not real but it has a nice ring to it doesn’t it? It’s when you receive a parcel in the post and you can’t even remember what it was that you ordered! Well you can thank the advertisers for that. You may even have experienced bringing home a product from the shopping mall or high street and wondered why you bought it. Yep, exact same reason. The hammer (advert) created a gorgeous neural pathway for that product in your brain. When you saw it you may have been compelled to buy it, without realising why.

99.9% of the junk we buy we do not need.

There are children going hungry, there are people living on the streets and all because society is too obsessed with wanting the next iPhone in their hands, when the current on is working absolutely fine. Nobody wants to connect the dots between buying stuff and the state of the world, whether it’s hunger, homelessness or climate change.

We’re all so totally self-obsessed with our own wants and needs that we dig our heads in the sand and just think of number one, yourself.

Happy shopping this Season!

Michael de Groot

Expelliarmus

This is the spell that Harry Potter uses when he’s in a duel.

This how I feel sometimes when I’m duelling against the manipulation of the internet, email marketing and advertising.

No matter what I do I’m bombarded with these messages every day. They suggest that we are exposed daily to 5000 marketing messages. We don’t even know it’s happening to us.

A connection of mine Nolan Clemmons posted this fabulous graphic (see below) illustrating the routes that corporations use to manipulate us using email and the internet. Once they have us in their sales funnel they will bombard us with adverts wherever we browse, in our email inboxes and then eventually by phone.

Nolan Clemmons — clemmons.io

Don’t get me wrong, I believe the Internet is a great invention, I’m an advocate a believer and yet I also believe that tech companies have carefully examined us humans as targets and data sets to be manipulated and controlled.

Governments actually love Facebook, they may suggest all sorts of action for data leaks, privacy hacks etc., but they themselves are the biggest users of searching for individuals using these technologies. I’ve sat in front of cyber security experts that have shown me a whole host of hacks they use to get the intel that governments, security firms, the police, MI5, the FBI, NSA, GCHQ and the CIA need in order to locate criminals. Well they can adopt these techniques for all of us too, for any of us. On the day of publishing this, I received this email.

By: Sarah Miller — Citizens Against Monopoly

Facebook Inc. is inviting Capitol Hill staffers to Washington DC’s “newest, most exclusive event venue” for free food and drinks. Events like this enable Facebook to peddle influence in the halls of power, and keep lawmakers from cracking down on its abuse of our democracy. In the first quarter of 2018, Facebook spent $3.3 million lobbying the U.S. government, more than ever before. That’s a key part of how it builds power and evades accountability, and events like this one are part of the process. At “A Place to Connect,” Facebook’s executive and top lobbyists will be schmoozing the people who are supposed to represent us, and trying to bamboozle Congress into believing that the company’s reforms are for real. For instance, a former corporate lawyer who is now Facebook’s deputy chief privacy officer will try to argue that Facebook is stepping it up on privacy — all actual evidence to the contrary.

Sign the Freedom From Facebook petition. Tell the Federal Trade Commission to break up Facebook’s monopoly: https://freedomfromfb.com

You know when you get that sinking feeling, that what you’ve been doing on the Internet for over a decade in order to be noticed, get found and help your own small business is now catching up with you and the realisation that corporations are using all your data to make millions, no sorry, billions.

Today I sat through a presentation by the UK CEO of Cisco and he told us that in 2018, that’s right now, there are 18 billion devices connected to the internet, by 2020 it will be 50 billion and by 2030 it will be 500 billion, that’s ½ trillion devices connected to the internet. And that’s not just mobile phones by the way, of course it couldn’t be.

He also said there are more mobile phones in the world compared to toothbrushes. What a ridiculous statistic that is, but it’s true!!

Happy brushing!

Michael de Groot

Just saw this interview with Jaron Lanier on Channel 4 news in the UK. He confirms the manipulation point.

Manipulation

The world is angry with Facebook and rightly so. It may not happen straight away, but we may have seen the gradual and ultimate demise of Facebook over the next few years. It’s not just the Cambridge Analytica story that’s causing it.

Most people are realising that Facebook is a total time-suck. You lose yourself in the Rabbit Hole, never to come out. You stop speaking to people and avoid having real conversations that matter.

I stopped on Facebook, I haven’t deleted my profile, but maybe one day I will. My mind is so much better off as a result.

Down the Rabbithole — Michael & Josh

What gets to me now is not only the manipulation of the social media platforms, also the manipulation of marketers using those platforms.

I can now see the wording, the language, the videos, the NLP, basically the brainwash that’s taking place across the board. I’m worried for us all. Capitalism, consumerism, growth, GDP’s, nationalism, plastics, money, all of it is making us greedy, corrupt and wish to take rather then give.

A human wants to help her fellow human, but not at any cost, not telling her that I’m better than anyone else, surely?

That is what’s happening at the moment. When I read LinkedIn profiles I am astounded how people promote themselves as the biggest this the best at that, showing off awards, so-called corporates to have worked with, testimonials and also sorts of gimmicks, tricks and magic. It’s making me feel quite nauseous when I read them.

Happy promoting!

Michael de Groot

Have you been hypnotised by Apple?

Watching people in the London Apple store, is like watching zombies in there ideal environment. They are all staring at screens, not speaking to anyone apart from the Apple staff, who are either convincing them that now is the best time to buy or the genius team who are telling them to switch off their device and then back on again. Ironically this happened for me when I met with one of the genius team reporting my failing notes app. It sounded just like being back with Microsoft. Oh blast! 

Anyway, I observed how these folks were being hypnotised by their surroundings and Apple’s stuff. Their ‘best ever’ devices. 

Yes I'm also a hypnotised victim, all my devices are Apple, although I do not have all the latest and greatest, still on iPhone 6s and iMac 2013, I did upgrade my iPad last year to a Pro and that’s because the old one just wouldn’t function any longer. Built-in redundancy tricks by the tech industry?

Anyway back to being a Zombie. 

Listening to a podcast by the Minimalists the other day, they mentioned that the whole reason Apple have laid out their store so that you can touch devices is that they have done extensive research that confirms that when people touch something which they desire, they have already bought it in their brain. So it will just be a matter of either convincing themselves that they want it or they just go through the process of buying having been hypnotised by having touched the device.

Although I hadn't actually considered this, when I think back how I personally have been affected by this, I can definitely see how this works. Yes I am a hypnotised victim and I’m not proud of it and being a victim means I probably didn’t have any control over it. Now that I know what happens, I will for sure be on my guard, no more watching Apple keynote announcements, unsubscribing from their announcement and product emails and unsubscribing from their YouTube channel. 

Oh my, I just hadn’t realised how I had set myself up to be hypnotised via so many different ways. It's my own fault.

Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy their products, they deliver immense value in my life and business, I wouldn’t have been able to be as proficient in my business without the functionality, reliability and simplicity. In the main the products and their apps work faultlessly. Inevitably as they have grown bigger and bigger with billions of devices installed around the world, I guess issues do occur. My firm belief is that IT companies of any kind are in constant BETA. That must be so tough for them.

The big lesson for me is to be more awake, less zombie-like and aware of any desires that may arise as a result of being hypnotised by big brands like Apple and others.

This Zombie is biting back!

@stayingaliveuk