Cherubs, and expensive roses.

It’s that time of the year again when couples are excited and singles are freaking out! Whichever team you’re in this year (#teamthirdwheel!), I hope you have a fantastic Valentine’s Day! (You know, if you celebrate it at all and whatnot.)

But what is Valentine’s Day? History says that it’s the commemoration of one Saint Valentine and his act of martyrdom, marrying couples in secret which led to his imprisonment. This caused him to cross paths with his one true love: the jailer’s daughter. Since he was in jail, couples he wed would often send him flowers and notes to show their gratitude and the same is true for him and his lady. He sent his girl a note on his execution day, the 14th of February and signed it “From your Valentine.”

Sweet beginnings are used and abused by modern-day society, we can’t ignore the fact that Valentine’s Day is very much commercialised. Businesses and advertisers needed to give people something to spend on in-between Christmas and Easter, thus Valentine’s Day! Under the disguise of love, Valentine’s Day seems to do little more than raise women’s expectations and give men immense stress to deliver.

After all the heart-shaped lollies, roses, and the misuse of cherubs; how relevant is Valentine’s Day? Apparently, relevant enough to be the fifth most celebrated holiday in the world. Why does society (literally) buy into this holiday? With the power of the internet, you’d want to believe that there will be people who know that Valentine’s Day, much like other holidays such as Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, is used as an advertising tool to gain profit. This saddens me because I think that love should be celebrated every day.

False advertising has been a prominent issue in society for years, and with the Bunnings and Bike Barn fiascos that recently hit the news, isn’t it possible that Valentine’s Day counts as false advertising too, with its huge and unrealistic upselling of love?

We all will leave this world one day. Would your life’s highlight reel include Valentine’s Day? If you only made extra efforts on Valentine’s Day, then I’m sorry to say but I don’t think that’s love at all. You simply bought into the idea of love trying to please society rather than sincerely extending love to your significant other. Gestures of love are most genuine when you do it because of an overflow of love in your heart that you can’t help but pour it out – and not because advertising told you to.

Born to buy

For the majority of my life, I’ve been “one of the boys”. I grew up with two older brothers, so  I got their hand-me-downs, I was always bugging them when they were with their friends, and I even learned their hobbies.

So naturally, I was closer to guys. This being said, I’ve gained a clear perspective on how boys have this perception that they have to be sporty, they have to be taller than girls, and they should never cry.

Most of the guys I knew growing up didn’t really care much for clothes or anything like that until high school, but nowadays, I see 1-year-old boys getting the most fashionable clothes and even wearing designer shoes. I used to know a 3-year-old boy who wore Gucci school shoes and that was the first time that I thought about how kids – no exceptions, both girls and boys – are raised to be fashion-forward right off the womb.

I recently saw a video on Facebook from “The Illusionists” about why young girls are sexualized, and needless to say, it’s very true. Raising children to be concerned about how they look and how they dress gives the industry heaps of advantages because opening their eyes to these things at a very young age only means they will treat it as the norm growing up. Children are raised to be consumers.

Going back to that little boy with the Gucci shoes – I then realized how a lot of my guy friends are now very concerned about the clothes and (especially) the shoes they wear. Over time, I’ve had guy friends ask me for fashion advice or send me photos of the clothes they’re trying on in the stores to get a “lady’s opinion”. Today many of my guy friends follow their own fashion icons, male models or celebrities they look at (I’d say look up to, but I know they don’t actually look up to them – they just look at them) for “inspiration”.

This so-called “inspiration” is nothing more than fuel for insecurity. YES! It even happens with men and we are all victimised by media and its impossible standards of beauty.

In my honest opinion, we can blame media, marketing and advertising all we want but at the end of the day, we always have a choice whether we’re going to listen to the marketing messages that tell us we’re not good enough until we have ticked all the boxes that society and businesses dictate. The truth is, we’re never going to tick all those boxes because there’s always something new that gets added to the “must-have” list every single day. Satisfaction is a matter of self-awareness and contentment with who we are inside and not what marketing and advertising tell us to be on the outside.

Advertising: A source of insecurity

I was an insecure teenager growing up. I had an eating disorder and I was depressed for years until I discovered who I really am. During that season in my life, I saw other girls who were trying to be closer to the preconception of perfect, battering themselves to become someone off the Internet or in magazines.

The Internet, advertising and general media impacts our lives whether we know it or not. I didn’t know that as a young teenager but learning that it’s simply advertising affecting my perceptions gave me a sense of clarity that there’s nothing wrong with me.

This video shows that magazines are merely product catalogues packed full of advertising.

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD WATCH THIS! A shocking video about the ugly truth hidden in beauty and fashion magazines.

Advertising is everywhere and as for women, we are led to believe that we are not good enough as we are. Society’s standard for beauty is raised every single day and advertising creates an illusion that we’re only going to be beautiful when we have a certain, often expensive, product.

Some time ago, I saw a Facebook post of mine, ‘round about the time I was going to finish my degree. The post was an infographic showing how deceiving food labels can be. It urged me to share my two cents as to how sad it is that advertising and marketing all too often bend the truth to gain sales. I majored in marketing because I’ve always believed that marketing is the artistic side of the business but what happens when art comes in a deceitful form? I didn’t want to be that kind of marketer, so I promised myself that I would be as honest as possible once I start to work in the industry.

It’s still true today that advertising has its way of manipulating our behaviour as individuals. As I’ve mentioned, I became insecure and I knew other girls were too – but the moment I understood that those photos are manipulated first in order to manipulate our thoughts and emotions, is the moment that I knew that there’s more than meets the eye. Hey! Even celebrities were affected by this and they’re the ones we look up to.

I want to believe that behind the façade that advertising puts up, there are some advertisers who know that there’s nothing wrong with us.

In my next blog, I'll look into a company that started an advertising campaign to empower women and how this work created a huge ripple of panic among traditional advertisers.

How much have you sacrificed today?

This weekend I was at Sky City in Auckland. After dinner, a quest for Ice Cream sent me and my friends into the casino. There was no ice cream there. We exited the casino and left the building, walking past a series of personalised number plates stapled to pristine motor vehicles and I recalled something I had read in one of my favourite books, American Gods, written by Neil Gaiman:

“Entering the casino one is beset at every side by invitation – invitations such that it would take a man of stone, heartless, mindless, and curiously devoid of avarice, to decline them.

Listen: a machine gun rattle of silver coins as they tumble and spurt down into a slot machine tray and overflow onto monogrammed carpets is replaced by the siren clangor of the slots, the jangling, bippeting chorus swallowed by the huge room, muted to a comforting background chatter by the time one reaches the card tables, the distant sounds only loud enough to keep the adrenaline flowing through the gamblers’ veins.

There is a secret that the casinos possess, a secret they hold and guard and prize, the holiest of their mysteries. For most people do not gamble to win money, after all, although that is what is advertised, sold, claimed and dreamed. But that is merely the easy lie that allows the gamblers to lie to themselves, the big lie that gets them through the enormous, ever-open, welcoming doors.

The secret is this: people gamble to lose money. They come to casinos for the moment in which they feel alive, to ride the spinning wheel and turn with the cards and lose themselves, with the coins, in the slots. They want to know they matter. They brag about the nights they won, the money they took from the casino, but they treasure, secretly treasure, the times they lost. It’s a sacrifice, of sorts.”

Advertising and Gambling are twin engines of the same religion. Advertisers sacrifice vast amounts of money to the Advertising Gods in the hope that they’ll win big. Don’t believe me? Well, I’m sure you’ve heard this one before: “half of my advertising budget is wasted, I just don’t know which half.” It’s the calling card on the inept. But they also say (whoever “they” are) that you’ve gotta spend money to make money. So why do advertisers sacrifice money without any idea of what the return will be?

The reason is that advertising is a realm of sacrifice. In the same way that casinos beguile their victims with colour and noise and scent is the same way that advertising sells its counterfeit dreams. “Spend more! Spend more! Your advertising works (even though we can’t prove it)! If you stop sacrificing, everyone else who is will pull ahead. Is that what you want?”. It must be true; there are thousands and thousands of advertising messages getting nailed into our heads every day, so someone must be winning.

Yes, someone is winning but it’s not you and it’s not your competitors either. The House always wins. Advertising Agencies, Media Buyers, PR companies, Design Ninja Shops, Web Thrillers… they’re all different rooms in the same House. They always win.

And you’ll always lose if you continue to believe that gamblers play to win; that there’s a box you should think out of; that people buy watches to tell the time; and that if 50% of your advertising is working then that's enough.