One of the biggest challenges when you’re trying to save money is resisting retail temptation.
Because the Western economy is based around consumerism we’re surrounded by adverts and marketing campaigns. Talk about being hoist by our own petard. But we’re stuck with the system, at least for now.
It’s actually slightly sinister when you start to think about it. We’re advertised at fairly aggressively online, over the phone, in the street, on TV and radio, in magazines and newspapers, on buses, trains and ferries, in airports, by email and post in an exhausting barrage of ‘buy, buy, buy’.
There was even a pilot scheme announced a while back in Marketing Week magazine where London cabs would carry flat TV screens in the back to advertise to passengers. How mad is that? Is nothing sacred? Is there no peace? For goodness sake!
If you’re in a constant state of half-cocked temptation and find it difficult to resist the siren call of advertising and marketing, here’s three tips to help you retain your spending sanity in the face of the worst offenders – TV, radio and glossy magazines.
- turn the sound down on the telly when the adverts come one. We have a laugh making up alternative scripts, or we have a chat. Sometimes my fella plays his guitar and I read ’til the ad break finishes and we can return safely to what we were watching. We’re hooked on the silence now. You don’t realise, until you turn the sound down, how chaotic and frenetic adverts are, with all that half-hysterical, half insane singing, shouting and jabbering
- tune in to a radio station without adverts
- if you’re a label addict, step away from the glossy magazines. What you don’t know won’t hurt you, and if you haven’t spotted that expensive slinky number, you can’t lose sleep desiring it!
Don’t worry if you’re convinced you’re a hopeless case. Tomorrow I’m going to talk about support groups for the terminally addicted to shopping…
(Thanks to http://www.sxc.hu/profile/ryasaurus for the fab free image)
