I’ve just started to read the Cluetrain Manifesto (yes, I know, I’m way behind) and realised something that just hadn’t occurred to me before - I’m almost completely out of reach of traditional marketers.

I don’t watch television - well, one show per week, on non-commercial station. And movies now and then.

I don’t listen to commercial radio - I only listen to triplej which is non-commercial

I don’t read newspapers - ever

I don’t buy magazines - I read online instead

I don’t get advertising in my letterbox - living rural, with a PO Box instead of a letterbox means that catalogues don’t get to me.

I rarely go to the mall - I have started to buy fruit and vegetables from a roadside stall. I get other fresh produce from the market. My friends give me excess produce, and one day my garden will make most of our fresh produce. I have only stepped inside a mall once in the last month.

I don’t see pop-up ads online - Firefox blocks them for me

I don’t even get spam - not that this is the realm of traditional marketing, but now that I have knowspam running, I don’t even see this type of advertising.

I get product recommendations from friends or references, from researching online, or sometimes just heading to the shop with a good idea of what I want (I was frightened to the core reading William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition last year. I can’t remember the detail, but there was a scene in a bar with people doing product placement - in conversation recommending a product, and you didn’t know that they were being paid to talk to you about the product. This still freaks me.)

Anyway, I’m glad I’ve escaped the marketing and advertising scene. I feel more real and less manipulated. I feel more true to myself.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 24th, 2004 at 9:59 pm and is filed under Random thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.