Ads are everywhere we go. Drive down a barren desert road and there will be a billboard advertising some product or service. Turn on the TV and you'll spend almost as much time watching loud commercials as you do the show you tuned in to see. Commercialism is especially prevalent in the world of sports. If you've ever watched an English Premier League soccer game or a WNBA game then you know that the players' jerseys are dominated by their team's sponsor. When New York's men's professional soccer team was sold to the Austrian company Red Bull GmbH, they became the New York Red Bulls (I kid you not). If a commentator is to present an on-screen replay, he's got to make sure he mentions the replay's sponsor and associated slogan. One of the most obvious examples of the unrivaled supremacy of commercial sponsorship is in college football bowl games. The Holiday Bowl, for example, is now officially the "Pacific Life Holiday Bowl" and the logo contains the name "Pacific Life" and the insurance company's own logo displayed just as prominently as the bowl's own name. There a some bowls, in fact, that are entirely based on the sponsor (such as the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl). Another arena dominated by commercialism is the Internet. There are countless sites that are covered in ads. Often times, the first few results in a Google search will be ads pertaining to the query. Any video you watch online will be preceded by an ad of up to a minute long and will even have pop-up ads in the middle of the video. It seems that wherever we go we are constantly bombarded by some form of an ad trying to get us to acknowledge and turn to its product or service. Apparently, the most important facet of society is commercialism.
Sometimes I'm at a loss to understand the reasoning behind some of the methods corporations use to shove their existence down our throats. If I see the same damn commercial every five to ten minutes during each commercial break, I don't want to ever hear from or about that company for a good long time. It seems as if they're oblivious the fact that normal, sane people can get annoyed with seeing the same loud, annoying commercial over and over again. Granted, we'll most likely remember the name, service, and bad acting they present, but we often won't feel inclined to follow up on their unrelenting ads. At the same time, if this irritating tactic didn't work at least a little bit, then companies wouldn't spend so much of their money on it.
Some of the overabundance of commercialism I can understand, however. I get why the Los Angeles Times never fails to include at least one male enhancement ad in their sports section everyday. As awkward as it may sometimes be, the Times needs to bring revenue some how as their business gradually goes out of vogue. It can be annoying having to make that extra effort to turn the page to get away from these ads but to organizations like newspapers, they're a necessity. Most of the time, though, such an overabundance of ads are not necessary to the existence of both the company showing the ad and the company the ad is for.
So if the indomitable pervasiveness of modern commercialism can be so annoying and over-the-top to the consumer, why do corporations insist on thrusting their ads further and further into the various aspects of society? Why detract from the original spirit of something with rampant commercialism? Because of that all-important greenish paper. A TV viewer may be frustrated by constant commercials, a magazine reader may be vexed by page after page of ads they have to flip through, and a nature enthusiast may despair over an ugly billboard obstructing the view of a beautiful mountain, but if it's legal and it brings in a profit, it'll happen. Unfortunately the prospect of making another dollar does not make a corporation think twice about overriding the spirit of a sport with its logo, nor does the inconvenience for the everyday person when accessing some sort of media. This prospect has made commercialism supreme in today's society, probably irreversibly supreme.
Commercialism's increasing pervasiveness has been gradual enough for people to adjust to it decently well. But when you stop to think about it, you have to ask yourself where it's going to go from here. What kind of new, invasive marketing techniques will be developed and implanted in society? Will we ever get to the point when letters from universities will read "Congratulations on your acceptance to the University of Wherever, sponsored by McDonalds (buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, I'm lovin' it!)"? The implementation of more invasive marketing will most likely never have a limit, especially if it's gradual. We'll adjust to the longer pre-video ads and the fast food company-sponsored basketball game stats. As unfortunate and annoying as it can be, it's the society we live in, a society probably sponsored by Geico or something.
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