Ronco™ for the Ages.

I’ve come to the conclusion that advertisers are not evil, advertising agencies are. “Whoa there stud,” exclaims Chazz, Vice President in Charge of Things You Don’t Need and Likely Already Have. “What we do is a service to our clients, to help them get seen, to expose them to a larger audience, to make them money and give them a bigger share of wallet so they can make more money for their shareholders.”

I call bullshit, and I’ll tell you why.

Recently, I needed a trickle-charger for my motorcycles; I knew the type I required (they put a conveniently branded tag on my battery cable) and wanted to see if I could buy it locally, so I went a-googling. I found it at Blackfoot Motosports here in Calgary. I bought the thing. Money changed hands. I got the thing. Transaction done. I’m using the thing. I love the thing and will tell my friends about the thing: “It’s an Optimate™ that I bought at Blackfoot Motosports and it’s great. You should get one.”

Here’s the thing about the thing. I am now getting served ads EVERYWHERE for 'the thing' I already bought, and this barrage of ads lasts for days if not weeks. This isn’t the first time this has happened and it won’t be the last and it doesn’t just happen when I google things—it also happens when I write about things and link to them, and when I talk about things out loud. Why? Because your phone, Google Nest™, your ‘digital everything’ is always watching and listening and advertisers can buy that data to ‘better target ads’ for their clients.

“How does this happen?” the curious consumer asks. 

It happens because of the USER AGREEMENT you never read for your app or device; maybe you tried to read it but within seconds your eyes-glazed over, spittle formed at the corners of your mouth, and your blood pressure hit ‘Stroke Level 12’, before you just scrolled to the bottom and hit 'ACCEPT'. If you don’t hit ‘ACCEPT’ you don’t get to use 'the thing', so we hit accept and get 'the thing'. But 'the thing' is actually a Trojan Horse filled with tiny Advertising Executives with tiny little hard-ons who start selling off your thoughts and desires, tirelessly trying to convince you that you need a Ronco™ Green Bean Juicer, until you finally cave in and buy one.

It doesn’t stop there, no; they continue to tell you that you need more than one Ronco™ Green Bean Juicer and before you know it you’ve started your own chain of stores selling Ronco™ Green Bean Juicers because you can never niche down too far in business. But then a new rival moves in beside you selling Ronco™ Yellow Bean Juicers. It’s a battle for the ages as you both start digital ad campaigns to earn tens of dollars.

Chazz is feeling unbeatable and Ronco™ is ecstatic by the localized surge of product uptake (“Look! Targeted ads work!” cries Chazz), that is until they see their ‘campaign’ has cost them millions of dollars to sell a thousand dollars of juicers.

It makes my head spin. Bob Hoffman is a new connection on LinkedIn, his title is Chief Aggravation Officer and his job is to make Marketers like Chazz uncomfortable. I like this guy and bought all his books. He created this amazing funnel that explains where your advertising money goes. I can’t find fault with it. Bob Hoffman might be my new hero.

To all those out there fearing the COVID vaccine has given them 5G and is paying for Bill Gates’ new spaceship, look into your cupboard and count the number of Ronco™ products you own.