It’s that time of the year… again! And now that Christmas has arrived I think it’s a good moment to speak about our consumerism habits.
Consumerism: a very well-known word and a spread disease in the 21st. century. When this concept comes to our mind we tend to think of the money we waste in things we don’t really need, but its significance goes beyond!
When thinking of consumerism don’t think just of shopping items, everything in our day-today routine is carefully designed for making us spend our money: a coffee in our job break, a lunch with our colleagues, a simple beer after a eight-hour shift… We ‘invest’ our mot-that-high salary in things we could do without, but the society forces us, somehow, to enroll into this cycle of consumerism.
Let’s take a simple example; when it comes to technology we all love to have the latest smartphone, tablet or computer, what’s more, if we don’t own a fancy phone we’ll be out of the wave. Those people who dare to live with an old phone are considered weirdos. I once heard a conversation among some youngsters about one of their school colleges; apparently she was still using a shell phone so they were debating if she was a serial killer who didn’t want to be tracked via the GPS signal (thanks to Hollywood we know that if you’re going to commit a crime you’d better use an old untraceable phone).
Techno. companies are very aware of this fact, so they programmed their devices to expire and create a desire in us in order to sell their new models. This phenomenon is called planned obsolescence.
Little do we know regarding the marketing strategies used by companies to talk us into buying their items. Never forget a soft drinking company, Coca-Cola, was able to change the traditional colors of Santa Claus so as to link their brand to the Christmas’ spirit, a masterstroke!
In case you don’t know the story: St. Nicholas used to wear green clothes, now he wears a red coat with white details, the corporate colors of Coca-Cola.
You may think it could be a mere coincidence but, in the advertisement world, coincidences don’t exist, everything is well calculated to create an impact and achieve their endless goal: make you purchase anything.
So on these days be careful and don’t let yourself be dragged by the colors and spirit of consumerism.
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