Now What? (Life Post-Grad): The Ocean of Promotion, How to Make a Drop in the Bucket in a Sea of Advertising

From the time you get up in the morning to the time your head hits the pillow that night, you have probably been exposed to (roughly) 1,000 different advertising messages. An exact count is impossible to determine as some Unibomber-ish nut living in a log cabin in Montana might not be exposed to any advertising not done on the side of a rock. As to where someone like myself who might spend half the day on the internet could easily be exposed to 10,000 advertisements in a single day.

The old days of a company actually going out to script, shoot, edit, finalize, and air a TV commercial are still there (I think I see more commercials for Hyundai on TV than I do actual Hyundais on the road), but they’ve been pasted over by an endless stream of subconscious advertising where one or two seconds of exposure lets us be pitched to. We don’t have to actually watch Michael Jordan pretend to give a shit about something besides Michael Jordan for 30 seconds anymore, we just have to see his old jersey number 23 in black and white to know it’s a Nike commercial, or hear a rap song (always sneakily dropping product names) mention Air Force One sneakers, or just see the Nike swoosh logo. I am pretty sure the Nike corporation officially owns Tiger Woods post-divorce, so now anytime I see a grown black guy in a soft pink polo shirt my mind automatically short circuits to Nike.

People, now more than ever, are basically brands. I personally believe Kim Kardashian is a sex robot created to hawk products, which is why her, uhhhh, face is being used to sell everything from weight loss pills to credit cards for children. Is this person a good role model for young women? No, she’s a horrible one (seeing her labeled as a smart businesswoman might make actual female CEOs heads explode). Does that mean she hasn’t been branded into one? No. And more and more young people are following her lead.

Seemingly, there is not a single attractive woman on facebook that is not also an aspiring model with a fan page. Young authors are launched from Twitter accounts. And apparently it is almost impossible to get a manuscript published without first starting a well read blog. In a generation trying to noticed, it’s harder than ever to really stand out.

However, it can be done. I have an advertising budget of approximately zero dollars. Yet free advertising on websites like Twitter and Facebook makes it easier to raise awareness of the site.

For the first few weeks I was ruthless in promoting the site. If someone had a birthday and a lot of people were going to their site to wish them well, I might write “Happy Birthday from Alabama Liberal” even if they’ve known me as Brody for years and Alabama Liberal for about two weeks. Around Valentine’s Day there were a lot of engagements I may or may not have written “Congratulations, go to Alabama Liberal to register for your free wedding cake” on. If someone had a breakup? You guessed it “Tough break girl, go to www.alabamaliberal.com.”

It might be shameless but I have put the time into earning this promotion by spending years accepting fan page requests, hitting the like button on products I would never buy because someone asked me to, voting for someone in the Best Titties Contest or whatever modeling thing they’ve got going, wishing people happy birthdays that have never done the same for me, accepting Farmville requests even though I don’t play it, promoting articles for other blogs, and the 4,000 different ways people are going to ask you to help out even if you may never meet them face to face. And that’s okay, I don’t mind.

However, if I put a link to the site on someone’s page and they take it down, I also don’t hesitate to remove them. It’s not because I’m mad, it’s just that if they won’t leave up a link to a free website, they probably aren’t going to it and if they won’t go to a free website they probably won’t buy anything I write down the road. It’s the acid test of friendship. Generation 30 and under might be just using each other to promote our own pipe dreams, but there are still manners damn it.