There can be no more dispute on the influence of the language on thinking of the masses - it is recorded, proven to be true and adapted into art. Limitations of language are now widely combatted with the acknowledgment of how language transforms. With every new aspect of human life branching into further complexity, we create new expressions and rules for it. Now, at the current moment in time, langauge is also a marketing tool. In fact, it is the strongest one yet.
A few days ago, an advertisement for an Estonian cab and food delivery company slipped by my usually pretty tight anti-ad precautions and displayed itself for about 15 seconds. I try to always cover my advertisement and mute the sound - I do know how vulnerable my brain is to jingles, confidently said sentences and bright color schemes. The series of videos from that specific campaign came by me a couple times, usually introducing human characters using their services. The longest advertisement, which is a slideshow of photos on the topic of cities transforming, unveils without displaying much of the actual product, the supposed aim of the campaing - make cities for people.
Now, as I am quite cynical and tend to impulsively come up with the worst reason for a given thing to happen, I had a passing though - "yet again, a company is highjacking an idea". Issue is, while marginalised groups see through the marketing of identity politics, it is much harder to resist consumption if it is for the sake of a cause. Why wouldn't you buy that cab if the icon has a leaf on it? Why wouldn't you want to get an item that helps save the animals, or children in impoverished countries, or people with cancer, with aide of an organisation you never heard of and probably is affiliated with the original company?
Well, if you have not been liking how there are now concrete castles towering over your home, or that there are car accidents around you because simply anyone can drive a steel tonne on wheels a mandated meter away from you, how about we introduce a new idea we definitely came up with, because we bought a catchy web domain for it, and enlighten you on what you want? Now, what would you say if we provided it to you by making you pay to keep driving that steel tonne on wheels? Or what would you say if you could do that by ordering food through our platform, and a minimum wage immigrant will bring it over to you?
I would like to hear in 10 to 20 years when NDA's finally expire about how exactly each of these, as I like to call them, ideology hijacking ad campaigns, were conducted from start to finish. What the thought process was, what data was used, where the data came from, what other companies were involved in its creation or how much did the company profit off of it. We are truly not going to be fully aware of how much our attention is being fought for if we do not know the stakes and the effort it takes to get us to fall back into consumptionism, no matter how resilient to it we think we are.