More than any generation in history, people who are young today are not free to create an authentic culture of their own. Instead their hopes and desires are intensively studied by marketers, then amplified and sold back to them in a diabolical feedback loop.
That’s the premise of the PBS Frontline documentary “The Merchants of Cool”, which makes a chillingly compelling case for the distortion of youth culture by its massive commercialization.
TBYB encourages you to level the playing field, as it were, by stepping up the production values of your own advertising. Though you’ll likely never decide to sink a million bucks into producing an ad to influence yourself, it’s certainly possible to add a little color, a photograph, or a slogan. Rather than just writing your goal on a list, consider introducing interesting imagery to reinforce the concept.
Hey guys. I sat down late last night to publish the article I had written for you this week and discovered to my dismay that due to problems with my host (don’t get me started!) that version of the Wordpress database has vanished. ARGH!!!!! Hopefully this is a temporary situation that can be resolved from either their backup or mine, but in the meantime I encourage you to browse the article index for tips about personal marketing that you may have missed.
Share your personal marketing ideas and check out ads other readers have posted on the Examples page.
This improved version of Ad-O-Matic prints your personal ad on a variety of stuff you can use to influence yourself every day.
Serenitext is a service that sends text messages you have written to your mobile phone or email at random times throughout the day. Read TBYB!'s review.
Links to TBYB! reviews for the Amazon products listed below can be found on the Articles page.
If you're ever interested in buying a book, gadget, or service mentioned on Take Back Your Brain!, I really appreciate it when you click through to Amazon
Lynn Brem is a geek from Seattle, USA who is fond of electronic gadgets and is particularly interested in how they can be used to remind us to do things that are more interesting and important to us than going to meetings.
