at&t’s newest in aspirational marketing: enjoying sensory overload
This morning over the email transom, I received the latest product advertisement from my carrier, at&t.
It was promoting “Sensory Overload” like it was a good thing.
at&t’s Sensory Overload product is a new iphone wannabe, the HTC X which has an 8 mp camera, Built-In-Beats-Audio, and a large touchscreen for pics, texting, etc.
But it’s just such a weird promotion!
All advertising is aspirational. We aspire to be thinner, smarter, stronger, faster, more beautiful. But do we really aspire to “Sensory Overload”?
Haven’t we learned anything from South Korea and the internet rescue camps that have been set up to correct the overload? Internet addiction is causing kids to break down. The internet includes laptops, tablets and cellphones, Internet detox boot camps are an attempt to recapture the lost childhoods of South Korea’s children and teenagers. These camps introduce 10-year-olds to things like kickball, scavenger hunts, and camping in these detox camps.
This segment from Digital nation from PBS shows what’s up.
We can look at South Korea as a prototype. With a stagnant economy, they reinvented it 15 years ago by focusing all activity on informational technology. Now, their economy is booming; but their standard of living is less than desirable.
The infamous story of the South Korean Couple still haunts me.
The couple was so addicted to the internet that they let their three-month-old baby starve to death while raising a virtual daughter online.
The pair fed their own premature baby just once a day in between 12-hour stretches at an internet cafe.
They “indulged themselves online” to escape from reality.
The 41-year-old father and his 25-year-old wife were arrested in the city of Suweon, south of Seoul, five months after they reported the death of their baby.
An autopsy showed the baby’s death was caused by a long period of malnutrition.
The couple had become obsessed with nurturing a virtual girl called Anima in the popular role-playing game Prius Online.
The game enables players to interact with Anima and as they do so, help her to recover her lost memory and develop emotions.
But isn’t this “Sensory Overload”?
Isn’t this the hunter being captured by the game?
Why is at&t advertising this like it is a good thing?
