Advertising

Advertising can serve several purposes, some good but others bad. On the negative side, I firmly believe that advertising is adding to the noise and distraction of our lives. It interrupts programmes and takes away the thrill of an exciting storyline or a close finish. It creates a visual clutter that detracts from order. Repetition of the same advertisement, at best, bores and, more likely, irritates. Many adverts are just plain boring and do not entertain, amuse or give pleasure in any way.

Yet advertisements can also be informative, amusing or creative entertainment. They can inform one about new technologies, inventions or ideas that make real changes to one's life. They can pass on information or contacts that are, or will be, useful to know. They can be simply funny or entertaining. So we should not outlaw them, but we do need to control how they impact on our lives better than we do.

It seems to me ironic that in developed societies, such as New York, London, Tokyo, we accept that advertisements dominate the landscape. While in lesser developed countries adverts are few and far between.

That is why we do not advertise on Yourtomorrow.co.uk but are trying to maintain a clean website without distracting moving advertisements, colourful ads that clash with our house colours or just lots of repetitive and distracting visual images.

In the longer term, I really believe that the answer has to lie in the hands of the advertisers who have to accept responsibility for their effect on society. They should ask themselves whether advertisements are entertaining, amusing or useful to their target audience. Is the advertisement going to have a negative impact because it will be seen just too often and create a negative response from its audience? Will it bore? Will it encourage people to do unnecessary, or bad, things? It would be illegal to show an advertisement encouraging people to drive too fast or take drugs, yet why do we not take the same approach to foods that damage our health or to encourage debt?

I like the Adbusters website, because this shows the potentially ridiculous side of advertising by showing ads that are just plain funny. Here is an example, with full credit to Adbusters.

Missing The Point

Nick has found an article on the BBC website called "Focus on Carbon - Missing The Point" by Eamon O'Hara at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6922065.stm
This article says what we, at http://www.yourtomorrow.co.uk/ believe that it will take much more than just reducing our carbon footprint to ensure a better world for the future. That is why we have devised our seven Eco Icons, only a few of which are concerned with the environment. We also believe that other things like avoiding harmful chemicals, education, equitable trade including poor nations and helping local artisans to survive by their own skills are very important. I have put the article onto our knowledgebase page at http://www.yourtomorrow.co.uk/kbase_article/30.php, so take a look and feel free to comment if you wish!

Half Time by Bob Burford

This book is best described by its subtitle "Changing Your Game Plan From Success to Significance". I was pointed to this book by one of the founders of Ambata (http://www.ambatausa.net/), Nathan George. This is a US website, selling fair trade products through church communities, that is trying to do some good for the world and Nathan is apparently trying to put his business skills to some good purpose.

The main theme of this book accepts that it is inevitable that we will be selfish and driven in the first half of our lives, but the author tells us that we should use the second half of our lives to do something "good" (of significance) for the world. This certainly sums up where I am and this is what I am trying to achieve with www.yourtomorrow.co.uk. There are some useful exercises to help one work out how best to put the "significance" back into one's life. I am still working through these and, if I discover important truths, will certainly write about them in my Blog!

I do have difficulty, however, accepting that it is inevitable that people will be selfish and purely money-driven in the first half of their lives. I feel sure that we can build a better world if we encourage people, not to be selfish and concerned just for themselves and their families, at all. Sure, it is better to help others in the second half of life than to continue being selfish; but how much better to care about others throughout one's entire existence.

My second difficulty with this book is its over-bearing "Godliness". I do believe in the objectives of religions, peace, harmony, caring and community. But I do get put off these aims by such explict overuse of God as the reason for doing (or not doing) things. It seems to me that this book makes it point without the need to use God as a prop. The points are well made without needing God's help!

However, this book is to be recommended as a very helpful pointer for people who need help in (or a structure for) finding a purpose for the rest of their lives. Details are "Half Time" by Bob Burford, (1994) published by Zondervan ISBN 0-310-21532-3.

Wotnot Jewellery

Times move on! Wotknot, the community of AIDs patients in South Africa, have just launched a new range of jewellery. This is very attractive and suitable for the young (at heart even!). This picture shows a Choker and Earrings in turqoise and rust colour.

Hilary, the organiser of this community, has used her design and sailing knotting skills again to develop this range of six beautiful pieces, each in three colour options. You can see (and buy!) them from the following web address http://www.yourtomorrow.co.uk/product/21/wotnot-jewellery.php. You can even get a 10% discount by using the following promotion code "d61i97"!

As I was with the Thump Mats, I am very excited to be involved in this development because it combines helping others, particularly those less fortunate than me, while also launching a product about which I am excited and whose prospects seem very good.

The Great Global Warming Swindle

It is clear that I am not often inspired to write my Blog as it has been so long since my last contribution. But last night I watched a TV programme called "The Great Global Warming Swindle" that gave me plenty to think about.

It was a well presented argument that Global Warming is not caused by human activity, and the resulting CO2, but that the climate has had significant high and low temperatures throughout history as a result of changes in the sun's activities. This argument was put forward by a number of respected academics and, although a bit one-sided as are so many television programmes, was quite convincing.

If this is true, does it undermine what Yourtomorrow.co.uk represents? After carefully considering this matter I have concluded that the answer is definitely NO! I believe that we should still conserve our finite resources whether or not consuming them causes global warming. Why waste petrol, energy, water or materials? I still firmly believe that humankind should start to conserve these limited global assets; indeed I firmly believe that human satisfaction can come from setting and reaching conservation goals. If the developed world uses less, then there is more for the developing world.

This is where I disagree with last night's programme. It concluded that, because of the fear of causing Global Warming though industrialisation, the developing world was under pressure not to modernise. I would never argue for this; it seems to me that it is only fair that less developed countries have a chance to catch up with more developed ones whether or not we have a limited span time of existence. Indeed it is the responsibility of those in first world countries to help the less developed world; herein lies the satisfaction of creating a better world for future generations. If we do not accept that CO2 causes Global Warming, then this becomes less controversial.

Advertising!!

I have just been writing my first http://www.yourtomorrow.co.uk/ newsletter that will be sent to all registrants on the website and competition entries, hopefully this week. I have found this difficult because I have a thing about unnecessary, and often very boring, advertising. It seems to me that there is a role for advertising to inform, to let people know that you have something they might want; it helps find a match between a customer and a supplier. But these days we are bombarded with so much repetitive advertising that it can become at best a distracting noise and, at worst, an annoying irritant.

I used to love watching the Tour de France cycle race, enjoy the scenery they rode through and be totally amazed by the cyclists' stamina. But this year, my hour's nightly viewing on ITV4 was really spoilt by the constant advertising of products, for which I had no interest or need, being constantly repeated again and again and .... How often has a film that you are enjoying been spoilt by being interrupted, just at an exciting, sexy or romantic moment, by tedious advertising? Surely the advertising professionals realise that they are annoying at least as many people as they are persuading. It becomes more than just informing people when the same ad is shown several times in the same programme night after night.

People seem to be even more sensitive about unsolicited e-mails, so my Newsletter is trying to avoid being just another interruption. I want to make it interesting with news worth reading. I want to tell people about our new products and gift ideas. I want it to be amusing! But perhaps that sets too tall an order. I don't want people to see the newsletter arrive and just press the "unsubscribe" button without even reading the message, as I would!

Indeed I have also commissioned a small press advertising campaign before Christmas trying to tell people about Yourtomorrow and the fact that we have a range of gifts that are not available in the high street. But that has forced me to recognise that the boundary between reach (the number of people who see the advert), ensuring that the maximum number see the ad, and becoming boring and tedious is very difficult to manage. If you see this, then let us know what you think about it!

Dash!

On Monday I went to a funeral. Not of a close friend, but a parent of my children's friends, but who was only a year older than me. She was a wonderful, ever friendly, very hard working person, married to a farmer, and who had tried numerous ways to diversify their farming activities away from the Aberdeen Angus herd that were her husband's pride and joy. I admired her from afar really, but her demise has hit me quite hard particularly as her mother was there at the funeral. It just does not seem right when the natural sequence of life is distorted in this way.

There were lots of people at this funeral, with a hundred attendees sitting outside the church just to pay their last respects to this pillar of the local community. The front page of the Order of Service had the date of her birth and the date of her death with just a dash between; the vicar picked up on this fact and recited the following poem "Dash" by Linda Ellis.

The Dash

I read of a man who stood to speak
at the funeral of his friend.
He referred to the dates on her tombstone
from the beginning...to the end.

He noted that first came the date of her birth
and spoke of the second with tears,
but he said that what mattered most of all
was the dash between those years.

For that dash represents all the time
that she spent alive on earth,
and now only those who loved her
know what that little line is worth.

For it matters not, how much we own;
the cars, the house, the cash.
What matters is how we live and love
and how we spend our dash.

So think about this long and hard,
are there things you'd like to change?
For you never know how much time is left.
(You could be at "dash mid-range.")

If we could just slow down enough
to consider what's true and real,
and always try to understand
the way other people feel.

And...be less quick to anger,
and show appreciation more
and love the people in our lives
like we've never loved before.

If we treat each other with respect,
and more often wear a smile,
remembering that this special dash
might only last a little while.

So, when your eulogy is being read
with your life's actions to rehash...
would you be pleased with the things they have to say
about how you spent your dash?

...Linda Ellis

This inspired me because that is what Yourtomorrow is all about. It is trying to create a community of people who are concerned to improve the "dash" of all of us. But do we spend enough time worrying about the way we spend our "dash", or are we too busy chasing rainbows, money, fame and fortune? The funeral and the poem both got me thinking about this!