158. Ads that make you buy stuff, without knowing why😊!

Over the past few years, there has been a surge of ads in different mediums.  It is so much prevalent that it has started popping up in even in mobile phones in whatever apps you use.  Some of them are innovative, some run-of-the-mill and some you immediately remove from the screen.  There are some ads that compel you to buy the product, even though you may never need it.  The urge to buy it is so much that you don’t think about the cons on having bought the product.

During my childhood days, there was an ad for a fire extinguisher – Ceasefire.  It was small and a handy product that could be placed anywhere in the house or office.  During the product launch, they bombarded the ad on TV so much that everyone wanted to have that product in their homes.  Now, what would be the reason why someone would buy a fire extinguisher?  It will be for a place where the chance of the place getting on fire was most, like a cinema hall, hospital, factory etc.  The product may not be quite necessary at home.  But the situation played out in the ad was such that the entire house would be engulfed in case you didn’t have the product at home.  Such was the effect of the ad that everyone wanted the product to be available at their homes.  Soon the product was selling like wildfire and everyone jumped on the bandwagon to have the product for himself/herself, both at the office and at home!!  Over a period of time, people came to realize that the product just sat in a corner and was never used.  When the time came for renewal, only a few people went for renewals.  After having made a killing with the ad targeting homes, the company later stuck to its dedicated markets.

Nowadays, there is a new ad that asks you to download their app and pay all your credit card bills through their app.  Of course, they have stars like Anil Kapoor, Madhuri Dixit, Govinda, Bappi Lahri, Udit Narayan and Alka Yagnik endorsing it!!

No doubt, the ads are innovative and make you smile.  They also ran a scheme during the IPL where if you paid your credit card bills during a certain period in the match, the amount paid would be given back to you.  Many people fell for this and maybe a few people also got back their credit card bill amount.

Now let us look at the cons for going for this app.  You have to upload your credit card bill in the app.  Just by this process, the company has got hold of all your credit card details.  The limit that is there on your card, the payment history of yours, the different expenses that you have been making on the card, whether you pay your bills on time, what is the extra amount that you are paying as interest on the balance amount that you carry forward and many other information.  You may think that if someone got hold of this information, in what way you could be bothered?  All these information are actually “data” that will be mined and sold off to other companies who will then target you with their products, as they are aware of your expense-patterns!  Suddenly you might find your emails and messages getting flooded by various offers asking you to try their products. 

Over a period of time, your entire credit/spending history is available with them.  The data of yours, which should ideally be of yours alone, is now available to anyone who needs this data.  They now know how and from where to procure this info and promote their products to you.  The other drawback is that if you owe money to someone and are not paying it back, with this data, that person can know your spending pattern and then squeeze you for making payments to others and not to him!! 

So just be safe and don’t share any of the credit card info with anyone.  Use the credit card’s website or their dropbox for the bill payments.  Your data is yours alone and you need not share this with anyone!

Cheers till next time!!

Today’s Observation

Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark.  You know what you are doing but nobody else does😊!!