A number of financial skills relate to the influence of marketing, how a person “hears” the marketing presentations that bombard us from every side. It is important to learn how to respond to advertising and consumer marketing in a way that works to our advantage rather than to our detriment.
The foremost, and simplest, of these skills is that of deflection. It is impossible to completely avoid advertising so we must learn how to avoid letting it invade our life intrusively. In other words, we want to develop the ability to push the reject button on our mind’s mental tuner when it comes to marketing we would be better off not hearing.
The Danger of Marketing Influence
There are a lot of smart folks who spend all their time figuring out how to get your attention for the purpose of selling one thing or another. This is not altogether bad, we all have selling goals of our own.
Marketing influence is subtle and its impact builds over time. That is why advertisers repeat the same ad sometimes for years. But if you listen, say to those reverse mortgage promotions, over and over you begin to believe a product is good (reverse mortgages are nearly as bad as payday loans in my opinion).
Much advertising is designed to get us to buy things that we do not in fact have any rational reason to acquire. The truth is, most of us do not need to buy most of what we hear advertised at all! Most of our homes are filled with useless, unused things while our bank accounts are sparse. Not good.
Defend Against Marketing Influences
Sometimes the easiest way to avoid undesirable advertising is to simply hit the mute button on the TV remote. That is not always possible, perhaps, but we can learn to mentally guard against the dangerous potential of passively listening to all the advertising around us.
A simple awareness of the marketing madness around us and the importance of not being unduly influenced by it can help. With a little effort and the right kind of thinking we can develop a mindset that generally turns unwanted advertisement aside. Unless we have a valid reason for looking at some purchase there is no reason to let marketing influence our thinking.
This is the first and most important skill to learn when it comes to dealing with harmful marketing. If it doesn’t enter our minds it can have no influence.
How to Deflect Marketing Influence
How can we develop this skill? Like every skill, by practice. Simply start now by consciously choosing to mentally, if not physically, turn away from every uninvited advertisement as soon as it shows its face.
Unless it is clearly about something we need and want to hear for a valid reason, it is not wise to let this information pollute our minds.
Our minds can hold only one thought at a time. We can purposely choose to focus on an alternative thought immediately whenever an unproductive advertisement attracts our attention. Soon it will become automatic and the influence of unwanted advertisement will at at least diminish greatly.
In other words, whether a print ad insert in our newspaper, a tv ad, or one online, as soon as an ad presents itself our immediate conscious thought should be whether or not that is something we need to hear. If not, we can purposefully choose to block the advertisement content from entering our mind by starting to think about something more important to our own realities.
Recognize Marketing for What It Is
Advertising and consumer marketing influence are not invalid in and of themselves, but they have become unduly strong factors in our financial decisions. The only intelligent thing for us to do is to learn how to deflect them from distorting our financial decisions.
