Good morning/evening! Nice to see you. You’ve probably seen in the title something about this article: I’ll be trying to strip open as many advertisements as I can get my greedy little hands on. Let’s begin!
Spotify
If you are someone like me, you neither have the money nor the desire to get to the paid version of spotify, so you just learn all the ads of by heart. Have a look at a few excerpts of ads: “You’re a biest. You’re a machine” “Sometimes you feel like that song…, no…” “Imagine you’re listening to your favourite playlist and it gets interrupted by an ad…”.
The second ad is there to sell you the product by advertising freedom of choice to the listener. I have no problem with that ad.
The first ad tries to sell you the product by flattery and assuming you do workouts (who does?). It’s an effective ad for most fitness wannabees, but there is a danger into buying into the belief that you are the biest, the powerful one that they flatter you to be.
Have a look at Jude 1:16:
“These people are grumblers and faultfinders; they follow their own evil desires; they boast about themselves and flatter others for their own advantage.” Jude 1:16
Jude writes this right after saying that God will come and judge the people of “all the ungodly acts they have commited in their ungodliness” – verse 15. This is a scary thought. The people of spotify getting judged by god and “thousands apon thousands of his holy ones” (v.14) for encouraging boasting about oneself and flattering.
Now, I don’t want to grumble or try to find fault with things for the sake of complaining or being “proactive”. I just want to warn you here about the influence of the world. So easily we forget that everything we do and perceive slightly changes us. If god will judge those sins, he will also judge all your usual sins… unless god has opened your eyes to everything and you’ve layed all your sins on Jesus. Praise be to him!
I’ve been reading through Jeremiah lately, Have a look at these verses:
“This is what the Lord says: “Let not the wise boast of their wisdom or the strong boast of their strength or the rich boast of their riches, but let the one who boasts boast about this: that they have the understanding to know me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,” declares the Lord.” Jeremiah 9:23-24 NIV
This passage just radiates with humility. Instead of us (or spotify) glorifying ourselves, we boast about god revealing himself to us and about him. This should absolutely revolutionise advertising! Think about a world of advertising, where the advertisers don’t say that you’re a biest and you’re a machine, but god is! Think about after listening/reading those types of ads and at any time, you going and glorifying god, his awesome character of exercising kindness, justice and righteousness!
Now that you’ve thought about those things, do them 🙂
There’s so much to say about humility. (That’s called foreshadowing)
The third Spotify ad is just plain annoying. Not much else to say.
Belong
I don’t know if you get ads from them (yes, Spotify), but these ads are plain creepy.
“When you’re having a busy afternoon and it’s raining, there’s nothing like your favourite country tracks”.
It’s like they have a video camera and microphone constantly targeted at you, so that it sees and hears everything you do, when you’re on your tablet. Oh darn it! There is one!
On the whole “It’s great to be different” thing, I may write later…
Weet-Bix
I don’t know if any of you american readers know about the product (If you’re a fellow Aussie, sorry). Let me explain: Picture wheat, made into shards, compacted into a shape of a brick. That (with milk and honey) is what Aussies have for breakfast.
One interesting thing about weet bix ads is that they have gone completely against the social conventions of advertising how healthy it is and have decided instead to completely trademark Australian kids “Aussie kids are Weet-bix kids”
The ad is a video, where the first half of it is children singing “Aussie kids are weet-bix kids” over and over again. The second half is children doing typically Aussie activities, e.g. cricket, at the beach, doing other sports, randomly having a family outing to an empty field,… The third half is the pinnicle of the ad, the milk getting poured onto the cereal. That’s pretty bleak if you think about it. Weet-bix is trying to get you to put all your child’s identity in their cereal and letting them grow up thinking that they must think and act like weet-bix wants them to, after all, they are weet-bix kids. (Maybe not that part).
Anyway, as people saved by Jesus’ blood, we are to put all our identity in God. He is the only part of us that is worth it. You stop caring about weet-bix and care about glorifying Jesus. You stop caring about money and care about the Father and glorifying him. You stop caring about what others think of you and care about glorifying the holy spirit. It is a slow process, though, I keep on obsessing about what others think of me. When we are saved, though, god justifyes us. He declares us righteous and our new identity is “child of god” and “citizen of heaven”. While we are on earth with the Holy spirit in us, God WILL gradually changes us from the inside (even when you don’t feel like it is occuring)
Ads do surround us constantly. Sometimes they’ve got s good message, sometimes they don’t. (Wow, how do you write a conclusion?)
Have a great day!
Your brother in Christ, Ben
As to a song for the post, there isn’t really any that covers the topics of humility and identity, so please have a listen to this song. It is worth it and sort of relates:
Sheep among wolves 