Moving at the Speed of Creativity

The main company referenced in the article is BzzAgent, their website is www.bzzagent.com.

On its face, as my good friend Bill has pointed out, promoting a product to someone else (whether they are a friend or not) without telling them you are doing this for a company is most likely unethical. Certainly if a friend tells me a particular kind of sausage is great, and is working (whether or not it is for pay, points, or just good feelings) for a marketing company to promote the purchase and consumption of that kind if sausage, AND DOESN’T TELL ME THEY ARE WORKING FOR THAT COMPANY, I would consider their behavior unethical and a breach of trust. In the arena of international relations, non-citizens who hide their true identity and/or motives or actions are called spies and their activities are referred to as espionage. This is considered a crime in every country I know of, and is punishable in a variety of ways, generally the most lenient treatment is kicking the person out of the country. The other end of the spectrum is probably torture or capital punishment. So what we are talking about doing here has substantial impacts when it takes place in the arena of politics.

So now companies are paying marketing groups to get “regular joe” individuals out in society to conduct consumeristic espionage. Clearly there are some moral problems that should be apparent here. Sad that the NYT article doesn’t seem to mention or recognize this dimension to the BzzAgent phenomenon.

Second point I would like to make is that these behaviors seem to show what isolated and distanced lives many people seem to lead. I think we are inherently social beings, and need social connections to others. Obviously people vary widely in terms the quantity and quality of those social connections they prefer and want/need, but in general I think this is a common human characteristic. The collapse of the extended family (that lives geographically close to each other at least) for many segments of our society is a big influence here. So many people seem to be living to work, and have few vital relationships with others. Even spouses (that are still married) often don’t spend much quantity or quality time together to further develop their relationship, because we are so BUSY in this mad culture of ours.

As somewhat of an aside, I have observed recently that IDLE TIME rarely seems to be a naturally occurring phenomenon in 21st century life (here where I live in Lubbock, Texas, at least.) I think that in our lives, we all should make an attempt to intentionally schedule or plan for unstructured, unorganized idle time. That means a Saturday without birthday parties, appointments, etc.

Bottom line to this point: It is sad that people have such a lack of vital relationships and activities in their lives, that they are drawn to work for a company like BzzAgent. This is a sad commentary on the state of relationships and communitarian connections between people in our society.

Last point for now: How sad it is that escaping the pervasive influence of our consumeristic society in some ways is growing more difficult. I have read other articles about how certain gender age groups are spending much less time watching TV, and this has marketers scared (Wired Magazine Aug 2004: “The Lost Boys”). I think technologies like TIVO are great to the extent they can help us avoid watching advertising, and watching programming on TV that is more worthwhile than “just whatever happens to be on right now.” To the extent TIVO may encourage us to watch more TV overall, that may be a bad thing….

I want to minimize the influence and impact of commercial marketers upon my own life and the lives of those in my family. If you work for BzzAgent or another similar marketing firm and have a conversation with me (whether face to face or digital), please let me know. I won’t have any authority to kick you out of the country for unauthorized commercial espionage if you don’t, but I certainly won’t regard you as an ethical being living by a basic code of morality….

Am I making that point too strongly? Probably not.