NOW What Do You Want?

Today's mail included three new catalogs and several important looking envelopes. Several trees wasted. With the exception of bills that we all must deal with, nothing much arrives by snail mail anymore except glossy marketing materials designed to convince me that I need a newer or bigger or better something or other. Some catalogs are full of things I never even imagined existed. Gadgets to do things for me that I never thought of doing for myself. Gadgets to free more of my time and relieve me of more of my money. Exotic or at least high-priced items that every home simply must have. I must admit that I have not always been immune to their efforts to separate me from my money. Now, with a few clicks of a mouse, I can empty my piggy bank without blinking. You can shop online for absolutely anything. Let's talk about cell phones, for example. I must quickly say that having such a neat gadget when your car breaks down or when you can't find your way to a friends new home is wonderful. In fact, that reminds me that a GPS gadget would be a neat thing to have as well, but I digress. Back to the cell phone. I first rationalized that I really should get one for my wife so that she could call me or AAA or someone for help is she ever got stranded somewhere. Her safety is of paramount importance to me of course. But if she had a cell phone and I did not, then she could not call me for help. So of course it would be silly for me to do without. Not that I WANT a cell phone, but obviously I NEED one.

Now we both have cell phones. Perhaps they work the way umbrellas do. It only rains when you have no umbrella. Our cars only break down if we forget our cell phones, or if the battery is dead. Or if we are in some area with no cell service. But still, I can see a real need. I don't feel the need to be connected by phone at every moment of every day, but I have become accustomed to carrying this little chunk of technology on my belt almost everywhere I go. I refuse to answer it in the restroom however. But I can't figure out how this or anything else makes the transition from being a want to being a need to being an absolute necessity. That's the progression that all good marketing pros and copywriters thrive on. They plant a tiny seed and water it with pictures and cultivate it with mental images and before you know it you WANT it. Next, you begin to explain to your wife (or to yourself mostly) why this thing you want is very important and why you actually have needed it for some time now. You think of all the times you have been without this thing, whatever it is, and how you would have been so much better off if only you had it. Before long, you convince yourself that you really don't want this thing, but you just have to make the sacrifice and buy it because you really do need it. Now at last you have it. You read all the directions and try all the bells and whistles and just hold it and look at it and feel...special, because now you actually have one of your very own. This elation lasts for several hours or perhaps several days. (If the thing is a new car, it usually lasts either until you run through a mud puddle or you get in a little fender bender.) But sooner or later you find yourself with another catalog in your hands, or watching another in the endless stream of television ads, and you begin to forget this latest thing. But think about this. If you're not hungry, why look in the refrigerator? If you take every catalog you receive in the mail straight to the trash can without ever taking a peek inside, you are not likely to nibble on the bait, and not very likely to get hooked. Now when I get a catalog, I say to myself in a very stern voice, "NOW what do you want?" Since the honest answer is "Nothing" there is no reason to look in the catalog. The next important step is to figure out how to save all those trees and stop these people from sending me the catalogs in the first place. Got any suggestions?