Innocence lost

Recent reports highlight how companies have become so disillusioned by empty IT promises that they are slashing their IT budgets.

If you can break new ground in getting your message across, whether it be my cellphone or TV game, all the better for you.

Carel Alberts, technology editor, ITWeb

This backlash has led to everyone in the industry talking up value more than ever before. It`s not a great time in the industry; spending is still low (refer to the cautious sentiment expressed in TechNiche today) and the crisis of confidence will not be restored for a while yet.

While it is incumbent on IT companies to lay their cards on the table, a few things happened to me over the past few weeks that suggest the consumer has just as much to do with being bamboozled.

While on a trip to the US recently, I was exposed to a far greater degree of consumerism than ever before. With all the connotations of this charged term still applying, the one most striking to me involves the theory that progressively greater consumption of goods is economically beneficial.

This theory manifests, in my view, in a kind of unspoken contract between buyer and seller. It says I will buy any product if you can sell it to me convincingly enough. Tell me I need it, or I will feel stupid if I don`t have it and the Joneses do, or it will improve my life - whatever convinces me and twists my rubber arm.

In order to convince me, I tacitly agree to your bombarding me with messages. No matter what anyone says, there is no sacred ground. If you can break new ground in getting your message across, whether it be my cellphone or TV game, all the better for you. Just tell me what there is to consume, why I should consume it, and I`ll consume it. And if you can do it with a touch of the bull or blarney, well, I might be amused and intrigued enough to take you up on it.

If this sounds far-fetched, just consider this instance. On a Delta Airlines flight from Atlanta to Rochester, it felt like an American version of ye olde street or theatre entertainment when a canned voice came over the PA, announcing a joint venture between Delta and Wrigley`s gum.

"As part of our Surprise and Delight (SAD) programme, we`ll be handing out free breath-freshening melting strips, at least one per passenger, on this flight," the voice said.

Everyone paid due attention. I had to smile at the sportsmanlike acceptance of this invasion of their tired brains (21 hours after departing from Johannesburg for many of us). And I had to agree with the message - you want to be fresh, it`s free, and you don`t have to chew! These Americans are crazy, as Obelix would have said. Crazy but clever.

Since I liked the "gum", which stuck to my tongue the way a frozen piece of Titanic ship metal might have stuck to a drowning man`s hand, I suppose I`ll look for Wrigley`s the next time I need gum. I`m not a masochist, but any chilli lover will tell you the pain-fuelled endorphins from the fiery plasma they eat are addictive.

More examples of the wacky stuff you could buy in-flight were the lightweight blow-up dumbbells, saving on packing space, or the blow-up, hip-height pneumatic massage leggings, which looked like hospital gear. People around me were wearing caps with clapping hands, caps with goggles and goggle wipers. I was truly in the US.

Once I got to New York, I befriended a Turkish journalist, who asked whether I knew Reg Lascaris. I didn`t. Lascaris, I learned, advised Nelson Mandela on his first election campaign, something we should long ago have realised, since the man is so perfect.

I think I lost my innocence, though, the moment the journo told me (this is hearsay, but sounds entertainingly plausible) that he`d advised the father of our nation on 10 simple rules of behaviour: Be a good sport. Be forgiving. Attend traditional sports events, wearing the captain`s shirt. That kind of thing.

For a moment, I was stunned. "Tata Mandela!" I wanted to cry. "We thought you loved the game too!"

But now it all makes sense, I`ve figured out the man a bit better, and I`m more grown up for knowing the truth.

So to all marketers, I say good for you. Feed us the message. Apparently we like it.