Introduction
A
t this point in our social history we are experiencing trends in marketing and consumerism that no cultural phenomena in antiquity has prepared us for. Each day between the hours of waking and sleeping we are exposed to 3000 – 5000 marketing messages across every shape and flavour of media mankind has been able to devise in good conscience (Story 2007). Every niche, of every segment, of every market, for every product, has a multitude of competitors vying for space of mind, seeking to differentiate, remind, inform, or persuade themselves into our lives and shopping trollies (Copley 2004). This clutter, consternation, and competition has taken the humble consumer transaction to be something more akin to game theory, and contemporary marketing strategy has become a battle of minds and wills (Lee, Broderick, and Chamberlain 2007).
Each new generation of consumer finds themselves delivered deeper into an environment of increasing media and message saturation. But, with every generational cycle a further sophistication in the adaptive discretionary filtering system is created in order for these individuals to preserve some degree of highly guarded ‘psychic space’, and as such ‘marketing professionals are keenly aware of the obstacles posed by both information-processing limitations and viewer opposition’ (Rumbo 2002). ‘The multiplicity of advertising mes¬sages to which each consumer is exposed dictates that advertisers place a lofty premium on the much-coveted psychic space of their intended message recipients. Moreover, marketers increasingly find themselves trying to reach target audiences who have an arsenal of cognitive, behavioural, and mechanical strategies for ad avoidance at their disposal’ (Speck and Elliott 1997).
Further adding to this already encumbered media/communication sphere is also the weight and complexity of the postmodern