Is there anything real ?
It’s Saturday morning and my ears are still ringing from last night. No I didn’t go out partying, I took my son to see the Monster Truck Rally last night.
It was held in what has gotten to be one of the worlds smallest indoor arenas, and we had good seats so there was plenty noise and burnt rubber fumes to make it a complete night.
Any way this is the first time I have been to one of these things since I was a kid about my sons age. It would seem I was in the minority there though as everyone seemed to have a favorite truck, or driver, and knew all the different teams and who wore what etc…
I was amazed when they asked a 10 year old kid in the audience some monster truck trivia and he nailed all of it ( along with extremely excited guy on my right that was upset that kid got a free T shirt and he didn’t )
I was surprised at the following this thing had, I was even more surprised after the first run of trucks when the winner just happened to be the last truck on the track and the driver ( who was also a big part of the pre-show ) was out of his truck to claim his victory before the “judges” even gave their score.
After that first event there was some Quad Wars, where “Team Indiana” was getting beat up on by evil outsiders “Team Ohio”
I know I haven’t lived here very long but you would think you would here of a state team of quad racers at some point, but I digress.
Needless to say the results were a bit biased and no matter what happened there were only a couple of people to win every event, these were also the same people that were in charge of the pre show hype and making everything happen.
The sad thing is there were better drivers doing better things than them but I guess they were not good enough to take center stage and “act”
All in all it was entertaining, and that’s what I paid for was to be entertained and more importantly my son had a blast, he didn’t pick up on the quirks of the whole show. And I really wonder how many people there did.
I mean Wrestling has done it for years and the fans still love it , but it makes me wonder if anything is real at all.
Was there a time that there was an actual monster truck circuit where anyone could win, or has it always been a stage act?
Was there a time where wrestling was real?
What about furniture? I know there was a time you actually had to get your furniture delivered, but now that seems to be a dying trend in favor of modular pieces of compressed saw dust with a sticker of wood on it.
No one seems to complain, everything continues on, there was no one last night demanding there money back because it was staged,but is that where it all starts?
Do we as marketers keep pushing to see what we can get away with and as long as no one complains it must be ok?
Do we as consumers just take what we are sold and even when we find out its not what the commercial said just say to ourselves, looks like a was a victim to marketing again?
If that’s the case are we out marketing ourselves? If everyone begins ( or actually I think most already do ) thinking that all marketing is a lie, how to we convince the public when we are actually telling the truth.
Some one could create and market the answer to life, eternal happiness or anything else, but will there be any one to buy it, or will everyone already be jaded by broken promise after promise? Will it end up on late night TV being sold by Billy Mays or on daytime TV being sold by Oprah, is there really much difference between the two?
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