Broadband Tech > Security > Security > Hear Voices? It May Be an Ad

Hear Voices? It May Be an Ad

quote:

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NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- New Yorker Alison Wilson was walking down Prince Street in SoHo last week when she heard a woman's voice right in her ear asking, "Who's there? Who's there?" She looked around to find no one in her immediate surroundings. Then the voice said, "It's not your imagination."

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quote:

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"There's going to be a certain population sensitive to it. But once people see what it does and hear for themselves, they'll see it's effective for getting attention," Mr. Pompei said.

"The sound isn't rattling your skull, it's not penetrating you, it's not doing anything nefarious at all. It's just like having a flashlight vs. a light bulb," he said.

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"What are these guys thinking anyway? Are they so preoccupied by the self-satisfaction of their own accomplishments that they can't understand that no one wants to be targeted in such a manner? This is a perfect example of "just because you can doesn't mean you should."

They are thinking only of the big $ sign. They don't care to understand anything about their targets.

No. Nobody wants to be harmed and certainly, knowing that there is no harm is all well and good, but we have and are taking technology entirely too far, IMHO.

Just because they can shouldn't mean they should but it does mean they will.

reply to javaMan
Here we go again, another post from someone who thinks that human beings ought to have more rights than big corporations.

reply to dave

said by dave:

Here we go again, another post from someone who thinks that human beings ought to have more rights than big corporations.

reply to dave

said by dave:

Here we go again, another post from someone who thinks that human beings ought to have more rights than big corporations.

reply to hpguru
I liked the part about how the sound of gurgling water might make a person feel compelled to buy laundry detergent. I can think of at least one other action that that sound might put you in the mood to do that wouldn't be appropriate in the laundry isle.

BTW, will my tinfoil hat protect me from these evil voices?
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"Just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand." - Homer

reply to hpguru
I, as libertarian, concider streets as "public property" (which shouldnt even exist in libertarism, but anyway). Nobody has right to harrass or sell anything in such places. They are free for anyone to use (in a manner that doesnt harrass anyone). If you walk into a store, thats a totally different story then.

She should sue the SOB and grap few million dollars.
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My computer security & privacy related homepage »www.markusjansson.net
Use HushTools or GnuPG/PGP to encrypt any email before sending it to me to protect our privacy.

Actually she should work on a counter-measure and make money protecting people's sanity...

reply to hpguru
That would have to be unsettling for schizophrenics.

reply to onDvine

said by onDvine:

That would have to be unsettling for schizophrenics.

reply to hpguru
This is a new technology that uses ultrasonic soundwaves to create an audible sound in a very specific location.

If you're standing in certain spot, you will hear the sound. Move out of the spot and you can't hear it.

Neat stuff.

reply to hpguru

reply to MrBentor

reply to hpguru
A less instrusive approach to talking ads would be to
have some kind of sensor that detects when a person
passes by the ad, and it starts speaking out loud its
pitch to them.

Although I find this kind of ad annoying when found in
grocery stores and go out of the way to avoid them, they
would be better IMO than beaming sound waves directly
into one's cranium.
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"The trouble with computers, of course, is that they are very sophisticated idiots." - Doctor Who (from Robot)

reply to hpguru
I believe an excellent place to start with all this right now is to send a strongly-written note to the president of any company whose products are advertised this way, telling them clearly and forcefully that under no circumstances will you now consider buying (or viewing) whatever they're pushing via these types of ads. And, until they end their invasive and annoying ad practices, you won't be buying (or viewing) any other products they sell as long as they have competitors with their heads on straight about such intrusive nonsense.

Perhaps much of the time, complaint letters are less than effective. But whenever new attention-getting ad gimickry comes on scene, it's extremely critical to bump the early direct "negatives" as high as possible if you want to kill off the technique. Early promotion of the schemes by ad agencies to their ad-clients invariably focus on persuasive hype and overblown test-market stats. While most ad-client companies do want to get noticed, they don't generally want a lot of strong negative reaction, especially at the start of a fresh ad campaign. Even though some 'marketeers' will argue that any reaction - even negative - is better than no reaction, most companies don't buy very much into that reasoning when selling their products and services. Goodwill is simply too expensive to build up to risk it over such silly issues.

So the public's objective in this case becomes supplying real negatives to the ad-clients directly... it will far more than wipe out the artificial hype being spun out by the advertising houses in promoting their invasive ad techniques.
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If God wanted us to work with electrons, He'd make them big enough to see...