Reaching out to people is good business. Personalization and interactivity are the buzzwords of our age. Hence the current developments in advertising that seek to involve us simple consumers in the process of being marketed at.
In this spirit, it was only a matter of time before the cameras that pepper the modern city and the billboards that do likewise entered into some unholy marriage to make us feel like special individuals as they flog their wares to us. This Amnesty International campaign, with a poster that responds to people looking at it in order to highlight the behind-closed-doors nature of domestic violence, is certainly engaging stuff, and more power to it. But I can’t help feeling deeply uneasy in the knowledge that this technology is out there. I don’t want the posters to know I’m looking. What will they think if I linger too long over the picture of Hermione Granger in the latest Harry Potter poster (I’ve seen the way she looks at me!), or spend a bit too much time reading the blurb on those hemorrhoid cream ads? Or entirely ignore the latest Oxfam appeal? What happened to the right to be a heartless pervert with piles without the urban environment putting the fact on display for all to see? We used to warn: ‘These walls have ears…’ Well now they have eyes and they’re looking at you… and your wallet.
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