We live in an age of alienation

Supposedly we live in an age when it is easier to communicate than ever before.

The sad fact is that due to the fact that we live in an overinformed society, we are now turning away from the downpour of information that is vainly trying to attract our attention.

The problem is so huge, so vast, that it is difficult to know where to start.

However, let's look at just one small area, an area that affects us all at one time or another, "Customer Services".

When it comes to complaining you must first bypass "Customer Services" - a service which is actually a cunning modern day ploy NOT to serve customers!

Nowadays if you have the audacity to attempt 'phone contact with almost any organisation, you will, undoubtedly, be put through to the hell of "Customer Services."

New technology, new legislation, together with new management styles, are the weapons in this new age of customer alienation. I wonder what on earth they are teaching these days at the Business Management Schools?

The new age of alienation is practised most effectively by the larger organisations-banks,utility companies, Local Councils and etc.

To me all this new technology, even in this great age of easier communication, allows those who couldn't really be bothered an easier opportunity to be just that, not really bothered with you, the customer!

And most of what passes for advertising/marketing looks as if the practitioners of advertising really couldn't be bothered - advertising has run out of inspiration. And this is despite the fact that advertising is the main cause of all that information clutter out there.

Advertising has always had a bad name, nowadays it appears to be getting worse.

It has been brought lower and lower by the execrable standards of television, especilly "reality" TV, and by liars, the 'phone scams and hucksters parading accross our TV screens.

Perhaps, just perhaps, you might think that this is too strong a condemnation, well then, please consider this. It is embarrassing to have to say this however the Government is being urged to repay VAT earned from phone-in scandals. That is just how low the hucksters of TV have brought the TV indsutry!

Viewers wasted...wait for it...£45 million in rigged competitions on a number of TV programmes on ITV.

One MP described the scams as "...tantamount to the proceeds of crime..." Another said that "...the Treasury has a moral duty to hand over the cash that was stolen from the viewers". It is claimed that the VAT paid on the scams amounted to £7 million...utterly disgraceful!

There is one industry that could have prevented all these scams...the advertising industry, however it has, so far, shown complete indifference to the problem whilst still funding the TV indsutry with television advertising that has no accountability behind it whatsoever.

The advertising industry has allowed this alienation to occur by the fact that advertising has depersonalised and dehumanised the process of comunication. Due to the fact that the advertising industry has no concept whatsoever regarding the actual process of communication.

Advertising is a mendacious blight upon us all...and we are paying heavily for the right to advertise!

Having pioneered interactive communication in the 70s Paul Ashby has introduced the programme in Australia;Japan;USA;United Kingdon, and others. He also wrote and produced the world's first regularly scheduled interactive TV show on Channel Seven in Manila Philippines. Making interactive events accountable he has an investment of $10 million in independent research that establishes that interactive communicaion is far more effective.