When I head back to Bangladesh I always have a stop over in Bangkok. Like most international airports there are plenty of duty free shops with great displays to tempt us inside and make an 'unplanned' but very essential (not) purchase.
I started taking plenty of shots of all the different displays with an idea in mind, then I started to think of the vast amount money (compared to Bangladesh wages) that people have to walk in to buy, a Rolex watch or a Tiffany ring.
A good salary in Bangladesh might be $450 USD per month and guys save up for three months to buy a dream watch that costs $115 USD.
So my idea changed to how advertising changes us and came up with the image below to the right.
Tiffany, somethings not quite right?
So hopefully you saw that something is not quite right with the image above.
The image is actually a composite from the two images below.
Original Tiffany advertising display
She is a photographer and was using an iPhone to capture an image.
The thought process is that advertising can make us do things we perhaps were not planning to do. Like buying a new pair of red shoes. If we continue to make impulse buys then this will lead us down a path that could mean hard times when the telephone or power bill comes in or perhaps when you have to make the months mortgage payment.
- The reason why the shoes are changing red and the rest of the image is black and white is that advertising can change us bit by bit and slowly wears us down. It's not our fault. These guys go to uni right!
- The reason why the legs are the wrong way around (i hope you noticed) is that things can and do go wrong if you continually respond to the barrage of advertising that is all around us and impulse buy.
Well I never intended to get so deep and 'meaningful' its just what happened.
Until tomorrow.