Insight into contemporary culture, passed along by Josh at the American Sector.
Sunday morning, 8:30 am. Kitchen table.
Undercaffinated groggy blogger reading newspaper: “hrumph..”
Cheerful ten year old with endless energy: “Can I see the coupons and advertisements from the paper?”
UCGBRN: “Why?”
CTYOWEE: “I don’t know… I just want to see what’s going on in the world.”
Perhaps CTYOWEE was making an incisive comment on the sorry state of American journalism. When Target says you can buy a pair of socks for $1.99, you can be pretty sure if you take that coupon down to Target they will in fact give you a pair of socks for $1.99. Which is a much higher degree of factual accountability than you can expect from the New York Times or Washington Post.
By “new media” you meant “the new state of media”, right? In my field, “new media” usually refers to new information and communication technologies so I was expecting a post about that. This was different, certainly worth reading regardless.:)
I think coupons can be a new information technology. We have to think outside the box! Someday everything we know about the world will come from advertisements of one sort or another.
Coupons, which are also sometimes referred to as FSIs (free standing inserts), first appeared in the late 19th century for Coca Cola, and applications of that format continue to grow. In addition to being an incentive for consumers to purchase products, coupons have been found to increase brand awareness and sometimes even foster brand loyalty. (They’ve also been used fraudently, but that’s another story.)
I laughed when I read this post, because I too look to see what’s “new in the world” by thumbing thru the set of FSIs I get every Sunday. In my field, FSIs are one of the many (and most accessible) sources of information that I read to keep abreast of developments in products and packaging, innovations, advertisting artwork, and launches of new products by competitors. And sometimes I even save a few cents…