Use Your Words!

We are bombarded on a constant and overwhelming basis with information.  We hear radio ads in our cars every morning.  On that same commute, we pass billboards. When we read magazines between classes we see more advertising, and when we check our Facebook during our boring classes (You know.  The ones before and after ENG 213.) we see tiny squares of text with bizarrely relevant photos that are supposed to be tailored to our tastes.  

Each of these things is demanding that we pay attention to it.  Each of the aforementioned things is an informational medium.  We deal with them on a daily basis, and I'm not too terribly certain that anybody loves any of them too dearly.  Except for those of you who're choosing to do it as a profession, in which case, more power to you.  But anyway, the point is, we know them.  We're familiar.  We get it.

We're so familiar, as it turns out, that we tend to forget about the original advertising medium:

http://www.greenberg-art.com/.Illustrations/.Humorous/qq1sgYellingAtKids.jpg

The spoken word.

Before there were delicately created ads popping up in your internet window, talking babies selling you on which brokerage firm is the most effective, and billboards the size of two-story homes along the sides of all the roads, people had to sell things and convince people organically.

Specifically used words were all that they had.  Even today, while it's generally done without any sort of consciously made decision, we use the same techniques.  No matter who it is that we're holding a conversation with, we're always trying to convince them of something.  

Whether it's a future employer 

("Look how well I'm handling this interview. I am clearly the best possible option to dish out your ice cream cones."),

 a new professor 

("It's not my fault I know the answers to all your questions.  I'm just so friggin' capable and prepared and stuff."), 

or a peer 

("I'm just as nifty and collegiate as you are, dammit!"), 

the way that we present ourselves is just a toned down way of advertising.  

It may not need a fancy, overpaid designer, but the concept is the same.

Language isn't just a medium of advertising.  It's the original, and the founder of all those that came after it.