Does advertising reflect on what society wants, or push us towards what advertisers want us to desire? Going by these two depressing advertisements I found at Central Station in Sydney, it seems that a third motive is ‘reflect upon what society gets forced into when they are hard up for cash‘.
I’m hoping you never need to ponder insolvency packages or melting down your heirloom jewellery for gold – but if you do, there is someone out there to make a profit.
The proliferation of ‘Gold Buyers’ kiosks at just about every shopping centre around highlights the growth industry in buying jewellery as people are desperate for cash!!
You’re spot on with the gold buying kiosks: you’d be hard pressed to visit a major suburban shopping centre without coming across at least one. Pawn shops with ‘we buy gold’ banners is another common sight in lower income suburbs.
Classy. For tourists and foreigners, welcome to the lucky country.
And on that topic, the platform I found the billboards on was the same one that the Sydney Airport train uses!