Project Of Private Tourist Business Samples †MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Examine about the Project Of Private Tourist Business. Answer: Presentation XYZ is private visitor business that is based out of Australia and pulls in more than 200,000 families on a yearly premise. The business includes significant vacation destination along a significant Australian expressway. The clients that the business serves are residential just as worldwide clients. The data framework that is at present conveyed in the organization for the execution and the board of business activities has various downsides. The framework is likewise not effective to provide food the client needs and requests. As of now, portable and remote gadgets are being utilized by pretty much every person. In any case, the present framework that is followed at the private visitor business can't be gotten to on the portable stages. The arrangement has been proposed to create and computerized framework that will settle the issues and issues with the present framework. The task will incorporate the update of the present framework by including various highlights and prerequisites. The redesigns will center upon the budgetary model, human asset prerequisites, planning errands and exercises alongside client interface necessities. There will likewise be an office the executives framework that will be remembered for the updated data framework for the business. The report covers the task plan featuring the suspicions and constraints related with the venture, venture foundation, and undertaking extension, portrayal of the task components, asset necessities, venture plan, venture costs and the suggestion based on the discoveries. Suppositions Limitations The undertaking colleagues that have been distinguished for the task have the satisfactory abilities and information to complete the venture exercises. It has been accepted as the venture is a basic one and includes a decent measure of arranging exercises alongside it. The task supports will be given by the venture support and it will incorporate the one-time cost of instruments, cost of assets and the undertaking exercises. These costs will be essential as the task tasks and exercises won't be cultivated without sufficient assets. The venture spending plan and calendar would be fixed and there won't be any progressions or improvements conceivable in these two task boundaries. The idea of business of the organization capacities around the year and any deferral in the venture conveyance will prompt business misfortunes. The venture colleagues will be given the workplace for the fruitful execution of the task exercises. There will essentially be three workplace that the undertaking assets will require as advancement condition, testing condition and creation condition. Outline of the Project Background The present data framework that is followed in the private traveler organization has a great deal numerous disadvantages. The client commitment and fulfillment is breaking down because of more slow preparing and long holding up time. There is likewise poor data the board and capacity alongside upgraded cost for printing of handouts. Clients regularly don't become more acquainted with about the most recent proposals also. The present framework doesn't bolster cell phones and the goals of specialized issues is taken care of physically. There are additionally security worries as the data on the individuals present at the vacation destination at a specific time can't be recovered. Because of the considerable number of issues expressed above, it has been proposed to redesign the present data framework to a progressed coordinated arrangement. The overhauls will center upon the money related model, human asset necessities, booking assignments and exercises alongside client interface prerequisites. There will likewise be an office the board framework that will be remembered for the overhauled data framework for the business (Peslak, 2012). Venture Scope In-Scope Items An upgraded type of data framework will be created for the business which will involve the accompanying sub-frameworks Fund Management System Human Resource Management System Calendar Management System Client Relationship Management System Office Management System The data framework will be made accessible on the web just as portable stages. The sub-frameworks will be coordinated as a solitary framework and the last discharge will be tried covering framework, reconciliation, unit, execution, relapse and security testing (Mirza, Pourzolfaghar and Shahnazari, 2013). The framework will be executed and conveyed at the business side and the end-clients will be given the preparation and framework documentation. The framework will likewise cover the venture arranging, prerequisite examination and task conclusion stages. The non-useful prerequisites will be fused in the framework involving the framework accessibility, framework unwavering quality, framework versatility, framework practicality, framework flexibility and framework execution. Out-of-Scope The accompanying arrangement of exercises won't be secured by the task colleagues during the venture life cycle: The task group won't be answerable for the defers that will be brought about by the outsiders. The venture group won't engage the change solicitations and recommendations that are not endorsed by the task support (Randolph, 2013). The exercises around dealings with the outsiders, for example, providers and merchants won't be engaged. Portrayals of the Project Outcomes to Meet the Current Problems There will be three essential sub-frameworks that will be consolidated in the undertaking in order to meet the present arrangement of issues and issues. Money Management System: The framework will incorporate the execution of the bookkeeping exercises and will likewise decide the planning errands and exercises. There are as of now issues with the expense of printing the leaflets and related undertakings. The new framework will plan a spending that will recognize and dispense with the extra expenses. This will bring about the financially savvy business exercises to be executed (O'Leary, 2009). Human Resource Management System: There are different assets that are as of now connected with the private vacationer business. There are various specialized and activity blunders that are looked by the assets alongside administrative issues. The new framework will incorporate the trainings and meetings for the HR. It will likewise structure a preparation plan and calendar for every asset. The exercises, for example, one-on-one conversation with the administration, conversation of the contentions and representative complaints will likewise be done (Gagnon, 2006). Planning Tasks: The traveler business is for the most part dependent on the recurrence of the client that visits to see the vacation spot. The framework will plan the gracefully of the assets that will be required according to the client appointments. It will store the quantity of clients that have visited the vacation destination on every hour, out of each day, of the month and every year premise. It will permit the improvement of the satisfactory wellbeing measures too. The database will at that point be moved up to a propelled form over the time. Client Relationship Management System: The clients will be permitted to get to the framework on the web just as the cell phones. The clients will be permitted to book their tickets ahead of time and will likewise have the option to see the subtleties on the vacation spot remotely. They will be furnished with the most recent subtleties and offers on the online networking stages and records. Client care and help group will likewise be accessible consistently to deal with client questions (Ayiri and Kudzanayi, 2017). Office Management System: There might be various specialized and offices gives that may come up. The framework will record the episodes at a prompt premise and the asset to determine the occurrence will be doled out following checking the accessibility. As such, the personal time included will be diminished. Asset Requirements Inward Resources Venture Manager: The asset will be liable for the general administration of the undertaking and would be required to have the administrative, correspondence, authority and specialized abilities. Task arranging, correspondence, control and conclusion will be completed by this asset (Muller and Turner, 2007). Task Developer: The engineer will compose the source code for the different sub-frameworks that are to be created and will perform unit testing (Kock, Heising and Gemunden, 2016). Venture Designer: The interface necessities and the conveyance of the framework configuration record will be finished by this asset. Execution Head: The asset will actualize the framework by dealing with all the undertaking changes and alterations. Framework Tester: The testing of the framework will be completed by this asset which will incorporate framework, reconciliation, execution and security testing. System Engineer: The incorporation of the sub-frameworks as a last unit and its organization on the systems for open use will be finished by this asset. Specialized Writer: The framework documentation required for the venture will be set up by this asset. Fund Officer: The task financial plan and the bookkeeping exercises will be completed by this asset. Outer Resources Venture Sponsor: The asset will audit the task progress at visit stretches and will furnish with the undertaking prerequisites, change endorsements and venture reserves. End-User: These assets will complete the application testing on the framework. These will be clients or the families that will visit the vacation destination and will profit the offices offered by the business. Business Analyst: The asset will investigate the business necessities and will help the Project Manager in the smooth execution of the undertaking. Booking Tasks Work Breakdown Structure There are different appraisals that are required to be completed in the undertaking to ensure that the venture accomplishes its objectives a

Hysteria and the Consequences of Mass Paranoia in The Crucible Essay

The Crucible Effectively Demonstrates the Development of Hysteria and the Consequences of Mass Paranoia. Examine this with Reference to the Play and the Time in Which it is Written. 'The Crucible' was written in 1952 by Arthur Miller and was first acted in 1953. It is about a town called Salem in America, set in the seventeenth century, where a doubt of black magic and affiliation with the Devil has emerged. This topic of allegation and distrustfulness is equivalent with the time of McCarthyism in the United States of America, where numerous individuals were blamed for socialism and against Americanism. The play was composed at about a similar time as the occasions during the 1950s and from various perspectives mirrors the townspeople's tension towards their circumstance. The people group of Salem is an unequivocally strict one and the townspeople all go to the Christian church. The priest is the most significant individual in the town, as he holds a high situation in their religion, subsequently he is relied upon to give a genuine model. The town is encircled by backwoods and the closest town is a couple of miles away. This makes a solid security in the network as every individual needs to work hard so as to persevere through the preliminaries of being a piece of a disengaged society. The writer shows the setting and period in the style of the characters' discourse - it is in the style generally seventeenth century American, when the play is set. The Caribbean slave, Tituba, additionally has her discourse altered to suit the Barbados lingo: My Betty be generous before long? is the initial line of the play. The primary demonstration begins in the place of Reverend Parris, where Parris is asking, in a confounded state, for his oblivious girl. Tituba, his slave, enters and the resulting 'discussion' uncovers that... ... has a simpler activity making the correct impact for every scene, so it is increasingly convincing for the crowd and they have a better comprehension of it. The Crucible exhibits how without any problem individuals can be controlled by conviction, and how confidence in something can viably visually impaired individuals, making them think nonsensically. The characters are conceivable and steady, and the crowd can perceive how they create all through the play. All the occasions are reasonable (if not plausible) and the language utilized is persuading as seventeenth century American. The crowd can understand the characters, especially with John Proctor, as they see at an early stage the issues he has and comprehend the predicament he faces in Act IV. I figure the play ought to be thought of not as a bit of dramatization, yet as a bit of writing representing how individuals' trust can be abused to a person's advantage.

Can We Have an Honest Conversation About Advertisements

Can We Have an Honest Conversation About Advertisements If the following screed were a peer-reviewed journal article, its abstract would be brief: advertisements suck. Well, at least most of them do. That’s not to say that all advertising is inherently evil, or even bad, because not all advertisements are created equalâ€"they run the gamut from informative to downright destructive. To understand the inherent problems with advertisements, it’s important to first point out that advertising isnt the same thing as marketing. Though these two terms are often used interchangeably, they are different in practice. Advertisements Advertisements are paid announcements via a public mediumâ€"mattress commercials, infomercials for the latest exercise fad, and seemingly harmless adverts for harmful prescription drugsâ€"and they are generally not an endorsement by the platform on which they are displayed. In Latin, advertere means to turn toward, and thats the exact aim of todays ad agencies: theyre willing to pay heaps of money to turn your eyes toward their products and services. And if the demand for a product isnt as high as the supply, no problem! Advertising can create a false demand if the budget is high enough. In recent years, worldwide spending on advertising has topped half a trillion dollars a year. Even writing the full numberâ€"500,000,000,000.00, commas and allâ€"doesnt come close to truly understanding its depth. So lets put it into perspective: If you leave your home today and begin spending one dollar every single second, it will take you more than 15,000 years to spend half a trillion dollars. In fact, if youdve spent a million dollars every single day since the fall of Rome, you still wouldn’t’ve spent half a trillion dollars by now. And were spending more than that every year on advertising. Which isnt so bad in and of itself. After all, its just money being spent on informing people about useful stuff, right? Yes, that sort of used to be true. A Brief History of Modern Advertising Before the twentieth century, advertising largely connected the producers of goods with consumers who genuinely needed those goods. But then, as Stuart Ewen describes in his book Captains of Consciousness, Advertising increased dramatically in the United States as industrialization expanded the supply of manufactured products. In order to profit from this higher rate of production, industry needed to recruit workers as consumers of factory products. It did so through the invention of [advertising] designed to influence the populations economic behavior on a larger scale. By the Roaring Twenties, thanks to Edward Bernays, whos sometimes referred to as the founder of modern advertising and public relations, advertisers in the U.S. adopted the doctrine that human instincts could be targeted and harnessed. Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud, realized that appealing to the rational minds of customers, which had been the mainstream method advertisers had used to sell products, was far less effective than selling products based on the unconscious desires that he felt were the true motivators of human action. Since then, weve witnessed ten decades of advertising agencies reachingâ€"and overreachingâ€"into the depths of the human psyche. Overreach of Advertisers Fast forward to the present day. One of the most obvious examples of advertisers’ rapacious (over)reach in recent years is the drug Sildenafil, which was created as a treatment for hypertension. When clinical trials revealed the drug wasnt effective, that should have been the end of its life cycle. But then advertisers stepped in. After discovering several male test subjects experienced prolonged erections during clinical trials, the makers of Sildenafil had a solution that desperately needed a problem. So they hired an ad agency who coined the term erectile dysfunction, and Viagra was born. This campaign took a relatively flaccid problem and created a ragging $2-billion-per-year blue pill. Of course, Viagra is a rather anodyne example. There are many pharmaceuticals whose side effects are so expansive that their commercials are forced to use gratuitous green pastures, yearbook smiles, and handholding actors to conceal the terror of rectal bleeding, amnesia, and suicidal ideation. In a sane world, misleadingly selling harmful prescription drugs would be a criminal act. Actually, it is: it’s illegal in every country in the worldâ€"except the United States and New Zealandâ€"to advertise drugs to consumers. But we let the almighty dollar get in the way. In 1976, Henry Gadsden, then CEO of Merck Co., told Fortune magazine that hed rather sell drugs to healthy people because thats where the most money was. Weve been sold new cures ever since. But please dont think this is an anti-boner-pill diatribe. According to the research, Viagra seems to be a relatively benign drug. Thereby, theres little wrong with the pill itself. Its the paid advertisements that are troublesome. Many ad agencies employ writers, demographers, statisticians, analysts, and even psychologists in an effort to divorce us from the money in our checking accounts. With the help of a fine-tuned agency, even the disclaimer is part of the sales pitch: Consult your doctor if your erection lasts longer than four hours. I dont know about you, but Id rather consult my partner with my everlasting hard-on. Viagra isnt the only product pushed beyond its initial conception. Did you know Listerine was previously used as a floor cleaner, Coca-Cola was invented as an alternative to morphine, and the graham cracker was created to stop you from masturbating? Hmm. If at first your product doesnt succeed, hire an ad agency! Selling Insecurity Making men believe their erections arent firm enough isnt the first time corporations have capitalized on human insecurity. For decades, women have been sold an inferiority complex. Our glowing screens would have the average female believe her waist isnt skinny enough, her breasts arent big enough, and her eyelashes arent lush enough. Dont worry, though, whatever your ailment, consumerism has the cure. In Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk prophesied of a dystopia in which a cunning con man could sell our own fat back to us after extracting it from our bodies. He was only half right, however. In the book, the fat is repackaged as soapâ€"a metaphor for cleansing ourselves by way of consumerismâ€"but in the real world were sold our fat in the form of autologous-fat transfer (butt injections) so we can look like our favorite reality-television stars. In a Kafkaesque bait-and-switch, advertisers sell us the food that makes us obese because we deserve a treat, and then they sell us the diet plans and exercise equipment to combat our gluttony. The sleight of hand doesnt end with male enhancers and weight-loss remedies. Advertisers go much further, capitalizing on our fear (and greed) with radically overpriced timeshare properties, precious metals, and end-times survival kits. You may notve known the world was ending, but now that you do, theres a product you can purchase to prepare. Selling Scarcity Speaking of the end of the world, why does it seem like the ads we experience are always taking place in a state of perpetual emergency? Act now! Limited time only! While supplies last! These advertiser-induced artificial limits are almost always imaginary. The truth is that if you miss out on a so-called sale, youll be just fine because corporations are always looking for a new opportunity to sell you something today. I mean, whats the alternative? Sorry, Mrs. Customer, youre screwedâ€"you waited an extra day to make your decision, so we no longer want your money! Why, then, does almost every company inject urgency into their ads? Because, as Bernays recognized a century ago, this tactic takes advantage of our primal nature: humans make quickâ€"often rashâ€"decisions in times of perceived scarcity. This made sense when our number one concern was starvation; it makes much less sense when we think well never be able to own that big-screen television, video-game console, or clutch purse unless we get in on this weekends doorbuster bonanza. Selling Nonessentials Advertisers have gotten so skilled that they can even sell us trash and tell us its good for us. Literally. Since American farmers are faced with unprecedented hoards of soybean and corn crops, and thus unprecedented waste products from those crops, advertisers have found a way not to safely dispose of that waste but to repackage it and sell it to you as hydrogenated oil, a supposed alternative to healthier oils from olives, avocados, and almonds. Inferior cooking oils are just the start of the garbage thats sold by the food industry. The amount of junk food that is peddled to us is so immense and so dangerous that there isnt room in this essay to meaningfully explore the sugar and processed foods vended by Americas largest corporations, but it can be summed up in a single stat: in 2018, you are more likely to die from obesity than of a violent crime, terrorism, war, starvation, or a car crash. Junk foods arent the only junk we buy. Unbeknown to us, advertisers have helped turn our homes into mausoleums of trash. To justify our clinging, weve invented cute nicknames for our junkâ€"trinket, knickknack, novelty, doohickey, tchotchke, collectors item, mementoâ€"as if what we call our trash increases its importance. But in the real world, the cheap plastic things we purchase at gift shops arent of importance, which might be fine if they made us happier or improved our lives, but they dont. Instead, we experience a dull high that wears off soon after the cash register dings its quiet victory, and we sit in the aftermath of consumption with an unusable artifact. Then, in time, we feel icky because were too ashamed to let go, so we purchase plastic storage containers to hideâ€"ahem, organizeâ€"our past mistakes. Each year, Americans spend $1.2 trillion on nonessential goods. In contrast, we contribute less than $200 billion to charities every year. In other words, we spend a trillion dollars more on shit we don’t need than on helping people in need. Advertising to Children Advertisers have found perhaps the easiest way to flood our homes with nonessentials: by advertising to our children. Not only do kids lack the critical thinking skills to say no to the foods that are killing us, but if they develop brand loyalty early, then Ronald McDonald has a lifetime customer. According to the American Psychology Association, commercial appeals to children became commonplace with the advent and widespread adoption of television, and they grew exponentially with the proliferation of cable television, which allowed programmers to develop entire channels of child-oriented programming and advertising. It is estimated that advertisers spend more than $12 billion each year to reach the youth, and children view more than 40,000 television commercials each yearâ€"an exponential increase from decades past. The American Academy of Pediatrics believes this targeting occurs because advertising in the U.S. alone is a $250 billion a year industry with 900,000 brands to sell, and children and adolescents are attractive consumers: teenagers spend $155 billion each year, children younger than 12 spend another $25 billion, and both groups influence another $200 billion of their parents spending every year. Perhaps the solution is to follow Sweden, Norway, and Quebec, and completely bar advertising to children under the age of 12. But more than likely its up to us as parents to develop the systems and communities that will better influence our kids viewing habits. The Upside of Advertising When done carefully, however, as rare as that might be, advertising can help fulfill an existing need. In fact, a hundred years ago, many ads did just that: they connected potential customers with a product that would improve their lives. I myself have benefited from informative advertisements. Living in Los Angeles, Im exposed to more billboards than most of the worlds population. Even though theyre a horrendous eyesore, I can honestly say that Im more informed about the available mediaâ€"movies, music, television seriesâ€"than if these advertisements didnt exist. The same is true for the tailored ads of the Internet. Google does a great job matching their content with my perceived needs. If a website is going to clutter their sidebar with banner ads, I would rather be served messages that are geared toward my interests: the bookshelf Ive been considering instead of a cosmetics display, the socks I need instead of an automobile pitch, the concert I want to attend instead of a beer commercial. It would be hard for me to claim that ads dont occasionally provide some quantifiable good to my life. Im simply not sure whether the pros outweigh the cons. True, the ads are better than ever, but maybe Im more likely to spend my money irresponsibly when Im constantly presented ads that match my precise interests. And while L.A.s billboards are more informative than, say, the ambulance chasers who fill the outdoor displays in most American cities, theyre still intrusive, and Id prefer they didnt exist at allâ€"and Im not alone. The Peoples Preference While I was driving from Burlington to Boston last year, something felt off. The rolling emerald landscape was unsullied, not unlike a tranquil screensaver, and I felt an unnameable calm as the mile markers ticked away. Then I crossed the Massachusetts state line, and it became obvious: the trips serenity was produced largely by its lack of billboards, which are illegal in the state of Vermont. Currently, four statesâ€"Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, and Vermontâ€"prohibit billboards. And more than 1,500 cities and towns have banned them throughout the world, including one of the largest cities on Earthâ€"Sao Paulo. When Sao Paulo introduced its Clean City Law in 2007, more than 15,000 billboards were taken down. To boot, an additional 300,000 intrusive signsâ€"pylons, posters, bus and taxi adsâ€"had to go. The strangest result of ridding the worlds third largest city of these advertisements? In a poll done after the removal, a majority of Paulistanos actually preferred the change. What a novel idea: ask people what they like instead of letting profitability dictate the cityview. From Good to Great Profit If all ads were unobtrusive and informative, it would be hard to have anything bad to say about them. But many twenty-first century advertisers have figured out how to manipulate the system for maximum profit. In the era of mass media and Internet spamming, theyve crossed a line: we went from connecting people with products they need; to creating a false desire for objects that add little value to our lives; to selling objects that get in the way of a richer, more fulfilling life. Many of the things advertisements make us think we need are actually the source of our discontent. You see, the easiest way to sell us happiness is to first make us unhappy. Its a painful cycle for us; its big business for them. Unfortunately, we’ve accepted ads as part of our everyday life; we’ve been conditioned to think they are a regular part of content delivery. After all, advertisements are how we get all those TV shows, radio programs, online articles, and podcasts for free, right? Alternatives to Advertisements Theres no free lunch. Every hour of network television is peppered with nearly 20 minutes of interruptions, and the same is true for most other mediums, which one could argue is more costly than the free price tag because we’re giving up our two most precious resourcesâ€"our time and attentionâ€"to receive the product. If we don’t want ads storming our attention (or our childrens attention), then we must be willing to pay for the things we associate as free. Netflix, Apple Music, and similar services are able to sidestep the traditional advertising model by providing a service people value. Other businesses and individualsâ€"Wikipedia and Sam Harris come to mindâ€"follow a variation of this ad-free model, frequently called a freemium model, where creators provide content for free, and a small portion of their audience supports their work monetarily. (By the way, this model is what keeps The Minimalists Podcast advertisement-free.) When asked why he chooses not to run ads on his popular Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris responded, I dont feel I can credibly run ads on my podcast, even for products and services I love and use myself. The one ad I read for a while was for Audible, which I do use, but even in that case, I dont feel entirely comfortable telling you that you should subscribe to Audible. I mean, should you? Perhaps you shouldnt. I have no idea. And that would go down as the worst Audible ad ever. In any case, Ive discovered that I dont feel comfortable selling ads, which is fine because I hate what ads have done to digital media. The advertising model is responsible for almost everything that is wrong online. But not running ads puts me in a position of asking my audience for support. This is something I approached with real trepidation in the beginning. However, having done it, Ive discovered its actually the most straightforward relationship I can have with my audience. No matter your feelings about Netflix, Apple Music, Wikipedia, Sam Harris, or similar companies and individuals, their approach undoubtedly improves their creations by making them interruption-free, and it increases trust since their audience knows these creators aren’t beholden to the desires of advertisers, which allows them to communicate directly with their audience in a way that strengthens the relationship because the customers are in control, not the ad buyers. Moreover, as consumers, our willingness to exchange money for creations forces us to be more deliberate about what we consume. If we’re paying for it, we want to make sure we’re getting our money’s worth. It’s a mystery why we don’t do the same for so-called free programming, where we pay no money, but we rarely get our attention’s worth. Whether your time is worth $10, $100, or $1,000 per hour, you likely spend tens of thousands of dollars every year consuming messages from advertisers. Think about that: in a very real way, youre paying to be advertised to. And there are no refunds on your misspent attention. Marketing The flipside of advertising isnt the absence of communicationâ€"its marketing. In his book, The Mindset of Marketing Your Music, Derek Sivers writes, Don’t confuse the word marketing with advertising, announcing, spamming, or giving away branded crap. Really, marketing just means being considerate. Marketing means making it easy for people to notice you, relate to you, remember you, and tell their friends about you. What Sivers is describing here is the most honest form of marketing: informing people without manipulating or bothering them. At its ethical zenith, marketing considers the needs and points of view of an audience and works hard to meet those needs by connecting the creators with consumers in an authentic way. In neutral terms, marketing is an unpaid endorsement, often by the creator herself, communicated directly to an audience whos eager to learn more about the product or service. When done well, this is what Seth Godin describes as Permission Marketing: the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal, and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them. It is possible to engage in world-class marketing without spending a penny on advertising. True, both advertising and marketing are forms of promotionâ€"both allow creators to present their goods and services to a group of peopleâ€"and when executed poorly, even well-intended marketing can be overkill. Like advertisements, not all marketing messages are created equal. Bastardized Marketing Unfortunately, not every marketer is a paragon of integrity. Just like the advertising world, marketing messages can be laced with misinformation, exaggerations, and propaganda. When creators stray from their audience’s preferencesâ€"when they stop providing value and abuse their permission with over-marketingâ€"they fail; they fall victim to vapid self-promotions, the most egregious examples of which include spam emails, website pop-ups, clickbait headlines, begging for followers, searching for Likes. As The Minimalists, we provide loads of high-quality free creationsâ€"essays, podcasts, and quotesâ€"and we occasionally use our platforms to promote a book, event, or service. And if we’re being forthright, even though we attempt to market with integrity, even we struggle to walk the line between informative and overkill. While Ryan I refuse spam, pop-ups, and salacious titles, and we strive to add value, we, too, have fallen victim to the look at me Internet cultureâ€"occasionally putting our preferences above our audience’s best interests. Whenever we catch ourselves straying, we course correct, and we work diligently to improve. Marketing as Part of the Creation Regardless of how you feel about marketing, it is the final step in the creative process. Marketing helps creators get their creations in front of people, and when approached delicately, it benefits their audience. But when creators focus more on promoting the creation than the act of creating, the product suffers and so does the audience, and trust is eroded. Until recently, the only way a creator could effectively market her product was to plaster her message across television, radio, print, and billboards. Using jargon like GRPs, TRPs, and frequency, advertisers could guarantee their product would reach a particular audience via a robust advertising plan. Even though this shotgun approach was imprecise, it was the only way to get to a mass audience. Today, the opposite is true. As a creator, you are your own marketing department; you can find an enthusiastic audience without the need to advertise. And because our tools are better than ever, your efforts can be more precise than the traditional approach of yesteryear, so you neednt cast a wide net to be effective. In fact, a thousand true fans  are enough. Spending time marketing your creation doesnt need to be tedious, either; it can be creative, artistic, and even fun. Thats why the best marketing doesnt feel like marketing: it feels like a conversation or entertainment or something the audience anticipates. Above all, it feels considerateâ€"not salesy or forced. Unavoidable Advertisements All of this poses an interesting and prickly dilemma for us as The Minimalists. Because we don’t want to add to the noise, we personally don’t allow ads on our website, podcast, or any other medium we directly control. However, we appear regularly on television and radio shows, as well as in newspapers and magazines, in which advertisements appear. And we’re honestly conflicted about this. Even companies we respect and have partnered withâ€"our tour promoter, Live Nation; our primary bookselling platform, Amazon; and the company behind our travel-bag project, Paktâ€"engage in various forms of advertising. We could, of course, choose not to appear anywhere that participates in advertising in any form, but because ads are virtually everywhereâ€"Americans see upwards of 5,000 each dayâ€"that would greatly limit the amount of people our message reaches. So we’ve instead decided to ride the line: no, we won’t incorporate ads into our platforms, and we’ll continue to speak out against the innate problems with advertising, but we won’t hide in a cave to shield ourselves from every billboard. Now maybe you don’t think advertisements are a big deal, but I believe they are one of the worst things to happen to our culture: they are the largest contributing factor toward rampant consumerism in the developed world, and they’re the biggest reason our political climate is where it is today. Advertisements are much like the islands of plastic haunting our oceansâ€"a giant problem people rarely think about. That doesnt mean ads (or plastic) shouldnt exist; I simply dont feel good about producing either unless they contribute to the greater good. Values over Money That said, Im not allergic to money. And this commentary isn’t meant to be a judgment on other people. Many of my close friends incorporate advertisements into their creations, and I don’t necessarily begrudge them for that. It likely wouldn’t do much good anyway because, as Upton Sinclair once wrote, It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it. The way I understand it, though, is simple: my values trump my ability to make money. And advertisements dont align with my personal values. Do I want to earn a living? Yes, of course I do. But I want to live a life thats congruent with my values, and thus I dont want money to be the primary driver of my creations. Just because I can advertise, that doesnt mean I should. True, money will always be an important part of the equation (everybody has to pay the bills, right?), but if we put creativity and our values first, then we can determine the role of money further down the line. Conclusion Suffice it to say, this disquisition wouldnt see the light of day in any of todays ad-driven organs. Nor would it find its way into a scholarly journal, because this isnt a peer-reviewed article; its just one guys loosely connected thoughts about advertising. Its my hope that these musings start a conversation about the oft-ignored pernicious aspects of advertisements. And maybeâ€"just maybeâ€"our society can find a way to make advertisements that dont suck. Lets not hold our breath, though. If we want to produce meaningful creations, we must rely on ourselves. Or, as the historian Yuval Noah Harari once wrote, You cannot unite humanity by selling advertisements. This is true even if those ads are for dick pills. Subscribe to The Minimalists via email.