hidden in plain view

After reading this article on Dubai i find that sometimes (most times) what we see is not what we get.This has always been a problem for me in advertising, and i became slightly obsessed, ok fine a lot obsessed, with reading the small print on adverts, mainly print ads, but also, TV ads, you know like on video games ads you see the "not actually game footage" written in the most conspicously small type you'll ever see, right at the bottom, which flashes for all but 2.4 seconds, and then it's gone.i guess this all started as a kid, watching Cartoon Network or whatever obscure kids televsion they showed in the 90's, (on a seperate note, they need to bring back CDUK), and "those" toy adverts would come on, and get i'd get all excited at the thought of dragging my mum around trying to find said toy, only for them to dash all my hopes and dreams, with "batteries sold seperately". What the hell? what are these so called batteries? how many do i need? are they AA or AAA? and where the fuck do i get them from...?, ok maybe a bit exagerated, but i was 6, what more did i have to worry about???in a way, i guess we all have some sort of small print to us, our little defects that we don't tell people until it's too late for them to walk away, men* and women both have their small print right??anyway, i think my obsession is curbing ever so slightly**, because as i've learnt to love advertising, and the creative process, and the amount of thought that goes into every good ad i see, i've realised that the disclosures are the business side of advertising, the bit we as advertisers have to include, even if we don't want to, because ultimately it's all about the things we aim to do, differentiate, inform, remind and persuade, and i guess the small print is just the extra gravy.So for the best part, lets learn to appreciate the little uncomfortable details, at least we're.warned before hand.

who needs batteries..........................??

*will eventually let you down and embarass you at any given opportunity

**i'm still obsessed with it and always will be, don't judge me.