Policy makers can be reluctant to put in place policies that are seen to impinge upon the privacy of people in their own homes, yet commercial entities are less worried about this. From adverts in kitchens on fridges to people having massive logos on their clothing, accessories and in their homes, it’s another way of letting the outside in, making homes more public spaces.
Instinctively the idea of adverts on fridges feels quite shocking and a departure but reading Saunders & Williams 1988 piece ‘The constitution of home’ was a reminder that it’s perhaps more of a variation on a theme. They were talking then about advertising coming into the home through the TV and radio, and how this connected the home and outside world. They had slightly mixed views about the extent to which the home is or isn’t a private space but it was helpful to be able to see these adverts in a longer-term context.
TV and radio advertising has helped pave the way for the adverts on fridges, but with TV and radio, the ads are quite one-way. The people and organisations placing the ads would be able to get viewer or listener numbers and they might be able track if there was an uplift in activity as a result. They would have much less information available than is there now through tracking on phones and internet devices. This creates much more of a feedback loop between the adverts, organisations and audience. It’s also providing much more data which can be tracked and logged and used, with the attendant concerns about the possibility of personal or big data being used in ways we would find unethical.
Some of the sense of difference might just be the shock of the new, happening in a situation where there are growing concerns about the impact of data and devices. A sense that there’s increased surveillance but it’s not clear that we are safer or benefiting from it in other ways. That devices are making things seemingly more convenient – so smart fridges can tell us something is getting close to its best before date, but at a cost we hadn’t considered, let alone really reckoned with. The hollowing out of high streets, a loss of big and small businesses that can’t compete with massive online, offshore companies, more job insecurity and lower pay for more people. The social impacts of becoming more removed from others – those that we disagree with and now feel more removed from so it’s easier to be angry with and about them. Removed too from those we care about or might care about. Of course, no one smart fridge or other device does that but the cumulative impact of convenient things is something people are concerned about, for instance in the increasing hollowing out of high streets or declining concentration spans.
There is something different about the extent to which it’s a choice to engage. With TV and the radio you can choose to switch them on or not. If the adverts come on you can switch off or leave the room, and it’s you engaging when you want to but otherwise they aren’t around. With the adverts on the fridge, the fridges weren’t sold with that function to start with, so it isn’t as though people made the choice and were able to consider the trade-offs. People chose an expensive fridge and then subsequently that functionality was introduced, which feels very different indeed. There was eventually some functionality introduced that allows the adverts to be switched off but it isn’t clear they can be entirely removed.
In many respects then, smart devices with advertising are part of the longer history of the outside coming inside, or there being a much more permeable link between the home and the wider world. What remains then, is a sense of how the lack of choice looms larger in that context, but it also shows how homes, and expectations about homes, can push back on shifts. The company that introduced them thought they would be able to get away with it, yet people felt able to complain and have their views heard in a way that might be harder to achieve in a more communal space.
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