Saving Money or Spending More Money?

"Hey, what are you going to do on the Thanksgiving break?" My American friend Roxanne asked me.
"I'm going to have the Thanksgiving Dinner with a local family... Nothing else." I replied.
"You know, if you don't have any plan, you can go shopping and experience the American consumerism."
Suddenly, "Black Friday" jumped out from my mind. "You know what, Roxanne, I've already experienced it."

In the past few months, I purchased tons of clothes, shoes and facial cares. I didn't need to go to Carousel Center and the fact is, I didn't even want to -- everything I bought was from the Internet with considerable  discounts.

You may ask how I got all the information about the sale? From ads?
Honestly, I don't like ads because they always come to you when you don't want them to disrupt your favorite TV show. The interesting thing is, now, many ads don't come to you, instead, you follow them.

This is how "ads" on social media work:

• Many brands or "info agents" have their social media Webpages to let you to follow them. 
• They offer you bewildering discount information and tell you to "save money". 
• Then you buy the items that you never think you will buy if you don't follow those brands or info agents on social media. 
• You feel so happy that you bought them at such "low prices", thinking those who do not know the coupon codes will spend more money than you did.
• You are now obsess with those ads.

Social media change the way you see ads by:

• creating your loyalty to brands you are interested in
• providing discount information you want to know
• having conversations with you

Those brands and info agents are like "friends" of yours on your social media Webpage. They act as opinion leaders who select "valuable info"for you rather than those regular ads whose target is no more than sell products to you.

Ads, whether on social media or anywhere else, are always trying selling products to you. However, when they come to social media, their tone and wording changed. Ads become more humanized and closer to the customers.

When regular ads tell you to save money when you are watching TV shows, you know they want money from your pocket. But when social media ads tells you to save money, you really think they mean it. Because they are following you like real world friends. And you listen to what your "friends" tell you.

Everyone, Happy Thanksgiving!