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Not in a meaningful sense. We certainly learn to tune them out to a degree... but both in general and because some ad campaigns are designed that way, the information continually filters in. See my prior comments about why zapping and zipping and muting are essentially useless - most TV ads have been designed to still impact the viewer even from the first few seconds or at 10X speed.
Believing you are immune/inured/oblivious to advertising is not completely a reaction of the viewer... it's a shaped element of modern marketing in general. "We know you're way too smart to be swayed by this," like any carnival huckster or snake-oil salesman... and then you go home broke and with a bottle of the goop anyway.
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Originally Posted by Larry Siegel
It pays to advertise. Every product I've ever bought was manufactured or sold by a company that advertises. Advertising is as much a cost of doing business as paying your utilities or taxes. It is the way that potential customers who don't know about the product hear about the product.
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Originally Posted by oregonwoodsmoke
Of course advertising works. Ever see anyone ask if store brand food is worth buying?
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Originally Posted by KaraG
People actually appreciate ads for things they want.
We opened a new store 3 years ago. People still walk in every day and tell us how they found out about us.
An easy pitfall here is to discuss "advertising" and "marketing" as if it's some monolithic process, all good or all bad or whatever. There are several tiers to - let's just be simple here and call it advertising, although I've made the case that ads are just a puppet show for the real efforts - several tiers to advertising. No one questions that straightforward presence and service ads, usually for local or regional businesses, are useful and effective. (And, unless they're doing the Cal Worthington, fairly inoffensive.) I am often interrupted in discussions and talks with just this argument - "But my auto shop advertises and it brings me business and people love knowing I am there, or having an oil change special, or etc." Of course. There's nothing really to object to with this approach.
When we talk about the evils of adver/marketing, we are almost always talking about the efforts of the national and multinational conglomerates - PepsiCo, Kraft, etc. At this level, marketing is a war. Not in hysterical anti-consumerism talk, but in their own language. Coca-Cola famously operates their major campaigns (which are for far more than Diet Coke) from a "war room" and operates under war assumptions. (Is anyone not aware that each of the five or six major conglomerates could fill a grocery store corner to corner with their own products - every shelf, every end cap? Each of them regards competing products on the shelf as the enemy, and the goal is not to garner a share of the market, but all of it. For every product. Even most auto makers are content with a share of the market segment, preferably a dominant one, but don't waste time dreaming the competitors will go away. Food/consumer good makers have basically gone down a road of insanity in this respect, and have been on that road since at least the 1960s.)
So it's this huge, omnipresent marketing war that is increasingly invasive, pervasive, influencing even those who pride themselves on self-determination, and basically has been shaping our culture for decades. The very brightest minds in behavioral psych don't go into therapy practice, they go to work for the major conglomerates and marketing firms... and modern marketing is about as far from kindly ol' Don Draper brainstorming with his drunken colleagues as modern medicine is from Civil War battlefield aid. Encouraging you to think along these terribly quaint and outdated ideas - that you're just too smart for old Don - is as deliberate thread in marketing as, say, using red type for attention grabs. Modern marketing is as science- and data-based as any engineering field... and yes, it's become a dominant force in social engineering - all for the benefit of the marketers. And now big data has transformed even that into something worse.
TL;DR? Advertising is a useful business component - when used for awareness, location and promotion without coercion, deception or manipulative elements. It is a three-edged sword in the hands of modern marketing at the corporate and conglomerate consumer-goods level, and we are all skewered by it.
Thanks, but while I can laugh at marketing/advertising humor (MAD Magazine reader for 30 years, until they went sour), it's a bit like laughing at old ethnic, gay and "handicapped" jokes. Or Jewish jokes in 1939 Germany. The humor is as much a deflection and denial of what many of us uncomfortably suspect to be true as it is entertainment or enlightenment, and it lets us blow off anxiety and not worry about it... which might as well be a part of some Great Marketing Conspiracy for its effectiveness in reinforcing how we are conditioned to see [corporate] marketing.
(And no, I am not now or ever positing an active conspiracy in the field. But all the players are happy to have the others pushing the same kindly dogma at us all. It's kind of like a neighborhood where the residents don't quite know each others' names but nod and smile at neatly-mowed lawns all around.)
To make it very current and raw, what do you think of humor about me-too? Why are Dave Chappelle's very funny barbs about it so shocking and 'inappropriate'? ...now you know how I see kindly ol' genial let's-yuk-it-up-at-PepsiCo's-expense humor.
Thanks, but while I can laugh at marketing/advertising humor (MAD Magazine reader for 30 years, until they went sour), it's a bit like laughing at old ethnic, gay and "handicapped" jokes. Or Jewish jokes in 1939 Germany.
Wow, I sure don't get that impression! It's satire, a very good means of conveying the absurdity of things that are often taken for granted.
Regarding what is "current" I really don't know, since my media exposure is pretty well limited to what I go looking for.
Wow, I sure don't get that impression! It's satire, a very good means of conveying the absurdity of things that are often taken for granted.
I've written satire and humor for public/commercial use. And enjoy it, from the classics to the best of late-night.
But in this case it's a tool that's been co-opted to an uncomfortable degree. The sharpest Carlin or Seinfeld or Wright piece about marketing predation is far too... deflecting, IMVHO.
"The very brightest minds in behavioral psych don't go into therapy practice, they go to work for the major conglomerates and marketing firms... "
I think there might be a bit of hyperbole there. There are a number of reasons why advertising exists and is pervasive in our culture as it is. To try to nail it down to one or two reasons is simplistic, and effectiveness is only a small part of the factors that create it.
A lot of advertising is based upon ego gratification and bluster. Some advertising is simply a reward or attempt at community involvement. Some advertising is aimed at promoting a particular social agenda. Those are just a few of the reasons for it.
What, effectiveness isn't all-important? Isn't that wasted money? I can give you a real life example, one which I saw happen repeatedly.
Movie theatres once only had very limited advertising before the shows. Those were in the form of large slides projected onto the screen, or a fire curtain that was paid for by an advertiser and emblazoned with their ad.
In the 1970s a small company began creating advertisements with live action that was then put on the 35mm movie film and projected prior to the feature. At first, only the armed services and charities used it, and even with that limitation there was a huge kick-back by audiences complaining that they didn't buy a ticket to see advertisements.
The source of income to the theatres became increasingly important to theatres as they were squeezed out of profits on the films by distributors. Local businesses began to pay serious money to be on the advertiser reel, and audiences basically sat down and shut up.
The combination of slide advertising (cheaper) and film advertising continued and became increasingly popular. With my being in the industry and seeing what the real effectiveness was, I became amazed at the gullibility of the advertisers. The slide advertising that they were paying for, more often than not, was being shown to a completely empty auditorium, and as people became more savvy that previews took at least five to ten minutes before a feature started, even the highly attended screenings afforded advertisers few views. The live action ads continued to upset audiences, as well as break the spell of the polished presentation of a curtain opening on a feature film, complete with fanfare.
Around 1995 I came up with the idea of putting selected advertising on movie tickets. The concept was that ever customer HAD to have a ticket, the stub was large and held both advertisements and coupons to local businesses to drive feet in the door and show efficacy. The tickets worked like a charm, with everyone from car dealers to fast food restaurants benefiting. For the theatres, it was a win win, since the cost of the tickets to them paid for my tech support fees for the point of sale software, and they could make an additional profit. As far as impressions, the tickets easily created ten times the impressions as the on-screen ads.
However effective and cost efficient the ticket advertising was, it didn't have one thing that is critical in determining where ad dollars flow - ego gratification. The idea that Mortimer Snerd and his giant bippy business could be shown on the same big screen that showed the movie stars was irresistible to every Mortimer out there. "A couple thousand bucks and I can be on the same screen as Clint Eastwood?! Sign me up!"
The theatre owners eventually didn't want to make the effort to sell the ticket ads, and some of them used the advertising kickbacks from using coke or pepsi in their theatres to get those companies to sponsor the tickets. The selling of sugar water is only partly about effective advertising, another part of it is providing the on-the-side rewards to those who actually do the selling. For coke and pepsi, the cost of advertising on the tickets was just part of the cost of keeping the theatre owner happy. They could have cared less if the advertising was effective.
A 5% return on advertising impressions is considered great. Spammers routinely are happy with returns of a fraction of a percent.
One of the aspects of our culture that I find humorous is that government is so afraid of upsetting business that the idea of taxing advertising into submission is off the table, even though it would drive advertisers into being more careful with advertising and reduce ineffective campaigns, while funding various programs like repairing infrastructure or funding basic healthcare.
"The very brightest minds in behavioral psych don't go into therapy practice, they go to work for the major conglomerates and marketing firms... "
I think there might be a bit of hyperbole there.
No, there's not.
Most of what you additionally write is straight out of the Biz/Marketing 101 textbook, and while much of it is still true in smaller-scale efforts (and the way Newtonian physics is still valid, except for quantum physics)... it's pious nonsense, obviosity and dogma at the level of major modern marketing.
What most people know of and think of as marketing dates to the 1960s, if not earlier - the MAD Magazine, Don Draper, small-company notions of how to promote products and services and sales by gently prodding the target audience. That model still holds for small, local and regional business, and even for most B2B trade relationships. "We make the most durable flexible connectors in the industry!" - okay.
But marketing exists at several levels, that being the first of them. The next level is current academic/trade writing and analysis, both in journals and trade magazines. It seems very cutting-edge and nouveau... except that (from my perspective, with my viewpoint and well over 30 years of experience - I've seen some of this crap come around again and again, always New!) it's all a little too "nicey nice" in that all of the discussion is based on economic verities like continual growth and all sales being a good thing. (An aside, but there is no significant body of "contrarian" writing about marketing, not at the journal levels. Even the "negative" papers are largely about how to fix that problem to the benefit of sellers.)
...oh, and it's all at least 20 years behind reality.
Let me give you just one example of how disconnected both popular conception and current "SOTA" discussion of marketing are from what's really going on on the marketing floors.
Children's cereals almost universally have an appealing cartoon figure on the front. Next time you go down the cereal aisle, really look at the wall of boxes... all those characters are winsomely, appealingly staring right at... your kids' faces. It's no secret that cute faces with big eyes, like these mascots, push buttons in us, some of them positively animal-brain/hind-brain. There's a journal-level paper on this that goes into deep, data-driven analysis. (Unfortunately, it's disappeared behind a paywall, but the article link for those who subscribe is here on Bloomberg... if someone can post a link to the paper itself, I'd appreciate the legwork. My bad for not bookmarking the source.) (ETA: Found it. I'm such an idiot, not looking in my own writings for the info... journal link here. And note that the paper is way outside business and marketing publication.)
So there's a paper that BLOWS THE LID OFF SUGARY CEREAL MAKER MANIPULATION OF YOUR KIDS!
Written in 2014.
When the practice became nearly universal in the 1960s.
Feel up to date now? Or do you begin to realize that the practices of 21st-century marketing are still essentially closely guarded trade secrets crafted with the steady input of first-rank behavioral engineers?
More modern examples: It's well-known that some number of clicks within Facebook create the initial addiction to its content. How many? Might as well go ask Coke for the formula to ingredient 7X. The number and positioning of droplets on a Pepsi can have a strong influence on consumer appeal. How many, and where? Go ask the Colonel for the 11 secret herbs and spices. Those are just two major, major trade secrets in today's game... and more closely guarded than the nuclear football.
(Oh, by the way, KFC chicken coating contains only salt, pepper, MSG, flour, milk and eggs. Not an herb or spice to be found. It's all 50 years of marketing BS. Feel better? Or just hungry?)
The easy way to get rid of a lot of advertising, is to switch your browser. I went to EPIC PRIVACY BROWSER a few months ago. It immediately stopped those that have trackers that watch what web site you go to, and put adds for such an item on the web pages you see. The browser tells me how many such trackers they eliminate. I have seen as many as 150 trackers that were eliminated in a short period of time. It is based on Chrome, and works about the same, without a lot of ads thrown at me. It has also eliminated a lot of ransom ware, etc. It also stops people from knowing your location. One time they will find I am in a city on the west coast, and maybe a couple of days later it will tell them I am in a city on the east coast, and next day Toronto Canada, or Paris France, or in India, England, etc.
Since the change, I have found when running cleaners, it has gone from a lot of things being cleaned off the computer to almost none.
We have it on all our 4 computers. My all in one, my wife's small tower with a 32 inch screen, one dedicated tower hooked up to our 52" flat screen TV, we use to stream Free movies from older ones to the latest ones for Free. It is also fun to play games on it. And my heavy duty commercial grade Lap Top, used when I don't want to sit at my computer desk. A lot of computers for a couple in their 80s. Years ago when computers were expensive, I used to build my own from better quality parts, for a lot less money than I could buy one back then. Today, since computer prices have fallen so much, I usually buy a good basic computer on sale, and upgrade memory, etc., as needed.
"(Oh, by the way, KFC chicken coating contains only salt, pepper, MSG, flour, milk and eggs. Not an herb or spice to be found. It's all 50 years of marketing BS.)"
You must be a follower of Poundstone. The story is more complicated than that. I had a friend who managed a KFC well before Poundstone, and back when the Colonel (A true character with a checkered history) was actively going around and meeting with the franchisees as part of his agreement with Heublin during the transition. Saunders took a liking to him and the two of them bought a pressure cooker and some spices, and Saunders custom made some of his original recipe chicken (not the "original" that is sold in KFC) and they ate that. My friend pronounced it to be far superior to what was being sold at the location he managed. Saunders, it is well known, was not happy with Heublin.
My suspicion is that when the business was sold, only a lick and a promise of the original spice mix was mixed in to what Poundstone found, keeping the legality of it but reducing costs. Wiki has some of the story.
Facebook? Skinner was laying groundwork on variable ratio and interval reinforcement back in the '40s and '50s. There is no "closely guarded trade secrets crafted with the steady input of first-rank behavioral engineers" there. It has been open knowledge for decades to those of us who studied psych. Click rates is simply an extension of that. If you think that this is all new from the 1970s on, perhaps you have fallen prey to good advertising.
Manga faces have also been around for ages. Betty Boop, the drawing of the Gerber baby, the strange vapidness of Little Orphan Annie's eyes all focus on oversized eyes and feminine weakness as an attractor. Any artist or photographer worth their salt can explain the effect of a portrait's eyes "following" an observer. Again, nothing new or secret, even if Disney tries to cash in on Porgs in Star Wars or non-threatening faces appear on cereal boxes.
What you don't make mention of are the subtleties of NLP and semi-hidden imagery, cultural references, or imperatives. While most of the techniques are hidden within political campaigns and propaganda, some of these techniques do make their way into advertising. The average person has few defenses against advanced confusion techniques, overload and sanctuary, culture manipulation and the like. Even there though, remember that some of that was in the book "1984" and written around 1947.
The purges that happened a while back in the advertising industry were long overdue. The bloat and pompous BS by high paid "executives" and "creators" was obvious.
"(Oh, by the way, KFC chicken coating contains only salt, pepper, MSG, flour, milk and eggs. Not an herb or spice to be found. It's all 50 years of marketing BS.)"
You must be a follower of Poundstone. The story is more complicated than that.
Admire his better stuff. He got it right, and noted that what were probably expensive and complicated recipes under the Colonel became... simplified under corporate ownership. But the product of the last 40+ years has been 11 herbs and spices short of the boast.
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Facebook? Skinner was laying groundwork on variable ratio and interval reinforcement back in the '40s and '50s. There is no "closely guarded trade secrets crafted with the steady input of first-rank behavioral engineers" there. It has been open knowledge for decades to those of us who studied psych. Click rates is simply an extension of that. If you think that this is all new from the 1970s on, perhaps you have fallen prey to good advertising.
You are confusing generality of knowledge with specifics.
The generalities in each of these examples are well known and of course go back to the roots of each science - most are taught at the 101 level. But specifics, even though literally sitting in plain sight, are expensively developed and carefully guarded until eclipsed by better or evolved knowledge.
Tires are made from the same dozen or so ingredients used by every maker... but the exact compounds in top-quality performers are highly protected trade secrets. You and I can go buy every compound in a Goodyear Eagle F1 tire... but are unlikely to match it with our Ronco Home Tire Maker. (Or even by buying an old Firestone plant.) Some compounds are utterly defined by a few ounces of content in multi-ton batches of rubber - but what compounds, and how many ounces, are written down next to Formula 7X.
Everyone with high school science knows an atomic bomb is composed of two masses of U235 or Pu239, which when smacked together make a satisfying boom. How much metal? These days, even the approximate amount is probably on Wackopedia. But the critical (that's a pun, son), exact amounts of each half, or the core and slug... good luck on that. And on other simple, obvious, but still ultimately secret details like explosive design and machining and tolerances and casing strengths.
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...or non-threatening faces appear on cereal boxes.
You again miss the point. Of course baby faces punch through right to our hindbrains; high-school psych at most and Renaissance painters knew it. But the rise of universal use of this effect, carefully tuned and adjusted to short consumers tugging on mommy's skirt, has been with us for 50 years... and was not noticed or documented by the public research side of marketing until 2014. My point is not that specific marketing technique... but that what even current research sees of marketing is already old-hat and entrenched, like astonishing people by publishing formerly secret Army munitions manuals from WWII.
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