Quackers
The Frog
you buying the right stuff?
Marketing
- Thread starter civver_764
- Start date
you buying the right stuff?
Wait! downtown is the spawn of Satan?
! Another hero bites the dust.Well, caveat emptor.
Mise
isle of lucy
I don't see a problem with advertising or marketing. I like being informed of products I didn't even know I wanted. Just the other day I saw an advert for a home cinema system for TVs that was really small and didn't require a million speakers all placed around your living room. That's something I want now, that I didn't want before, and that would make my life even more enjoyable. Hurray for TV ads!
TV ads are pretty much the least efficient way you can find out about stuff to improve your life.
Your grocery stores never put out weekly ads? You wouldn't vary produce consumption depending on what is on sale?
I'm not going to forgo buying apples to buy frozen pizza, but I'll vary between apples and say, pears or or plums, depending on whats on sale. I could be persuaded to try new foods depending on cost promotions.
I get a lot of my income from online sportswriting. Just about every media outlet, print or otherwise, is supported primary from advertising. When my readers use adblock, it takes revenue away from my website, which means they can't pay me as much for what I write.Wait! downtown is the spawn of Satan?
Well, caveat emptor.
We charge people per ad view, not per ad click.
Deaths Advocate
Prince
How can something that takes zero effort to do, be inefficient.
Efficiency gotta be valued at energy in Vs gain. Even if there is little gain in watching the ads, there is so little energy cost, you're still winning!
Oh yeah, I buy stuff that's on sale pretty much every week, but I just walk around the store and see where the yellow stickers are, I never see ads for my grocery store.
Watching TV commercials is incredibly expensive - the average American watches over 4 hours of TV per day, at median personal income of $32k, this places the average opportunity cost of watching TV commercials at close to $1000 per year - that's somewhere in the area of $300 billion per year in opportunity cost spent by Americans watching commercials.
azzaman333
meh
Because you get bombarded with a great deal of things that you don't give a crap about, and only a couple of things that you do care about. That's clearly not efficient.
_random_
Jewel Runner
Do Germans really refer to all pop as lemonade?
Right, but as a connoisseur of foods you hate, I can get information from fast food ads that's relevant to me, so the ads do serve a purpose. It's possible that they're deceptive, but society and government tend to discourage that sort of thing. Some accepted elements might qualify as deception (dressing up the food to look a lot more appetizing than anything served at an actual KFC restaurant), but they tend to be used to grab attention for more legitimate information, and most people are smart enough to get that it's not supposed to be taken at face value. And even then, it would be possible to make an ad without such elements. There's nothing intrinsically deceptive about the medium of commercial advertisement.
I think it's more that every element has a cheating part.
You get manipulated in every way, not only through the obvious things.
Don't have an example for TV ads right of my mind now, but e.g. that supermarkets structure their sortiment in that way that the most expensive stuff is on the height of your eyes, and so on. Psychology everywhere.
I hope this is not the main point someone would read out of that ^^.
But yeah, more or less.
You get manipulated in every way, not only through the obvious things.
Don't have an example for TV ads right of my mind now, but e.g. that supermarkets structure their sortiment in that way that the most expensive stuff is on the height of your eyes, and so on. Psychology everywhere.
I hope this is not the main point someone would read out of that ^^.
But yeah, more or less.
Mise
isle of lucy
I agree with Deaths Advocate. Nobody I know actually watches TV. As in, sits in front of it, staring at it for 4 hours. It's background noise while internetting, playing on phones, texting, chatting, gaming, or whatever. If I can find out about cool stuff in between laughing along at The Big Bang Theory and while playing Football Manager, then that is basically a costless activity.
Measuring it as opportunity cost is ridiculous, especially if you take the total time Ti spent doing activity i in a day and multiplying it by your salary S per hours. First of all, if you sum Ti over all i, the total amount of time spent doing all activities would vastly exceed the number of hours in a day. Better to measure it as marginal cost: I would internet, play games, etc anyway, whether the TV is on or not, so the marginal cost of turning a TV on and listening to some mindless entertainment is pretty much zero.
Put another way, I could choose to listen to some music while playing computer games instead, which I often do: this activity would provide the similar amounts of background entertainment, but it would not apprise me of the latest gadgets and products I might want.
Even if you don't agree with this, and counter that if I calculated the marginal time ti spent doing activity i in a day for each activity, and added them all up, the total time spent doing all activities would be less than the number of hours in the day, you have to accept that, somewhere between these two numbers is the "right" number. For TV watching, music listening, and so on, I contend that the "fair" time spent doing these activities for the purposes of this calculation is much, much closer to the "marginal" time than the "total" time.
Contrast this with your objection. You presuppose that the purpose of watching TV ads is to furnish me with knowledge about products: your objection is that I could find out about those products in better ways. But those ways would require an active amount of time spent, i.e. active research or reading on new products that I don't enjoy. For the purposes of our calculation, the time spent doing this activity would fall very much on the "total" time side, rather than the "marginal" time side.
Researching new products is an active pursuit; it is difficult to do in the background. Listening to TV ads in the background can be done without sacrificing time spent on other activities. Its cost is close to zero.
Would you please, please, consider changing your signature into something a bit less intrusive?
Borachio
Way past lunacy
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2012
- Messages
- 26,698
But so much of advertising is persuading people to buy stuff they never realized they had any need of in the first place. Therefore how ever much time is spent on paying how-ever-much subliminal attention to advertising is wasted time.
Mise
isle of lucy
Yeah, I didn't realise I wanted a blender where you could throw in a bunch of vegetables without chopping them, put the lid on, press the button, then a minute later, have hot vegetable soup, until I saw a guy demo it in John Lewis. Now I want one, because it's freaking awesome. Making me aware of awesome things is good, no?
Mise
isle of lucy
There's nothing in between watching birds and pulling birds for you? There's no product out there that will make your life easier or more enjoyable?
Borachio
Way past lunacy
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2012
- Messages
- 26,698
No. I don't believe there is.
But, it has to be admitted, I am getting rather old. And not needing any more gadgets does seem to be a feature of aging.
And yet, if you can still get a kick out of a food-blender, more power to your elbow! I take delight in using a knife.
But, it has to be admitted, I am getting rather old. And not needing any more gadgets does seem to be a feature of aging.
And yet, if you can still get a kick out of a food-blender, more power to your elbow! I take delight in using a knife.
amadeus
Apply directly to the forehead
civver, I'm lost on your distinction. Let's say I've got a new video game, SimCivver―you get to play an anarchist that's learning about how great the free market is. 
How do I notify you of this product without trying in any way to convince you your life would be better with it? The fact of me even telling you this product exists can in some way be inferred as meaning that this is something that has been created for the benefit of humanity and in some minute way you could benefit from it. That alone has been an attempt at persuasion and thus, marketing.
Let's take a product and strip away all obvious signs of marketing.
What could be so offensive about this sterile beer can? Okay, the color of the font is blue. As it just so happens, a plurality of people will answer blue when prompted for their favorite color―a coincidence, or a subliminal message? So let's strip the color off the text.
But there's also the font itself. Dating the can (1970s, 1980s?) it's apparent that the font was used because it was a popular, new, modern disco-influenced style. That needs to be taken away too, so as not to unduly influence anyone into buying this product.
Now we're left with a can of beer that has no stylized font and no color. Yet, there's still a problem.
A competitor has a flashy can with its brand name, boasting of its great taste. (Full size link.)
Now you're walking down the aisle and you see these two. Before you look at their price, what do you see? A flashy can and a sterile, economical-looking can.
That's right, we've just inferred that the generic can is going to be more economical than the name-brand can. More marketing. There is nothing left that we can do, is there?
So civver, do you think it's even possible to come up with something that is not marketing? How would you tell someone of something without somehow, whether intentionally or not, marketing it?
How do I notify you of this product without trying in any way to convince you your life would be better with it? The fact of me even telling you this product exists can in some way be inferred as meaning that this is something that has been created for the benefit of humanity and in some minute way you could benefit from it. That alone has been an attempt at persuasion and thus, marketing.
Let's take a product and strip away all obvious signs of marketing.
What could be so offensive about this sterile beer can? Okay, the color of the font is blue. As it just so happens, a plurality of people will answer blue when prompted for their favorite color―a coincidence, or a subliminal message? So let's strip the color off the text.
But there's also the font itself. Dating the can (1970s, 1980s?) it's apparent that the font was used because it was a popular, new, modern disco-influenced style. That needs to be taken away too, so as not to unduly influence anyone into buying this product.
Now we're left with a can of beer that has no stylized font and no color. Yet, there's still a problem.
A competitor has a flashy can with its brand name, boasting of its great taste. (Full size link.)
Now you're walking down the aisle and you see these two. Before you look at their price, what do you see? A flashy can and a sterile, economical-looking can.
That's right, we've just inferred that the generic can is going to be more economical than the name-brand can. More marketing. There is nothing left that we can do, is there?
So civver, do you think it's even possible to come up with something that is not marketing? How would you tell someone of something without somehow, whether intentionally or not, marketing it?
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
I like advertising; it gives me an excuse to spout half-understood Situationist gibberish at people who really could not care less.
Also, just "beer"? Like not even distinguishing whether it's larger or bitter or whatever? That cannot bode well for the contents.
Also, just "beer"? Like not even distinguishing whether it's larger or bitter or whatever? That cannot bode well for the contents.
Mise
isle of lucy
Well, if by "advertising is wasted time" you meant that "advertising is wasted time for you", then that's fair enough. But I think the argument is over whether it is always a waste of time to have adverts broadcast in one's general direction.
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