Advertising

Also, Women Laughing Alone With Salad and Women Struggling to Drink Water

 

I thought you were all just excited about finally getting to take a shit. Isn't that what all those probiotic yogurt commercials are about?

 

This brings nothing to the discussion but I found it funny.

 

Seth Godin makes a lot of good marketing points:

Traipise through the archive, you salty hobo: http://sethgodin.typepad.com

 

Random advertising is so passe the new hotness is the stores will simply tracking what you buy and sending you targeted ads or printing them out at the register based upon where you may be in your life (Note this is a long article, but is very worthwhile to read) http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=magazine

The crux of the story is that the statistician guys at Target were able to pinpoint when women were pregnant based upon a change in their buying habits. If they started buying certain items and stopped buying others then there was a greater chance of them being pregnant. They then started sending out flyers with certain deals and coupons to these people, while mixing in other offers for non-related products so it didn't seem as obvious that were being targeted. It seems being pregnant is one of the big times people make changes in buying habits, so retailers want to make them be more in the habit of shopping at their respective stores. Obviously they didn't release any data on how this worked, but from what was shown in the article Target has had a nice run-up in recent times. It's worth reading the article if just for the pissed off father whose daughter started getting these kinds of coupons.

I recently made a big move myself to a new town and I had to buy a bunch of the staples for living and Target was the closet store to carry basically everything I needed. I bought things in waves and I noticed during my second wave of buying I received a $5 off coupon if I spent over $50 dollars on my next visit. I thought at first this was just because I had spent so much money that Target wanted to keep me coming in and spending money, but after I read the article I figured since I was buying so many obvious products that showed I had recently moved that Target wanted to make sure that I got in the habit of coming to their store, which I would of anyway since they are very close and have the majority of the things I buy. In saying that I have received some perplexing coupons at the checkout from time to time. It would usually just be one coupon that I watched being printed out, so I knew it wasn't the previous customer's, and I would have no idea why I was given this coupon since it had nothing to do with present or past buying habits, so the system isn't perfect (If they were masking something else they thought I was susceptible to then it wouldn't be printed by itself).

The obvious way to keep from being tracked is to buy everything in cash, but that just isn't practical for most people anymore, so this is the tradeoff that is made. In my bit of free advertising I bought the book written by the author of the article "The Power of Habit" and it is very good and I highly recommend it. It is about more than just about advertising.

 

I had a marketing lecturer in university who was advocating a minor in psych if you were planning to major in marketing, who described marketing and advertising in general as the worlds largest experimental psychology laboratory.

That description has really stuck with me. Fundamentally - that's how most commercial marketing and advertising feels to me. Like a psychology experiment where I'm part of the test population.

Sometimes those experiements are conducted in an ethical fashion, based on good and ethical ideas. I consent to advertising when I watch television or browse advertising funded websites. I don't mind a lot of marketing tactics. Even the nappies and beer placement thing at walmart which I think is kind of dubious, isn't exactly unethical.

I fucking HATE marketing aimed at vulnerable people, like putting candy at kids eye level at a grocery store check out? Fuck you. You're exploiting a child's naivete and a parents embarrassment/stress/general fatigue to force a sale, of something that's fucking bad for kids no less. Fuck off. It's like dropping boulders on the highway and telling people who complain that they could always drive around.

I hate advertising in content I paid for. Fuck off. If you want to advertise to me, I get the content for free or at least cheaply. On a fucking DVD or Blue Ray? Go fuck yourself.

I hate advertising in public spaces. In the middle of a well known public space near my house, in the middle of a fucking walk way - some company put up a sign that you just can't avoid. You HAVE to look at it to navigate around it. It fucked up the traffic flow and made life a pain in the ass for people in wheel chairs or parents with prams. And it's not a commercial space - it's fucking public property. I was delighted when someone smashed it up.

I LOATHE advertising targeted at people's insecurities. Really, you want to advertise medication or acne cures or weight loss programs? Here's how you should advertise it. 'Use it the way we tell you too, and it'll fucking work or your money back. Less side effects than our competitors.' Implicit or explicit indications of things that won't happen or are utterly unrelated to your product (Two weeks with our fuck you fatty gimmick, and you'll not only be thin, you'll have great skin, a hot girlfriend, a well trained dog and a private beach to run on!) are fucked up.

I recognize that there are good and ethical advertisers out there who don't suck. But I suspect you could put every one of them in the world in a single office, while the douchebags and jerks need a fucking small south american nation to house their cocaine and shoe collections.

 

Advertising depresses me, when I stop to think about it. I read once that 'advertising is the science of instilling dissatisfaction', and I think that's accurate. Sure, the intention is to sell more of a particular product, but the collateral damage is making a whole lot of people unhappy with various aspects of their lives. Not exactly the noblest of goals.
I can't prove any of my next points because I'm not aware of any empirical data, but how many of the people who acquired mortgages they couldn't afford in 2005 - 2008 did so because of advertising? And how much has advertising contributed to the $770+billion that Americans have racked up in credit card debt? The counter argument to this is of course that people are ultimately responsible for their own choices. That's true, but that doesn't mean it's a morally upright thing to do to encourage them to make bad ones.

That said, I don't think the problem is advertising as such. The problem is that most of us have very limited critical literacy skills. If people were better at deconstructing the messages in advertising, the effectiveness of advertising would drop, and we would either see less advertising, better products, or reduced spending. Or maybe just better ads.

Spoilered for conspiracy theory.

Spoiler

Some days I think about the level of advertising required to become president of the USA, versus the critical literacy of the general populace, and assume that a dystopian future is not far around the corner. (If we're not there already. How many of my electronic gadgets were manufactured in sweatshops by some half-mythical underclass I never see or think about?) In my more cynical moments, I think that almost no-one in any position of power has any desire to see an engaged, critical populace. Politicians sure as hell don't, and who controls funding and curricula for schools? It's far better that everyone just accept that the status quo is pre-ordained.

 

Let me throw in my two cents about the general opinion here that advertising is advanced psychological warfare, using CIA like subliminal mind-games and manipulating you based on advanced evolutionary psychology and cognitive science that would put Stanford's behavioral science lab to shame.

Sure, that is theoretically possible in the future. But currently, it's not even close. It's crap. It's utter crap.

The average American is a fuckin' idiot. A complete fucking drooling idiot. Think about George Carlin: "Think of how stupid the average person is -- and then realize that half of them are stupider than that!"

Everyone knows the consumer is stupid. What you are missing is that the people managing the marketing and the advertising businesses - in all honesty most businesses - are also stupider than shit.

How many Americans believe in ghosts, angels, four-leaf clovers, and other superstitions? Guess what: the advertising industry is also chalk full of superstitions and misinformation. You think that industry is run on sound scientific principles and hard empirical studies? Maybe they conduct a sprinkling of sub-par studies once in a blue moon; biased, non-rigorous studies that support their already foregone conclusions.

Here's my background:

1. Grandfather worked in advertising + I've talked to advertising professors who have retired/ worked for 30 years.

2. One major in psychology.

3. Currently work for one of the largest companies in the United States (not advertising).

Why did I mention #3?

To bring up my next point: I work for a leviathan corporation. It is not the paragon of virtue and business practices. It's actually a model of laughable inefficiency, bad practices, painful bureaucracy, creativity stifling, and just plain old stupidity. It's stock is currently plummeting, and they've made - from a numbers standpoint - repeated mistakes in rebranding and "new logos" that have caused 20% drops in sales.

My point is, to think that businesses have their shit together just because - like myself- based on TV shows and the Imperial Empire from Star Wars -- you think that Leviathan corporations are so evil and devious and are filled with super geniuses at the top - that they run smoother than the US military is just plain fiction.

Many are filled with fallible humans, like all others. The US especially is renowned for trusting superstition and tradition over scientific or empirical evidence - or just simple logic.


For the guy who said psychology is relevant to advertising - it is. However, the current industry could give two shits. Most Americans have no understanding of psychology whatsoever, and often confuse pseudoscience and the latest issue of Cosmo as legitimate scholarly material in psychology.

For instance, we just had a thread here about Tucker Max turning to psychoanalysis.

I have not studied modern psychoanalysis in depth at all, but from my psychology major from a top 20 national university, it was posited by most the entire field that while Freud was an amazing pioneer and champion in the field of psychology - most of his theories are now regarded as pure bullshit. Neuroses are not really the product of any infantile sexual desires. The different stages or oral, genital, and anal fixation? Please. The id, ego, and super-ego don't carry much weight either. This is my point: most people don't understand the difference between empirically based modern psychology, and the pseudo science of yore or the latest "science" from your relationship expert best friend, which is worth fuck-all to science.

Armchair psychologists that know nothing of psychology are unfortunately rampant. Everyone likes to speculate about why people behave this way or what people respond to emotionally or yadda yadda, and I'm guessing this is especially rampant in the fucking marketing department where everyone is jocking to climb the ladder and no one can be fucked to conduct a time-consuming and expensive scientific study that may not even reveal that much. I'm not saying a wise person's testimony on human behavior is worthless. It very well may be accurate and extremely insightful. Sadly there is no way of proving this outside of some sort of empirical set-up.

If we had armchair biologist or armchair engineers or armchair computer scientists you guys might understand more. I could just start pontificating on what I might imagine or dream engineering is about.

Anyway, I've talked to a few seasoned advertising professionals, and the main complain that they had is this: the field is bullshit and not scientifically run.

Most 'creatives' in the industry care more about making "art" or "something funny" or the next hip thing than simply moving product. They want to win industry awards for "best creative advertisement" --- you don't win awards by making the next boring, but highly effective ad, that moves product. Ego stands in the way.

This is why my company make quite a few flubs in redesigning it's logo. Graphic designers had too much ego involved - instead of maintaining traces of the original brand -- they liked doing completely different things, because they didn't want to make a minor 'tweak' and not seem like they fully owned it. They didn't want to build on a past designer's work. No, god forbid, they shit on it and 'did their own thing.' Like George Lucas making Episode One, this had dire consequences.

Another seasoned advertiser told me they did a test with TiVo to determine the ads the user *didn't* fast forward through. Want to know the number one type of ads? Bowflex and exercise equipment-like informericals. Boring infomerical like ads that just rattled of specifications and details of the product.

Artsy-fartsy creatives though have too much ego and creative talent though to make a simple, but EFFECTIVE ad like that. No, it has to be 'clever' and 'funny' and not only do most ads lack in that department (they fucking suck) -- but they don't move product either.

Can anyone here even tell me what the advertisement with Jerry Seinfeld and Leno in squirrel suit that they play 12 times a day is even for? I didn't know what it was even selling the first 10 times I watched it.

TL;DR People are fucking stupid.

 

I have to admit, this is what I do. Instead of ISM (In-Store Marketing) and design, I'm on the back end running the numbers and measuring the effectiveness.

Our candy aisles are floor to ceiling, so it's at the right height for everybody - but we do have a special Back-To-School floorplan that does have lowered display cases for notebooks, backpacks, calculators, and what have you. This isn't a bad thing; if you're in that area of the store, we're making it easier for the kid to pick out what they like so that mom/dad can finish shopping and get on with their lives.

I was incredibly insecure, and had horrific acne as a teenager. I also lived out in the country and had no cable television, satellite TV, or internet (other than the school library) until I was almost 18. My parents weren't the most sympathetic about bringing me in to see a dermatologist, so the commercial for Proactiv was a life saver. So what that it doesn't fit into your narrow view of what advertising *should* be (because it had celebrity endorsements, long-winded explanations and embellishments, etc)? It increased awareness in a future customer, and the purchase improved my quality of life.

Your professor was right: all of these marketing tactics and initiatives are very immature, and are still barely scratching the surface of how much can be done to drive trips and baskets. They'll keep evolving, and if it turns out that advertisements which fit the description of "Use it the way we tell you too, and it'll fucking work or your money back. Less side effects than our competitors." will drive sales, then it's what will be used. If you aren't going to buy the product, then why would you expect someone to tailor the marketing to your tastes? We deserve the advertising that we have.

 

Your post was great except for 50 things that were blatantly incorrect, too busy to get into them but here are the highlights.

Back in the day, ad agency people went by gut and feelings. Companies went with these as their agencies went. Now everything is measured, every penny is counted, and NOTHING gets done without a fuckton of research. Hence why you're getting harassed in the movie theatre, people offering 3-4 dollars for you to take a 5 minute survey now. There is a LOT of research. Fourth time repeating this.

Also, there are a ton of awards for effective advertising. They're called The Effies. Creatives do care about this, because agencies love them more than anything else, and they get PAID. Also, I don't know what city you're in and what crack agencies your contacts are from but are there shitty people in every field? Yes. Doesn't mean the entire field is complete crap.

Full blown psychology isn't the baseline for all advertising research. But there is a ton of surveys, qualitative and quantitative done to get data, which makes for effective advertising. Yes some of it gets distilled incorrectly, then handed off to artsy fartsy creatives, but most of the time, shit comes out and works.

Oh and the fact your company has had 50 logo changes is more indicative of your company's internal marketing department being fuck-ups. Not the advertisers.

 

Eh, you may be right that advertising is increasingly getting quantitative, but it's still in its infancy, and the numbers aren't seen as gospel - more of a suggestion at best.

Of course there is market research and surveys and number crunching - however I'm still skeptical concerning the statistical processes being conducted in a big advertising firm. Summaries, data, and power-points signifying nothing seem to be the new currency these days. I don't have my finger on the pulse of the industry - like I said all I know is from people who recently retired from it.

However, if you do have your finger on the pulse you might know that the days of the big ad agency are declining as major companies increasingly go in-house. I'm still critical of the quality of ads being churned out.

And yes, I know advertising is a only one component of marketing, and often outsourced or handled by a different department in-house.

Nonetheless, still, all I see is mediocrity. Unfunny ads, stupid-ass ads, ads that neither make you remember or know what they are advertising (what's the product?) or even give a basic value statement about the product.

That's what I learned in my advertising courses -- the value proposition right? Make the commercial say at least one major thing about your product? What did the commercial with Seinfeld and Leno say about that product? Trick question: It did not assert ANYTHING about the product or why it surpasses competitors, other than "Jerry wants one." True, SuperBowl commercials were meant to be more "this is the best we can do" show-cases, but goddamn they are awful. All of them were/ are awful - and these were the best?

The people I talked to both worked at Olgilvy and Mather. One is still in the game and the other recently retired. I don't know; although quant is certainly done at many places, I'd say the majority of operations are account managers scrambling for sales and creatives trying to hit deadlines and come up with something funny. Scientific rigor --- or studies testing the effectiveness of ads --- are an afterthought or ignored.

Why would an ad agency even want to test the effectiveness of its ads? Is that going to increase business? Showing a client a power-point stating that your ads actually work, and that they work WELL? Hell, it's already assumed that a slick ad is going to get sales by the buffoon client, so why waste the money on a study that will prove it? (or worse, prove that your ad was shit and ineffective).

A study testing the effectiveness of an advertisement, especially at a Leviathan corporation --- would be extraordinarily difficult to test the effectiveness for. It would be extraordinarily expensive, time-consuming, and take a ton of intellectual planning and prowess.

Take Gatorade, for instance. Their ads have evolved a lot of the years --- not just one ad, but an entire campaign, campaigning a multitude of different products on different channels and mediums --- involved in documentaries, etc. They have also simultaneously changed their products and product line in tandem with marketing. Other products - like drinks and food -- swing wildly depending on geography, climate, time of year, the economy, etc.

Testing the effectiveness of one ad would be very hard and very expensive. When's the last time you took a survey concerning your opinion of any advertisement? Are self-reporting measures even accurate when considering if you've ever seen an ad, or whether that influenced your buying choice, and by how much?


Compare that with the crop of utter shit ads I see day in and day out, and there's no way in fucking hell any of those were well-thought out.

The only thing advertising currently has right is that 1. Just seeing an ad no matter how shitty at least makes you aware of the brand or product (hopefully) and 2. The guy who uses this product is fucking awesome and a cool dude who gets laid all the fucking time, and you need to self-brand (as a geek, athlete, suave guy, whatever) so you should buy this fucking product to help solidify your identity and what other people think of you.

That's what they discovered so far and it hasn't evolved much from there.

 

I'll just say one more thing, briefly.

Most companies barely even understand social media right now. A dime-a-dozen facebook page or twitter page with constant updates saying "Buy the new XYZ product at $XX.99! Mmmm! Product slogan!" is worth fuck all, and at least at my company the training on social media amounts to "This is the World Wide Web. Be careful what you post on the amazing World Wide Web, as it can potentially be accessed, via dialup or ISP, around the World! Stick to the Internet Explorer Browser, as Google and Yahoo can be buggy by comparison."

When the amount of idiocy is jaw-droppingly staggering, somehow, the fact that they might have "secret statistical analysis studies" concerning their use of social media, or advertising in general, seems dubious at best.

Are people conducting legitimate studies at other places? Yes.

Are they in the uber-small minority? Yes.

Otherwise, the majority of "social media gurus" at others places are just goddamn hucksters. They come in, provide bullshit consulting and expertise, making a facebook page, collect 6 figures, and then a month later are gone before you realize that sales did not increase one iota.

Can social media increase sales? Well of course.

However, it seems that all this mystical data and analyses and science and credentials a lot of these social media gurus claim to have, seem to vanish the second one asks for them. All these 'studies' that have rock-solid conclusions seem to be allergic to the light of day. It's just another buzz-word.

"Trust me on this, the Earth is flat."

"It is?"

"Oh yeah, there's been numerous quantitative studies showing the Earth is flat, all the experts agree. They just did a big spread in Geographical Science magazine."

"Can I see these studies and look over their methods?"

"They seem to have mystically disappeared."

 

I do it all the time (at a Fortune 30), and while the numbers aren't gospel - the results are statistically significant. Predictive Technologies (APT) are doing some really cool things these days.

There is a continuum with everything we all do: yes we can take longer to produce a more refined and perfect outcome, but sometimes the incremental cost doesn't justify the effort. You do it all the time in your own life, with things as mundane as brushing your teeth; you don't incrementally measure how much your quality of life will increase with an additional 15 seconds of brushing per day because the answer really doesn't matter and won't impact anything. Some products are treated the same way, and therefore have almost no time and energy invested into marketing them.

Another thing to think about when judging these marketing attempts: are you even the person they were intended for? Even though you may think that the ad is total crap, if the intended audience receives it and sales go up = success!

Not every meal you eat needs to be a work of art in order sustain your body; and not every advertisement needs to be witty, artistic, approachable, and pleasing in order to drive a sale.

 

I'm at ad agency now, downtown Chicago, Michigan Ave, out my window I see the Chicago River and Navy Pier. I focused my college career into advertising (except my minor in Ingrilsh), and I have a Masters in it. I'm saying that to say you are off base with 70% of your statements.

The Acura NSX Ad with Seinfeld and Leno is called Branding. You like these two guys, we associate with these guys, these two guys like us, therefore you like us. That's what every single celebrity appearance is about.

A lot of CPG companies have social media locked down. Then again, major companies and social media aren't supposed to mix. One is about people. You obviously don't know anything about SocialMedia.org and all the companies that are part of that. McDonald's, Dell, Microsoft, Apple, Sony, all of them kill at social media.

They conduct research all the time, and also do post research, not a lot but some. If your contacts come from Ogilvy and Mather, they should know Maureen Shirreff, the lady who created the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty. They conducted a 6000 person survey across 6 different countries, with a hypothesis from a media image PhD professor. They just don't do it for that one account. Every major company requires research from their ad agency. That's what 1/4th of the agency, the Account Planning department does, research. You can't tell me a fourth of the agency sits there and spins their chairs. They also take third party research: Experion Simmons, Nielson, Scarborough, and many more.

The Gatorade and Nike are constantly churning out ads because they have their target market nailed and cornered. They know how to message and they know it works. Same with Nike.

I'm not saying there isn't bad advertising, but there is good in bad in everything. Just because you don't like half the ads, doesn't mean they're bad. You could not be the target demo for 50-75% of them. You could just be entirely anti-advertising.

Do you have a favorite ad? Or a favorite ad campaign that resonated with you?

 

Or a favorite product? Why do you like that product? How is that product advertised - usually through a format that you encounter? What kind of message does that ad convey? Are they selling an image, or a way of life? How dissimilar are your personal values with what is portrayed in the ads, or by the product?

If you're an upper middle class white girl that loves Sprite but hates basketball, then you might have a leg to stand on with your disregard for the efficacy of marketing. Maybe.

 

I'm all for graffiti on "public" ad space. In some parts of the country the bombardment is just... just beyond imaginable. I think throwing a punch back in the faces of advertising and making mockery of just shit ad-product is a good thing.

However I have no personal disdain for advertising. Nor do I think I'm being brainwashed on a daily basis to "drive X, drink Y, fuck Z, and go to such-n-such beach because look at all those hot bitches drinking Y!!!"

My thought process when presented with an ad is to assume that it is for something that is unhealthy and unnecessary. Therefore I rarely pay any attention at all.

 

Guy Fawkes, you're not the only one. Adbusters culturejamming is pretty cool stuff. Because they target the right stuff.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.adbusters.org/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.adbusters.org/</a>

Check it out there.

 

I am gobsmacked by this thread. Seriously.

The majority of this board seems to fall in line squarely behind an economically conservative point of view. Every time something regarding anything approaching social welfare comes up, I can practically see the hands clutching around wallets. "I made this fucking money, don't take it to give to some welfare queen in an Escalade!"

And then we come to advertising. "Oh government, please enlarge and regulate and spend my tax dollars cracking down on these evil corporations!"

You want a free market? You get advertising. You want heavy regulation of an entire industry? Welcome to big government. You can't have it both ways, folks.