Advertising

One major problem with advertising is that there is so much of it, we just tune out the majority as meaningless noise. When we tune it out, the companies who are doing the advertising have to yell louder and more outrageous things to make the ads successful. Eventually, you have to advertise things that are untrue (at least in part) to justify the ad itself.

The noise thing is an issue as well because we start to lose sight of how we feel when we are not being sold something.

Remember kids, in most of the US there is no personal finance class, nor is there an intro to marketing that tells everyone how advertising works. That's not a fucking accident, and it needs to get fixed at a basic level. Otherwise, you will continue to have people who believe that a .01 Iphone is a perfectly legitimate business model and a $8/hour job can pay for a $350,000 house. You will also have people abandoning car payments and credit cards if for no other reason than "Fuck 'em, they got enough money." because they couldn't afford the shit they were signing up for, but were so oversold they jumped at the chance.

I'm not against advertising, but I am against manipulating people who are ill-equipped to deal with it (like the Payday Loan scams that are everywhere in the South) and I am for letting people opt out of being advertised to in public space, in the mail, on their phone, and via the information you glean from your customers when you make a sale. It's not the company's right to advertise, it's your right to go to a fucking park without Coke's dick shoved in your eye.

Also, it's reached the point that entire mediums are being eliminated. I don't believe even the NEWS on television anymore, much less any ads I see on tv, I just assume what they are selling is bullshit.

 

Depends on what you're selling, how much responsibility you have for the product and if what you're selling fucks someone's life over based on them being misinformed.

Diet soda? Probably not much.
Detergent? Who gives a fuck?

Financial products? Probably a lot. Because when that product is oversold to people who don't get it, the rest of society foots the bill via higher payments, lower access to credit and more predatory lending practices. Not to mention that whole "nearly implode world economy" thing in 2008. There is no one size fits all, but allowing a company to advertise a 400% loan without ever saying the word "interest" in between Springer episodes is a bit more socially detrimental than a flashy ad filled with pizza and breadsticks.

Prescription drugs? Again, probably a lot, for many of the same reasons. It's bizarre to me that I should "tell my doctor about" some new prescription, but at least they say that much and then clearly mention the side effects. This shit needs to be understood by and explained to the customer by an impartial professional, because if not, the hospitals are choked with people overdosing on Enzyte. That's what I mean: a few details in the ad or a few facts they must adhere to that protect the dumbest of us from being misled by the wheat fields and Enya music.

In terms of enforcement, I defer to Scootah's guideline of "If a panel of reasonable ten-year olds can determine..."

 

Ok, so we're blaming the subprime mortgage crisis on advertising and not, I don't know, maybe the massive fucking fraud that took place behind the scenes that got those bad loans approved in the first place?

I just want to make sure I'm on the same page as you guys.

 

As much as I would like to agree with you in principle, I have a hard time supporting the reality of your proposition. A convincing argument could be made that the entire presidential race and all of the associated advertisements and marketing are selling something that will fuck over quite a few people's lives exactly because they are inadequately informed.

I am completely in favor of teaching people critical thinking skills during their formative years - but it's too late for that now. Instead, wouldn't this be an opportunity for marketing to help correct the situation? If the social cost is indeed high enough to justify regulation spending, couldn't that money instead be spent on corrective and factual advertisements? We have already agreed on the reach and effectiveness of marketing, so a counterpoint will be all that's required.

 

Yes, and? Is that not wrong?

 

It's a different kind of wrong. If you believe the bad (read: ill-informed) political ads, you cast a bad (ill-informed) vote. If you believe the bad mortgage ads, you lose your house. Way lower stakes for the individual.

 

Morally, I'm not sure - I never bothered with psychology or philosophy very much. I can agree that both 'wrongs' have a cost associated with them, and to crack this nut we need to find the balance where the personal and societal liability are balanced. Another problem is that the balance point may not provide the least overall cost; it very well could be that the lowest total cost to the system results in a few idiots getting completely taken advantage of and vigorously rogered by the more predatory businesses among us.

 

As we saw in 2008, mortgage ads have high societal AND personal liability--thousands lose their homes and banks implode. Political ads use similar tactics (obfuscation, appeal to emotion, etc.) as the mortgage ads, which makes them slimy perhaps, but towards an (arguably) different end, depending on why you think people run for office. I would say, because I think people are generally good, that political ads work on an "ends-justifying-means" m.o--maybe we're smudging facts and distorting truth a little bit now, but our guy is the best for the job, and once we get him in office he can do a better job than the guy we're making fun of. Mortgage ads were just thinking "let's trick these suckers so we can make a shitload of money off them."

Some people, however, would say that politics is a business, and political ads are also thinking "let's trick these suckers so we make money for us and our friends," in which case they're virtually indistinguishable from mortgage ads in any moral sense.

 

I had to quote this again because I think you guys got lost. Now we're talking political ads and defending stupid people. I never will, never plan to, and won't protect stupid people. Everyone has Google, Bing, Yahoo or even Baidu, fuck that noise.

There is always a group of people in circumstances where they are going to sell their gold, get cash fast loans, or do whatever else.

Pharma products are always going to say "Ask your doctor" and most doctors say "Fuck that shit" or "Hey that works." Because they get hit and sold too WAY before we see the commercial.

 

I think this is a false division of 'blame' or 'accountability' or whatever. Regular people (or 'stupid people') played a significant role in the housing crisis by funding all of the behind-the-scenes fraud. In order for loans to get approved people need to ask for them. And the reason the people asked for them is that they thought they were a good idea. And they thought they were a good idea because the ads presented them as a good idea ('ads' in several dimensions--sales pitches, billboards, commercials, whatever). Advertising has a hand in it.

Purely hypothetical: can't you see a world in which enough lobbying makes things like arthritis meds or other commonly-prescribed meds that won't get you fucked up available over the counter? What happens if there is no medical professional standing between you and Lipitor? Is advertising still off the hook? Again, I'm not saying this is going to happen, I'm just interested in the consequences.

 

I don't get this attitude. I'm not suggesting there's anything inherently wrong with it, but either we are in this together or we are not. I consider the fact that I was born and brought up in a place where finances were understood, stable and people didn't need to visit a pawn shop to keep the lights on a cosmic accident.

If you have the time, ability and critical thinking skills to research every thing you buy and do, great! Good for you for not making ill-informed decisions. But have the perspective to know that a lot of people simply don't or can't, and their decisions will be based more off of the ads they watch. Since that's the case, if they are misinformed about things that are important (financial products, drugs, lawyers advertising injury settlements) the companies should have a little more responsibility for those ads than ads that are not important at all (detergent and diapers).

Maybe I'm equating poor with stupid because I don't watch enough of the Kardashians.

 

Gotta be careful here, because despite our owns claims to being well informed enough to avoid the pitfalls of many of these advertisements - it doesn't make us any more immune to Dunning-Kruger.

What if YOU get taken advantage of based on an advertisement? I don't care about society anymore - just how you would allocate the blame: you, or the company that sold you an inferior/misrepresented/inappropriately-priced product?

 

What does "inappropriately priced" even mean?

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go picket Dominos, BECAUSE THEY PROMISED DELICIOUSNESS.

 

Ok, just to break down another ad:



The transcript of the ad is as follows:

Statement of fact.

Complete falsehood

Complete falsehood

No one does, falsely implies others do.

Utterly trivial truth presented as relevant.

So basically in a thirty second spot they've given you one fact without context and bald faced lied to you three times, and that's just in the voiceover, not even getting into the subtler psychology of the imagery.

 

The blame would sit on me. Why? Because I'm smart and I've had a solid education in critical thinking. I can quote McLuhan and other communication theorists at you all day. If I make bad decisions based on advertising (and I have and probably will again), I deserve everything I get.

A quite lovely colleague of mine hasn't had the same advantages. She didn't go to Uni, she had a couple of kids, and now she works a moderately low level job. She's not dumb by any means, but she also has no grounding in critical thinking. She accepts things uncritically - just like most of the populace. (See: email forwards.) Now: I'm not saying advertisers shouldn't be able to market to her. However, there is a power differential at work here. Advertisers can draw on a wide body of research to know exactly which emotional buttons to press to elicit a desired response. She's never been taught a method to identify this and resist it. Since I acknowledge that you cannot stop the advertisers, the only way to make it a more 'fair' fight, if you will, is to educate her about advertising tactics.

Also, if she buys something she can't afford, it is her fault. I'm not absolving her of personal responsibility. I just think that the companies attempting to emotionally manipulate her into buying shit aren't doing society any favours.

The consensus in this thread is that people who make bad decisions should bear the brunt of those decisions. I wholeheartedly agree. However, those bad decisions don't effect the decision makers in isolation. Not long ago a political figure here in my country orchestrated a scare campaign about the fact we are in danger of being "swamped by <minority>" (actual quote, despite the fact that we have one of the lowest refugee intakes per capita / GDP in the world) , and people with no critical thinking abilities believed her and voted for her. Suddenly, their bad decisions affect me, everyone in my country, and people on other continents. Sure, we get the leaders we deserve, but Jesus Christ. If you don't give people the tools to realize when they're being sold, everyone suffers, not just the people making bad decisions.

 

I have to admit, I'm a little shocked that, 8 pages in to a discussion about the ethics of advertising, there has been no mention of the hand advertising has in influencing and controlling social dialogue.

The notion that companies should be held to the same ethical standard as individuals when it comes to "responsibility for the shit they say, and messages espoused" is patently ridiculous; an individual can't afford to plaster billboards across a country, nor can they afford a slew of television commercials during prime time. Advertisers are more responsible for the shit they say because they, by dint of the social power corporations have in expressing their message, have an incredible deal of influence over the very context of our societal narratives.

As such, advertisers shouldn't have the ability to claim "I'm just using the tropes of the current social narrative to effectively communicate this message for my client" because, by virtue of the incredible amount of exposure your message gets, you are *creating* the the social narrative and symbols through which people communicate.

Take, for example, the ridiculous sexism in almost all advertising, ever. Sure, any individual advertiser can claim "I'm just using the imagery of a half-naked women because a) sex sells, and b) I want people to associate this makeup/jewelry/car/product with beauty and youth", but the reality is that you have an ethical responsibility for the shit that you say, and the amount of control "advertising" as a whole has over the imagery we use to express ourselves, and through which we reason, is incredible, and, as such, advertisers doing this are morally culpable for engendering sexism. (This is a bad thing, by the way.)

That's just an example, but it's the kind of thing that can be said of a million tropes advertising exploits to communicate its "message" through the language and imagery of the status quo. When you have large amounts of of exposure and your imagery is unavoidable to a large part of the populace, since you can impose yourself into the public space, you have to take more responsibility of your message. It's kind of silly to have a discussion about what is acceptable advertising and what isn't without acknowledging this, IMO, since it puts strong constraints on what is "reasonable expression" for advertisers.

 

I check out of any argument anytime someone says "patently false."

Also, according to Aetius, hyperbole is a crime up there with pedophilia and treason. And actually people want to limit the iPhone AND all other smartphone users by capping/throttling usage (except Sprint). So those claims aren't false. Also, Steve Jobs will kill you in his sleep tonight by saying his iPhone has a limit. The iPhone will never die, it is the basis for Skynet.

 

It seems naive to me to think this is a problem that can be solved through education. Next up, the war on drugs. I see people with college degrees spending just as recklessly and frivolously as people who couldn't earn a GED. The financial and mortage industries are special cases. Not only because those ads are deceptive with a particular intention, but because you look at companies like these two whose consultants and sales reps don't know what they're selling, don't know what top management is thinking, and work in a corporate culture that dodges questions with vague promises, and up sells because of commission. The people who sign off on unrealistic mortgages and throw money into financial quagmires aren't just doing it because of advertising, it's because they're giving so called advisers a level trust and credibility when they're better off crunching the numbers themselves or investing elsewhere. You can't fix this shit with education and you can't talk people into being smart with their money.

Think about how easy it is, just from a mathematical standpoint to determine why someone who makes $15 an hour shouldn't be buying a 400k house. Then you see the limits education has here. People won't spend logically, and inevitably it's the same problem when they spend everywhere.