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Ok. So the idea for this thread has come up in a lot of other ones that I post in. Several goons have expressed interest in the idea and I have a huge loving hate boner for commercials that would put Bill Hicks to shame. So here goes. I'll do my best to get a halfway decent OP going - and no one is sponsoring me. I've worked in advertising as a graphic designer and illustrator. I HAD TO. To MAKE MONEY. So I'm not just raging out of my rear end in a top hat here. I've sold out. I started the RWM thread about 10 years ago and I think it's tangentially related to this giant bug I have up my rear end about commercials and what "communication" really means. I think commercials and advertising are almost the same as news. I hate, hate, HATE commercials and the way advertising drives our access to information and shapes our behavior and the way we think. At best, it's relatively clever and one of the few outlets for creative people to make a living but, at worst, it's more or less insidious brain poison. By design, the language of advertising is meant to deceive, seduce and tantalize. Created to make you feel a VOID that only "X" product can fill. It is a form of communication driven by deception, dishonesty, titillation and, at it's core, made specifically to LIE to you and rob you of your money or sell you an image. Think back maybe 60 years ago when smoking ads were ubiquitous. The loving Flintstones were hawking cigarettes. And ask yourself, why in world would anyone ever SMOKE unless they saw it in a commercial where someone "looked cool"? No one, and I mean NO ONE, ever smoked a cigarette for the first time went gently caress yes, this tastes incredible and is certainly for me! Right? RIGHT? That's one example. Commercials got people to smoke and PSA's got people to quit. Even someone like myself, who likes to think they're immune of the effects of this poo poo, really isn't. No one is. And it's loving weird. If I want to read a news story about BLM or a bunch of MAGA's committing an insurrection on Capitol Hill, I have to watch some bullshit about how I should by a Lexus I can't afford. It's a god damned arms race. No one likes this poo poo. No one likes spam, junk mail, ads on Youtube, unsolicited texts, or anything close to it so why does it DRIVE everything and why can't we accomplish anything without succumbing to it? It shapes how we watch and receive the news, listen to podcasts, poke around You Tube and always tells us...always...that we are just one product away from satisfaction or something that will make our lives easier or better. Yet no one I know feels...satisfied. Why do Coca Cola, Budweiser and McDonalds spend billions of dollars reminding us of lovely products that we're already aware of? Why do Medical insurance and drug companies tell us to "ask our doctor?" Shouldn't our doctors be telling US? Because it WORKS. I guess that's a good enough start even though I'm a little bit all over the place with it. Hopefully a few other other goons can weigh in and help me out a little.
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Jan 16, 2021 01:01
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http://tobacco.stanford.edu/tobacco_main/index.php A crazy amount of info about smoking campaigns including lots of fun old ads to search through. Its wild that after censorship laws in the UK that restricted what images and claims could be made in smoke ads, some of them got reduced to just a warning and nothing more. Those fuckers know that even the warning is enough to make you want a cigarette.  Oddly Coke and Pepsi are not going to be advertising during the superbowl this year. It looks like they ran out of money in coffers. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/15/coca-cola-and-pepsi-wont-be-advertising-namesake-sodas-during-the-super-bowl.html
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Jan 16, 2021 03:03
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I did IT work for an agency for five and a half years. Much of that was spent looking for other work, because goddamn agency work can be stressful. If you can hang a major award on your wall, you can be as toxic a personality as you want. We had an Emmy and more than a few Clios. It got bad sometimes. I have one insight about the industry I took away. At its highest level, advertising is the art of convincing large corporations to fund experimental short film. The ideal commercial is 29 seconds of entertainment, and a logo. It was truly eye opening to see how many shoots were set up as "4 days at a resort with my buddies, who I am paying obscene freelancer rates" (a top freelance editor who's tight with a senior creative director could bill $20k/hr in 2005). We produced a lot of actual art in those five years, and the creatives were legitimately trying to work in positive messaging everywhere they could. It was still making commercials.
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Jan 16, 2021 04:07
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I don't remember where I saw this point made but it felt like a good point on the way advertisements work. I will never need a tampon. It's not a product I could ever have an opinion of. But if I am asked to buy some for someone without a specific detail what exactly to get what I get will be a brand like tampax or kotex. And it's not even because the information from those ads would have swayed me. It's that the ads gave me a list of choices that is "normal". It would feel weird coming back with a bunch of Rael brand tampons or something. Because it's a brand I know nothing about, when actually I know nothing about any brand. But advertising works even for products I couldn't use and don't know about, because it makes the advertised choices seem like the default, instead of being a thing that really hypes me up on a feature or something.
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Jan 16, 2021 04:28
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BiggerBoat posted:I've worked in advertising as a graphic designer and illustrator. I HAD TO. To MAKE MONEY. So I'm not just raging out of my rear end in a top hat here. 
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Jan 16, 2021 04:39
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i think the moment that advertising struck me as deeply evil, and not annoying, was about five or six years ago while randomly browsing the net. i got a video from some pasta brand talking about the fast and draining pace of modern life, and the need to find things that fit your demanding lifestyle. like spaghetti noodles pre-cut to half length to fit your one person pot, and fit your lack of time and energy as someone who has been habitually breaking my spaghetti noodles in half as a matter of course for literal decades previous to this ad, i had an instant and blinding realization that this ad was trying to subtly convince me that i was utterly helpless, that i was so defeated by life that i didn't have the wherewithal to snap dried pasta. and that this sabotage was being done in the pursuit of creating a market segment that would pay a premium of several cents on a new line of products in order to slightly goose quarterly profits and that a vast array of powerful societal forces had been doing this to me my entire life. i don't know what to do about it, all i know is that to this day the whole thing shakes me to my core
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Jan 16, 2021 06:20
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Just wated to chime in that my basic take-away from advertising as I know it is that if people are advertising something heavilly the product probably sucks rear end. Generally people are either trying to convince you you want something you dont actually have a real use for or trying to convince you their lovely throwaway product warrants a premium price. I find that advertising generally has the oposite intended effect on me, advertisements generally make me feel (probably rightfully so) that someone is trying to screw me over.
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Jan 16, 2021 07:58
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if you need to aggressively advertise your product to the point of saturation you don't actually have a compelling or worthwhile product
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Jan 16, 2021 08:37
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The_Fur posted:Just wated to chime in that my basic take-away from advertising as I know it is that if people are advertising something heavilly the product probably sucks rear end. Generally people are either trying to convince you you want something you dont actually have a real use for or trying to convince you their lovely throwaway product warrants a premium price. I find that advertising generally has the oposite intended effect on me, advertisements generally make me feel (probably rightfully so) that someone is trying to screw me over. I also associate being bombarded with ads with a low quality product. Here's the thing though... brands obviously know this and will make this insight part of their advertising strategy and either never advertise their brand to you through paid media (only earned and organic product recs, which they cultivate) or specifically tweak the programmed ad algorithms to only show you the ad once and then never again. That way when you read a product review or see in it in a store later, you're more likely to buy because you recall the product ("product awareness") but don't resent the brand for overwhelming you with spammy ads. Whether you hate or love ads, marketers have a plan for you. And with modern machine learning/AI and the ability to test hundreds of different ad serv campaigns against thousands of users for maximum efficacy, they typically know what works. All part of the "customer journey" through the modern "marketing funnel." And that's not even touching the words of branding/identity design and (especially) PR, which imho are both much more sinister and influential on our behavior than what we think of as traditional advertising. Green Nail Polish fucked around with this message at 08:48 on Jan 16, 2021 |
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Jan 16, 2021 08:38
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isn't there growing evidence that online advertising just does not loving work at all, and like the metrics are just complete bullshit to propagate a bubble
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Jan 16, 2021 11:09
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Verviticus posted:isn't there growing evidence that online advertising just does not loving work at all, and like the metrics are just complete bullshit to propagate a bubble Isn’t that where influencers (and micro-influencers) fit in?
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Jan 16, 2021 13:13
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Verviticus posted:isn't there growing evidence that online advertising just does not loving work at all, and like the metrics are just complete bullshit to propagate a bubble It sure isn't for lack of loving trying. Installing ad blockers and the way websites get around them is like an arms race. I keep forgetting how rife with ads Youtube is until I listen to it on my phone without UBlock. It's unlistenable. Another pet peeve is mine is fine print on TV ads and those sped up disclaimers you'll hear at the end of a radio ad. You can't come close to reading all that poo poo and it may as well just say "nothing in this commercial is true and this deal will not be honored in any way whatsoever. The sped up stuff may as well just say "everything you just heard is compete bullshit". Look at the end of a car or drug ad and try to make out those 10 lines of 3 point type at the bottom. Does anyone have solid data for how much lower the cost of prescription drugs or health insurance would be minus the marketing budget? And why are their billboards for hospitals on my highway? If I have a stroke, I don't think I'm going to be exercising brand loyalty at that moment.
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Jan 16, 2021 13:47
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Verviticus posted:isn't there growing evidence that online advertising just does not loving work at all, and like the metrics are just complete bullshit to propagate a bubble
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Jan 16, 2021 14:01
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Speaking of cigarettes, Bernays is likely one of the most influential people in this regard, and was one of the people to move advertising from just “our product good” to tying it in more with emotional fulfillment. Which is how he got women to start buying cigarettes.
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Jan 16, 2021 15:31
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So there’s a rumor I’ve heard about people studying sociology and persuasion/propaganda (which I think we can agree is just another branch of marketing) that the people that are really good at it or come up with really effective ways to persuade people have their research or they themselves are snapped up by intelligence agencies and never heard from again, kind of like really good cryptographers/mathematicians. Anyone seen/heard anything like that?
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Jan 16, 2021 16:20
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Marketing isn't all bad, though. Sometimes it helps me find a product that I want to buy. Example: earlier this week I bought some beer. The marketing e-mail from the brewery let me know that they had released a new beer in a style I like, so I bought that beer instead of buying some other beer. It's very tasty, I think I made a good choice, and I'm glad I was made aware of the availability of that choice. Did the ad manipulate me? In a sense, it did. I already wanted beer, and I had decided that I was going to buy some, and it influenced me to buy from that brewery instead of another brewery. Is there anything inherently wrong with that? I don't think there is; the brewery sold more beer, I got beer that I enjoyed, everyone's happy! That being said, it was very targeted and sent on an opt-in basis. The wider the audience for an ad, the more it has to rely on manipulation and inducing demand, which is much more ethically questionable. PT6A fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Jan 16, 2021 |
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Jan 16, 2021 17:05
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The single most important possible lesson to understand about advertising and propaganda is that IT WORKS. It works on me, it works on you. It can even specifically rely on people believing it doesn't work on them. It comes in through mental and emotional evolutionary back doors that humans have and constructs frameworks that we view the world through to guide us all in perceiving the world in specific ways even before we get to where we make choices. An atmosphere of advertising and propaganda frames the scope of ideas, responses, and beliefs that people will even have available to them before action is taken. Think about tooth paste. Think about it on your tooth brush right before you're about to use it. What image comes to mind? I bet we can all describe the exact same thing. Two little swooshes, one on each end, with a little wavy cylinder of toothpaste in the middle making that picture perfect blob of tooth paste ready to do it's sparkly-toothed goodness. Has nothing at all to do with a specific brand, it's just the concept of toothpaste that exists in the minds of an entire society. Because of advertising/propaganda that is the mental frame work that exists for hundreds of millions to billions of people. That's simply what toothpaste *is* to us. It's also an extremely cynical method of convincing an entire society to consume 2-3 times more tooth paste every time we use it than is necessary to actually accomplish the job of clean teeth so that the manufacturers make more profit via literal tons of wasted product. One pea-size blob on one end of the brush is enough. I bet we all make that straight line across the entire surface of the tooth brush though. Because that is the lens constructed for us through which we understand the concept of tooth paste by the advertising/propaganda campaign around it. Going forward now that we have specifically thought about the issue we can purposely choose not to do that in this one specific situation. Without being at this point though, we never even got the chance to choose because our evolved thought processes would get overwhelmed if we attempted to make these choices about every single thought, step, action or belief. There is only so much mental bandwidth available to the human mind at any given time so for everything else we have evolved these shortcuts and for every short cut our minds take, there's an advertising/propaganda looking to construct our frame work for their advantage. bird food bathtub fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Jan 16, 2021 |
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Jan 16, 2021 17:40
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bird food bathtub posted:The single most important possible lesson to understand about advertising and propaganda is that IT WORKS. It works on me, it works on you. It can even specifically rely on people believing it doesn't work on them. Agreed. Mind you, it can be used for good as well as ill. Imagine a really slick propaganda campaign to get people to wear a loving mask over their nose and mouth! We didn't even really try using typical advertising/propaganda techniques.
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Jan 16, 2021 22:22
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PT6A posted:Agreed. Mind you, it can be used for good as well as ill. Imagine a really slick propaganda campaign to get people to wear a loving mask over their nose and mouth! We didn't even really try using typical advertising/propaganda techniques. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ngNuuPpmj8
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Jan 16, 2021 23:10
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Holy hell, I thought that was a parody of a terrible ad. It strikes me like the "Truth" campaign. It didn't stop anyone from smoking, it reminded people of the existence of smoking every time it came on, and several times it actually mentioned brand names specifically! As a current ex-smoker (and not one of the ones who says "oh it's the best thing I ever did!"), I can say that I am already aware of every stop-smoking product in existence and every time an ad comes on about quitting smoking, all it does is make me think about smoking. These people need to hire people who are good at what they do, instead of cut-rate morons who think cameos from mediocre celebrities will make a difference. Look at some of the WW2 propaganda: it's colourful and engaging, with a clear message! That's what we need.
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Jan 16, 2021 23:20
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Pants Donkey posted:Speaking of cigarettes, Bernays is likely one of the most influential people in this regard, and was one of the people to move advertising from just “our product good” to tying it in more with emotional fulfillment. Which is how he got women to start buying cigarettes. Adam Curtis' Century of the Self does an interesting job of tracing the development from Freud to Bernays and so on. It's all on Youtube and worth watching if you've not seen it. That is, as long as you have an ad blocker, because as said above the number of ads (that I only notice when on a work computer) is crazy. And what's more, since I work with teenagers, I get to see how completely normalised ads are. When I was younger I would do anything to avoid watching them - an ad break was when I went to the toilet or, genuinely, I used to run up and down the room and try and beat my record for laps before the show started again. Recently, though, the kids I work with were really surprised when I muted the ads and chose to talk whilst they played out. They didn't understand that I found them intrusive and irritating.
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Jan 16, 2021 23:58
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I feel like there actually has been quite a bit of mask/covid advertising and really it's just hitting the limits of what advertising can do. It never is literal mind control, it's always about directing people to do things they sort of want to do. A lot of people do wear masks, but the people that still don't probably don't for reasons that would be hard to make an ad to counteract. If ad companies had a generation to work on it, then yeah, absolutely, but at some point even 100 million dollars and disney's decades of marketing expertise still can't make lone ranger a hit because people didn't want to see it. There probably isn't an ad they could run that would make non-mask people go "oh, I get it now"
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Jan 17, 2021 00:33
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One thing that crossed my mind today is how, for the most part, product driven advertising almost always accentuates the positive and pitches their poo poo in a way deigned to show you how kick rear end and awesome your life might be if you just buy some poo poo. But political advertising does precisely the opposite and the masterminds behind it almost always go out of their way to avoid pumping up a candidate as opposed to taking a giant poo poo on their opponent. Politicians get talked out of trying to "run a positive campaign" 9 times out of ten. Then you have RWM, talk radio and poo poo like that which, at its core, is nothing but a giant ad and the whole message revolves around fear, anger and negativity. I wonder why that is?
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Jan 17, 2021 02:10
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:I feel like there actually has been quite a bit of mask/covid advertising and really it's just hitting the limits of what advertising can do. It never is literal mind control, it's always about directing people to do things they sort of want to do. A lot of people do wear masks, but the people that still don't probably don't for reasons that would be hard to make an ad to counteract. Actually, wearing a mask is both incredibly easy and good for the wearer and others. The reason people are against it is because the other side is better at propaganda. These loving morons were convinced to storm the goddamn US capitol by a deranged orange ape, are you telling me the right messaging could not have convinced them to wear a bit of cloth over their face? "AMERICA IS DEPENDING ON YOU! WEAR A MASK" "BEING A REAL MAN MEANS PROTECTING THOSE YOU LOVE... WEAR A MASK!" It's so simple, but no one ever tried using the same (reasonably transparent) emotional appeals that the anti-mask kooks did because we figured that everyone would be swayed by logic and dry-rear end PSAs explaining how to wash your hands. I mean, I'm sure "LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS" and "WHEN YOU RIDE ALONE, YOU RIDE WITH HITLER!" didn't work perfectly either, but at least they gave it their all.
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Jan 17, 2021 02:15
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PT6A posted:Actually, wearing a mask is both incredibly easy and good for the wearer and others. The reason people are against it is because the other side is better at propaganda. Ads like you are describing do exist though.
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Jan 17, 2021 03:07
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Ads like you are describing do exist though. Not here they don't. But, could you cite some examples? All the PSAs here have been very dry and to-the-point, which is really not good propaganda technique. "COVID: It'll break your dick! You want a broken dick, you rear end in a top hat? No? Then wear a mask!" is bound to get more purchase than "please wash your hands for 20 seconds and think of the aged and infirm."
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Jan 17, 2021 04:05
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PT6A posted:
YOUR country needs YOU to fight this invisible enemy. If it were treated like fighting off a foreign invader, you would have gotten way more right wing support.
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Jan 17, 2021 04:30
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i really enjoyed this vice article about SUVs and the advertising that pushes them. i know its not unique to cars but they dont just push the cars as being good choices if you want a car they build an entire self image of who you want to be and push the car as a keystone part of it. the words of the people behind the advertising campaign really drove home to me that you can tell a lot about the people who buy products by looking at the image of consumers portrayed in its advertising and imagining the real life consumer as the opposite of that. if a commercial features big tough guys who are not scared of anything getting things done, the intended customer is not big tough guys who are not scared of anything who get things done, its people who suspect they are not big or tough, that they are ineffectual, and they fear many things. it seems obvious now but it really made me look at advertising, and people in giant cars, in a different way. the whole things very interesting and talks about how poo poo SUVs are in general but this is a couple of my favorite bits specifically talking about the marketing behind them: quote:Car companies managed this remarkable feat because they ran—and continue to run—quite possibly the most sophisticated marketing operations on the planet. They knew what people really wanted: to project an image of selfish superiority. And then they sold it to them at a markup. quote:This was a stark contrast with, say, minivan buyers. Those same studies found minivan drivers considered themselves parents of the neighborhood and not just their own children. They thought about how the design of the vehicle would enable them to do the things they did most frequently, such as transport lots of children or help senior citizens in and out of the vehicle. quote:Michael DiGiovanni, a GM market researcher who persuaded GM to buy Hummer and ended up running its Hummer operations, told Bradsher the $100,000 vehicle was marketed to “rugged individualists” who were “people who really seek out peer approval,” a delicious irony considering how much other road users loathe Hummers. Like their general SUV-owning brethren, few used the vehicle for actual off-roading.
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Jan 17, 2021 05:33
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One important thing to keep in mind is that more is advertised than just products. Any news you watch or listen to is its own advertising for a certain worldview and ideology, and the same goes for pretty much all media. The reason this is important is that once people think they know "what advertising and/or propaganda is" they become even more susceptible to advertising/propaganda that doesn't fit their mental image of what those things are. Many people, when they think of these things, have a mental image of something that is very tacky and bombastic, and don't realize that they just perceive things this way because that specific advertising probably isn't aimed at them (but other advertising is, and there's a good chance they don't even recognize it as such since it appeals to their own cultural sensibilities). BiggerBoat posted:No one, and I mean NO ONE, ever smoked a cigarette for the first time went gently caress yes, this tastes incredible and is certainly for me! Right? I actually was surprised at how enjoyable it was and deliberately avoided trying them (or vaping, which I imagine I'd probably like even more) again because of that, but that's probably because I had menthols (which I imagine are less harsh feeling due to the cool menthol sensation).
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Jan 17, 2021 05:54
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Verviticus posted:isn't there growing evidence that online advertising just does not loving work at all, and like the metrics are just complete bullshit to propagate a bubble You're talking about digital display (web banner) ads specifically? In that case, the answer is, yes. I can remember a few years ago when the information about click-through rates on those types of units came out. It was dismally low, it didn't take very long for the strategy on those kinds of units to change. Away went any kind of high concept creative that spanned the whole 15 seconds of the ad. Now it's the simplest way to get to our end frame message in 5 seconds or less and a lot of repetitive and reused creative. Rich media ads (the kind that used to expand from the top or side of the screen) have pretty much gone away entirely. I understand that these were the most annoying types of ads but it's kind of unfortunate because actually tried to do some cool interactive stuff a few years ago with that. I also work in the industry in case you couldn't tell.
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Jan 17, 2021 19:38
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BiggerBoat posted:One thing that crossed my mind today is how, for the most part, product driven advertising almost always accentuates the positive and pitches their poo poo in a way deigned to show you how kick rear end and awesome your life might be if you just buy some poo poo. A lot of this is speculation based on personal experience, but... A good political ad strategy should include both. If you're only running negatives on your opponent and not running any positives on your candidate then your opponent's negatives will shape the way voters view your candidate unchallenged. I got to watch this play out last cycle in a race that was close to me. (To be fair, there was also differences in spending levels and quality of messaging as well). Negative ads are basically a form of voter suppression, it almost doesn't matter what you say as long as you can make people feel bad enough about voting for that person that they stay home. BiggerBoat posted:Then you have RWM, talk radio and poo poo like that which, at its core, is nothing but a giant ad and the whole message revolves around fear, anger and negativity. I wonder why that is? I'd imagine it's so their advertisers have a better idea of who their viewer is. By targeting viewers who respond to certain political messages it makes it easier for advertisers to do the same.
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Jan 17, 2021 19:55
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eSporks posted:I feel like a competent admin would have directed war time rhetoric towards Covid. Is there evidence that would be the message that works, or just randomly deciding that if you put that out it’d be a huge success where other things failed? It feels like thinking up rad commercials is really easy and anyone can do it, but making ones that actually work is harder.
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Jan 17, 2021 20:14
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eSporks posted:I feel like a competent admin would have directed war time rhetoric towards Covid. A lot of dudes will happily bang on all day about how they'd 'literally do anything to protect my family!' and then balk when it ultimately means good food preparation and keeping things clean and sanitised instead of whatever hosed up violent murder fantasy they're actually meaning. Everyone has the capacity for violence, it was evolutionarily advantageous and In a civilised society we find harmless outlets for it like video games or sports. In other times, advertising plays on that impulse to create soldiers. That's why so much money goes towards glorifying soldiers and the military even though the actual point of them is to do things that in any other situation would be considered massively hosed up. But that messaging doesn't translate to other situations. Boris Johnson kept trying to channel Churchill in a lot of his briefings ('The bugle of the calvary of science can be heard over the hill!' was my personal favourite what the everloving gently caress are you talking about man moment) and everyone just laughed at him. Some of that is just because Boris is nowhere close to the speaker Churchill was, but a lot of it was the messaging was completely inappropriate for the situation. I don't really know what you do about Covid. Advertising at its core works by selling to people what they want to be, but I just don't see an aspirational angle. No-one have ever fantasised about sitting inside bored shitless for 18 months (besides goons, obvs). You can go the other way and play to fear, but that has a severe shelf life that we're way past. Humans just aren't wired to be scared long term of things they can't see, especially when for most people statistically it will be a thing that only mildly affects one or two people they know. Our brains are wired for 'poo poo I don't know that man, and he's going to beat me over the head with a rock and take my stash of mammoth blubber' being the kind of danger we'd encounter.
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Jan 17, 2021 20:49
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Ytlaya posted:I actually was surprised at how enjoyable it was and deliberately avoided trying them (or vaping, which I imagine I'd probably like even more) again because of that, but that's probably because I had menthols (which I imagine are less harsh feeling due to the cool menthol sensation). I quit for over a year, and I was having a hard time focusing on school this year and feeling stressed. Decided to try to nicotine gum, since I heard rumors it wasn't as addictive (it is). The first week was great! So much mental energy and focus. The second week not so much. Then I quickly got into the cycle where I was just sustaining normalcy and if I attempted to quit it would have been disastrous for school. I had to wait until thanksgiving break to have a few days without responsibilities so I could reset. FWIW, once I have a week without obligations where I can allow myself to be an irritable cranky mess with a splitting headache every day, its not too hard to quit. But yeah, starting again was stupid and foolish, and thinking I could control it was as well. Going to echo that quit smoking ads do the opposite. When I see one, it just gives me a craving and makes me miss those positive effects. Using that stanford research page for a school project is actually what planted the seed about starting the gum. Improper Umlaut posted:You're talking about digital display (web banner) ads specifically? In that case, the answer is, yes. Owlofcreamcheese posted:Is there evidence that would be the message that works, or just randomly deciding that if you put that out it’d be a huge success where other things failed? It feels like thinking up rad commercials is really easy and anyone can do it, but making ones that actually work is harder.
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Jan 17, 2021 20:49
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Pastamania posted:A lot of dudes will happily bang on all day about how they'd 'literally do anything to protect my family!' and then balk when it ultimately means good food preparation and keeping things clean and sanitised instead of whatever hosed up violent murder fantasy they're actually meaning. Everyone has the capacity for violence, it was evolutionarily advantageous and In a civilised society we find harmless outlets for it like video games or sports. In other times, advertising plays on that impulse to create soldiers. That's why so much money goes towards glorifying soldiers and the military even though the actual point of them is to do things that in any other situation would be considered massively hosed up. If we'd had better messaging at the beginning, we wouldn't be bored shitless for 18 months, we'd be back to near-normal because people took precautions and the disease (mostly) went away. This isn't a fantasy, other countries literally accomplished this.
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Jan 17, 2021 21:02
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Is there evidence that would be the message that works, or just randomly deciding that if you put that out it’d be a huge success where other things failed? It feels like thinking up rad commercials is really easy and anyone can do it, but making ones that actually work is harder. I wasn't able to find specific evidence to that but there is some indication that this is one possible strategy that could work based on the fact that both are all encompassing national struggles. This study by Ash Center compares different messaging sent to residents of New Orleans, the message labeled "duty" probably comes closest to war time messaging. The article calls out that messaging as "more effective" but unfortunately doesn't provide any actual statical information. https://datasmart.ash.harvard.edu/news/article/covid-19-messaging-insights-behaviorally-tested-trials Tangentially related is this study and article by James Kimble and Michael Ricciardelli from Seton Hall University. It also doesn't provide any hard statistics but does use WWII as an example draws comparisons with the messaging that was used there. The Role of Government Messaging in the Covid-19 Battle https://www.shu.edu/communication-arts/news/the-role-of-government-messaging-in-the-covid-19-battle.cfm The real lesson of World War II for mobilizing against covid-19 https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/03/25/real-lesson-world-war-ii-mobilizing-against-covid-19/ I understand that none of this directly answers your question but it is an interesting read. eSporks posted:As an insider, what type of ads or the most effective? I've never purchased anything from a traditional web ad or pop-up, my brain does just filter them (or at least I feel like it does). I've bought a few off instagram though. I'm in the production studio so I'm not as up on that as I should be but based on spending and the direction of resources I'd say social media advertising, particularly video, is still considered effective (and very measurable). As that continues to saturate it will probably go the same route as display advertising. Native advertising (ad content designed to look like articles, think taboola) is still pretty effective, at least more so than digital display. People have a love/hate relationship with brand social accounts that have personality ("silence brand!") but they still get a lot of attention. I feel that one is starting to wane as people get weary of Burger King and Wendy's fighting it out on Twitter. Email marketing is also effective, based on its cost to benefit ratio. If you send 15,000 emails and have an open rate of 10% and a click-through rate of 1% then you know you've reached at least 15,000 people with an impression of your product and 150 have visited your website and are more likely to do whatever it is you want them to do. Subscriptions for email programs like mail chimp are incredibly cheap, about $300-$500 a year.
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Jan 17, 2021 21:17
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eSporks posted:
If you measure by how many sales they directly generate from people clicking on them and buying things, Google Adwords. By, like, miles. It's not even close. If you class it as an ad, SEO as well, but that's a long old slog before it starts getting profitable. If you're trying to raise awareness of something new that people aren't actively looking for, Facebook's ad network. Youtube as well as a distant second, but Facebook has a far wider reach and far better targeting.
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Jan 17, 2021 21:19
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I've worked in advertising across a lot of different businesses for a long time ask away Owlofcreamcheese posted:Is there evidence that would be the message that works, or just randomly deciding that if you put that out it’d be a huge success where other things failed? It feels like thinking up rad commercials is really easy and anyone can do it, but making ones that actually work is harder. There are concrete (or concreter if you like) ways to measure things. If you want to sell product and you can tie a sale back to the ad directly then you know how effective it is. A coupon, for instance, is an advertisement with built in tracking information. There is an insane amount of testing that can be done to measure all of this, but the thing that I don't think will surprise you is a lot of companies simply don't want to pay to actually know whats going on. If it costs a dollar to run 1,000 ads and 7 more cents to figure out if any of those ads were seen by an actual human being Id say half or more of all businesses Ive worked with would say "don't pay the 7 cents"
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Jan 18, 2021 03:11
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PT6A posted:Not here they don't. But, could you cite some examples? Maybe its just me, but I think this German ad is pretty good. https://youtu.be/FS1DDn2eklU
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Jan 18, 2021 05:16
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A wildly successful campaign most American's don't realize was one was making Bacon a breakfast food and making breakfast a big deal. SMILLENNIALSMILLEN posted:i really enjoyed this vice article about SUVs and the advertising that pushes them. i know its not unique to cars but they dont just push the cars as being good choices if you want a car they build an entire self image of who you want to be and push the car as a keystone part of it. the words of the people behind the advertising campaign really drove home to me that you can tell a lot about the people who buy products by looking at the image of consumers portrayed in its advertising and imagining the real life consumer as the opposite of that. if a commercial features big tough guys who are not scared of anything getting things done, the intended customer is not big tough guys who are not scared of anything who get things done, its people who suspect they are not big or tough, that they are ineffectual, and they fear many things. it seems obvious now but it really made me look at advertising, and people in giant cars, in a different way. Laffo, yeah. You'll sit in meetings and just look at the data and be like "ok, the customer base for this product are just the worst. How do I call them a nice sounding name" I have had innumerable meetings explaining to someone their customer base is not who they think it is, ignoring me for things like "Im racist as poo poo" and then it blowing up in their faces.
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Jan 18, 2021 06:00
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