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I worked briefly in a marketing department as programmer. Learned the following there. The benefit of advertising is to inform the consumer of products they may
by SapporoChris 7y ago
I worked briefly in a marketing department as programmer. Learned the following there.
The benefit of advertising is to inform the consumer of products they may not be aware of.
"Messa thinks Messa might have Mesothelioma!"
Most of the time advertising is a waste of time, and there certainly are better ways of learning about products. However, the function of informing consumers of products they may not be aware of is of mild benefit.
A better question than what benefit is advertising might be, "How can advertising be made more beneficial to the viewers"
- dwaltrip 7y agoAnother way of looking at it: What are better alternatives for helping people learn about available products? Or better yet, good ways of solving different problems in life, which may not always involve buying a product. There is an inherent problem with advertising in that the incentives are somewhat misaligned. Company X doesn't want me to learn about the best way to solve problem Y. They want me to learn about _their_ solution to problem Y. Or even worse... Company X wants me to believe that Y is a problem for me — when in fact it may not be, or at least not how they claim — and that only they can solve it.
- komali2 7y agoTo a minimalist advertising could almost be construed as a form of psychic attack on ones value system. Imagine firing off hundreds of ads at a vegan about how eating meat is good. That's essentially what all the "buy this shit" ads are doing to someone who explicitly buys as little as they can to get by.
- pstch 7y agoThis doesn't only apply to minimalists. I don't consider myself a minimalist, but I do consider advertising as a psychic attack. This is how many justify disabling billboards and ad blocking : they are merely defending themselves.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]