26 ms·

This is a fascinating account of a very large-scale advertisement campaign that succeeded in radically changing the views of millions of people over a few years

This is a fascinating account of a very large-scale advertisement campaign that succeeded in radically changing the views of millions of people over a few years. I wonder what kind of such campaigns are going on today, changing our thoughts without us noticing.

d--b 7y ago
election rigging through orchestrated social media campaigns?
michaelbuckbee 7y ago
Almost all seasonal marketing campaigns: - Modern consumer Christmas as invented by Coke - "Back to School" made a lot more sense when you were actually sending kids off to boarding school
- Smithalicious 7y ago
  Did Coke really substantially influence Christmas? I always felt that that was some kind of weird anti-Christmas and/or anti-Coke propaganda in and of itself.
  - michaelbuckbee 7y ago
    I think it's probably more accurate to say that they cemented and popularized what's now the canonical image of santa (though there was lots of prior art). If you want a more indisputable fact of Christmas influenced marketing, check out Japan & KFC Christmas: https://www.businessinsider.com/how-kfc-became-a-christmas-tradition-in-japan-2016-12#kfcs-christmas-promotion-was-the-brainchild-of-takeshi-okawara-who-managed-the-first-kfc-restaurant-in-japan-he-would-go-on-to-become-ceo-of-kentucky-fried-chicken-japan-from-1984-to-2002-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/how-kfc-became-a-christmas-t...
- Animats 7y ago
  No, modern consumer Christmas was invented by John Wanamaker, who also invented the department store.
  - JackFr 7y ago
    Dickens invented Christmas. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/06/arts/06iht-IDLEDE6.1.18330401.html https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/06/arts/06iht-IDLEDE6.1.1833...
Synaesthesia 7y ago
Have you ever read manufacturing consent? Household products like soap and flour used to be generic and without brands. Brand names were invented to differentiate identical products. The entire history of marketing in the 20th century is appealing to people’s emotions with emotional oversimplifications. Their goal is to creat an uninformed, irrational consumer. There was a huge campaign against man made global warming, and its worked, a significant amount of people believe its a hoax. Many people thought Iraq was behind 9/11, or supported Al Queda. Propaganda is all around us, and it works!
- enriquto 7y ago
  All the examples that you say are quite old. What huge propaganda campaign is going on underhandedly in 2019?
  - jbattle 7y ago
    "It is normal for tech companies to hoover up behavioral data about us, to package it up, and to sell it on to others for whatever purposes they want"
  - fnord77 7y ago
    Just off the top of my head: -Lots of relentless propaganda trying to differentiate and demonize political parties (liberals/democrats bad and hate america!) when in reality there's not much difference between mainstream elements of both parties outside of wedge issues. -Lots of green-washing propaganda (consuming product X is good for the environment)
    - whatshisface 7y ago
      Add "super foods" to that list, which vary in actual health value but are all heavily supported by their associated agricultural consortium.
    - derefr 7y ago
      The former has been going on forever; the latter has been going on for at least as long as environmentalism itself. Also, both of these are "industry trends", where I think what the parent is asking for are campaigns unique to a single company and a single advertising agency, but with far-reaching effects on public perception beyond that company's brand.
rdtsc 7y ago
> I wonder what kind of such campaigns are going on today, changing our thoughts without us noticing. Political campaigns are usually comparable in scope. Obama, for example, beat Nike and Apple to win the "marketer of the year" award https://adage.com/article/moy-2008/obama-wins-ad-age-s-marketer-year/131810 https://adage.com/article/moy-2008/obama-wins-ad-age-s-marke... I remember being so excited and enthusiastic. People were banging pots and pans in the streets and celebrating. But looking back, I am not sure what happened. I don't even know why I was excited. And that's the power of propaganda and marketing, it presents a fuzzy abstract canvas and allows everyone to imbue their own, private hopes and dream onto it. In the more recent history, the "Russian collusion" is probably another campaign where so much effort was spent on, families were torn apparent, a lot of mental energy put into it, and then it kind of fizzled out. All of the sudden everyone stopped talking about it. It went from "it was a sure road to impeachment" to everyone at the same time deciding to ignore it.
- SimbaOnSteroids 7y ago
  It's a conclusion that you can reach from publicly available financial information, transportation logs, and behavior of the accused. It's not like there's nothing there, it just hit a dead-end because you have a situation where the complicit and co-conspirators are now responsible for the sentencing aspect of proceedings, so the house is basically going to sit on the continuance of the investigation. Additionally a lot of the relevant investigations were handed off to the relevant state prosecutors so the accused can't pardon himself and his underlings. My point is, it's not so much a propaganda campaign as an obvious juicy news story to be written about and it's predictably not reported on lately because nothings happening out in the open right now, but watch by October 2020 it'll be a thing again, because it'll be politically expedient again.
- checker 7y ago
  Obama's election was a positive milestone for race relations in American history. If that's not worth getting excited about politically then I'm not sure what is.
  - rdtsc 7y ago
ETHisso2017 7y ago
Some of the media pogroms against China in recent years might qualify. Huawei, Hong Kong, the South China Sea, Uighurs, the Yulin Dog Festival, the list goes on, but coverage of the country has been almost universally negative.
- gataca 7y ago
  What's positive about China's behavior in Hong Kong or their treatment of the Uighurs?
- SimbaOnSteroids 7y ago
  Well it's [CCP] existence is objectively a net negative for the world, so what do you expect?
  - Udik 7y ago
    I envy your certainties.
    - merpnderp 7y ago
      I think it’s easy to imagine an alternative history merely by looking at Taiwan.
      - Udik 7y ago
        Or another one by looking at Putin's Russia. Or at Africa.
- kryptiskt 7y ago
  Media pogroms? It takes a lot of nerve to use that word applied to a powerful government that has interned a million Uighurs without any due process at all. Yeah, that government is treated so unfairly. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  Truthful coverage of their actions resulting in being disliked isn't persecution. To call minimal accountability persecution is incredibly privileged. It is like NSA employees whining at being called snoops when they spied on literally everyone!
rasz 7y ago
Are you hydrated adequately? Drink more water! brought to you by Coca-Cola and American Beverage Association. Those bots spamming about hydration in twitch chat? thats them. >Coke and ABA also spread deceptive messages about hydration—giving the misimpression that many people suffer from dehydration, according to the complaint. “We don’t believe in empty calories. We believe in hydration,” said Coca-Cola executive Katie Bayne. https://cspinet.org/news/lawsuit-alleges-coca-cola-american-beverage-association-deceiving-public-about-soda-related https://cspinet.org/news/lawsuit-alleges-coca-cola-american-...
- yodsanklai 7y ago
  Talking about Coca Cola, they spend literally billions in advertisement annually. I find it quite fascinating to think that maybe nobody would drink Coca Cola anymore, would they stop advertising it. What a crappy product if you think about it...
- nathancahill 7y ago
  https://twitter.com/drinkwaterslut https://twitter.com/drinkwaterslut
- girvo 7y ago
  So that is where the “hydrohomies” stuff comes from on Reddit? Probably a second order effect though, considering that communities original name
  - pingyong 7y ago
    Uh... I really don't think so. Those communities are very specifically about only drinking water, ideally tap water, and absolutely hate soda. As tongue-in-cheek as the entire thing is, soda is the enemy there. If rasz thinks that the people spamming about hydration in Twitch chat (or anywhere else) have anything to do with Coca-Cola or any other company, he's wrong, and simply jumped to conclusions based on previous experience. This entire "movement" is literally about only drinking water, and the health benefits it provides over drinking soda, juice, etc. Maybe it's sponsored by lemon companies, since a slice of lemon is about the only thing that those communities allow in their precious water.
colordrops 7y ago
RussiaGate was generated by the DNC as a post-hoc justification of their loss to Donald Trump. Most people on the left bought into it. The org central to manufacturing the narrative was Hamilton 68, which was a creation of the think tank "The Alliance for Securing Democracy". It had both Democrats and Republicans on the board, including Neocons like Bill Kristol. https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/hamilton-68/ https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/hamilton-68/ Noam Chomsky made one of the more enlightening statements on RussiaGate: https://www.democracynow.org/2018/7/27/noam_chomsky_on_mass_media_obsession https://www.democracynow.org/2018/7/27/noam_chomsky_on_mass_...
prawn 7y ago
I suspect that shampoo/conditioner/etc are two of them. Many skin/beauty products also. A lot of what is advertised versus what isn't.
- colordrops 7y ago
  Conditioner is indispensable for untangling long curly hair.
  - prawn 7y ago
    Conditioner as it is sold now, or something particular to the formula? The conditioner I see promises to nourish hair, add strength and elasticity, hydrate, balance, deal with "split ends", etc.
    - colordrops 7y ago
      Yeah that's a bunch of BS
flukus 7y ago
> I wonder what kind of such campaigns are going on today, changing our thoughts without us noticing. Practically all advertising is designed to change your thoughts/behaviors. The delineation between real content and advertising is thinner than ever and the ads are more targeted than ever. Looking at global warming we have large scale disinformation campaigns that include politicians, "news" outlets like fox news and astro turfing. Astro turfing is becoming more and more frequent as the web becomes more centralized.
philwelch 7y ago
Veganism is an obvious one.
hnick 7y ago
Baby formula is one I often think about. There are a lot of people who need it for biologicial reasons, but for the rest most of the research I hear about says that breast milk is better overall. For the same reason we cannot catalogue and add every essential nutrient and vitamin into a 'meal pill', I wouldn't trust them to be able to do it for baby formula either. Yet the formula is very popular, especially in China (they have to limit the quantities per person here in Australia since they grab so much to send home). So sometimes I wonder if this is a problem or not.
- taneq 7y ago
  Formula is pretty popular in Australia too, it's just that middle-class Chinese don't trust the local product to be safe (and arguably rightly so, given the number of issues they've had with it).
- hyko 7y ago
  Baby formula is fine for everyone, at least where there is access to clean water. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/a-nuanced-view-on-breast-vs-formula/ https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/a-nuanced-view-on-breast-vs...
  - zhoujianfu 7y ago
    Yeah, please don’t try and guilt new moms into feeling bad if they have a hard time breast feeding, or can’t, or even don’t want to. Formula is perfectly fine and really makes the whole first year of child rearing way way way more manageable.
    - hdfbdtbcdg 7y ago
      A very small number of women genuinely don't produce enough milk. Most will produce enough but struggle to keep up for the first 10 or so days. Using formula in that period means they will never increase production enough. Breastfeeding after that is way way easier than pissing around with powders and bottles.
sametmax 7y ago
My personal favorite are currently "Bill Gates is a great guy", and "Microsoft loves open source". They have been fantastically orchestrated for the last few years in regular medias, but also on sites like HN, reddit or even imgur (!). And it worked very, very well. The pro BG and MS sentiment is growing more and more every day, while 15 years ago, they were evil. Partly because the communication was amazingly good, smart, and on the long run. Partly because they Gates and Big M did do good things in the mix to support the narrative, and so it looks very real. It's nicely done, you'll notice a few posts here and there, but the real work is done in the comment, like gardening.
- kashyapc 7y ago
  On "MS loves open source" ... I'm a long-time Red Hatter, and it's been nearly 12 years (or maybe more) since I installed a Windows Desktop. With that out of the way ... I see what you mean (some of it might well be orchestrated), still, we should try extra hard in not letting prejudices or cynicism come in the way of sincerely giving credit where it belongs. (I know you are acknowledging MS's contributions to open source, albeit in a back-handed way :-))

d--b 7y ago

election rigging through orchestrated social media campaigns?

michaelbuckbee 7y ago

Almost all seasonal marketing campaigns: - Modern consumer Christmas as invented by Coke - "Back to School" made a lot more sense when you were actually sending kids off to boarding school

Smithalicious 7y ago
Did Coke really substantially influence Christmas? I always felt that that was some kind of weird anti-Christmas and/or anti-Coke propaganda in and of itself.
- michaelbuckbee 7y ago
  I think it's probably more accurate to say that they cemented and popularized what's now the canonical image of santa (though there was lots of prior art). If you want a more indisputable fact of Christmas influenced marketing, check out Japan & KFC Christmas: https://www.businessinsider.com/how-kfc-became-a-christmas-tradition-in-japan-2016-12#kfcs-christmas-promotion-was-the-brainchild-of-takeshi-okawara-who-managed-the-first-kfc-restaurant-in-japan-he-would-go-on-to-become-ceo-of-kentucky-fried-chicken-japan-from-1984-to-2002-1 https://www.businessinsider.com/how-kfc-became-a-christmas-t...
Animats 7y ago
No, modern consumer Christmas was invented by John Wanamaker, who also invented the department store.
- JackFr 7y ago
  Dickens invented Christmas. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/06/arts/06iht-IDLEDE6.1.18330401.html https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/06/arts/06iht-IDLEDE6.1.1833...

Synaesthesia 7y ago

Have you ever read manufacturing consent? Household products like soap and flour used to be generic and without brands. Brand names were invented to differentiate identical products. The entire history of marketing in the 20th century is appealing to people’s emotions with emotional oversimplifications. Their goal is to creat an uninformed, irrational consumer. There was a huge campaign against man made global warming, and its worked, a significant amount of people believe its a hoax. Many people thought Iraq was behind 9/11, or supported Al Queda. Propaganda is all around us, and it works!

enriquto 7y ago
All the examples that you say are quite old. What huge propaganda campaign is going on underhandedly in 2019?
- jbattle 7y ago
  "It is normal for tech companies to hoover up behavioral data about us, to package it up, and to sell it on to others for whatever purposes they want"
- fnord77 7y ago
  Just off the top of my head: -Lots of relentless propaganda trying to differentiate and demonize political parties (liberals/democrats bad and hate america!) when in reality there's not much difference between mainstream elements of both parties outside of wedge issues. -Lots of green-washing propaganda (consuming product X is good for the environment)
  - whatshisface 7y ago
    Add "super foods" to that list, which vary in actual health value but are all heavily supported by their associated agricultural consortium.
  - derefr 7y ago
    The former has been going on forever; the latter has been going on for at least as long as environmentalism itself. Also, both of these are "industry trends", where I think what the parent is asking for are campaigns unique to a single company and a single advertising agency, but with far-reaching effects on public perception beyond that company's brand.

rdtsc 7y ago

> I wonder what kind of such campaigns are going on today, changing our thoughts without us noticing. Political campaigns are usually comparable in scope. Obama, for example, beat Nike and Apple to win the "marketer of the year" award https://adage.com/article/moy-2008/obama-wins-ad-age-s-marketer-year/131810 https://adage.com/article/moy-2008/obama-wins-ad-age-s-marke... I remember being so excited and enthusiastic. People were banging pots and pans in the streets and celebrating. But looking back, I am not sure what happened. I don't even know why I was excited. And that's the power of propaganda and marketing, it presents a fuzzy abstract canvas and allows everyone to imbue their own, private hopes and dream onto it. In the more recent history, the "Russian collusion" is probably another campaign where so much effort was spent on, families were torn apparent, a lot of mental energy put into it, and then it kind of fizzled out. All of the sudden everyone stopped talking about it. It went from "it was a sure road to impeachment" to everyone at the same time deciding to ignore it.

SimbaOnSteroids 7y ago
It's a conclusion that you can reach from publicly available financial information, transportation logs, and behavior of the accused. It's not like there's nothing there, it just hit a dead-end because you have a situation where the complicit and co-conspirators are now responsible for the sentencing aspect of proceedings, so the house is basically going to sit on the continuance of the investigation. Additionally a lot of the relevant investigations were handed off to the relevant state prosecutors so the accused can't pardon himself and his underlings. My point is, it's not so much a propaganda campaign as an obvious juicy news story to be written about and it's predictably not reported on lately because nothings happening out in the open right now, but watch by October 2020 it'll be a thing again, because it'll be politically expedient again.
checker 7y ago
Obama's election was a positive milestone for race relations in American history. If that's not worth getting excited about politically then I'm not sure what is.
- rdtsc 7y ago

ETHisso2017 7y ago

Some of the media pogroms against China in recent years might qualify. Huawei, Hong Kong, the South China Sea, Uighurs, the Yulin Dog Festival, the list goes on, but coverage of the country has been almost universally negative.

gataca 7y ago
What's positive about China's behavior in Hong Kong or their treatment of the Uighurs?
SimbaOnSteroids 7y ago
Well it's [CCP] existence is objectively a net negative for the world, so what do you expect?
- Udik 7y ago
  I envy your certainties.
  - merpnderp 7y ago
    I think it’s easy to imagine an alternative history merely by looking at Taiwan.
    - Udik 7y ago
      Or another one by looking at Putin's Russia. Or at Africa.
kryptiskt 7y ago
Media pogroms? It takes a lot of nerve to use that word applied to a powerful government that has interned a million Uighurs without any due process at all. Yeah, that government is treated so unfairly. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.
Nasrudith 7y ago
Truthful coverage of their actions resulting in being disliked isn't persecution. To call minimal accountability persecution is incredibly privileged. It is like NSA employees whining at being called snoops when they spied on literally everyone!

rasz 7y ago

Are you hydrated adequately? Drink more water! brought to you by Coca-Cola and American Beverage Association. Those bots spamming about hydration in twitch chat? thats them. >Coke and ABA also spread deceptive messages about hydration—giving the misimpression that many people suffer from dehydration, according to the complaint. “We don’t believe in empty calories. We believe in hydration,” said Coca-Cola executive Katie Bayne. https://cspinet.org/news/lawsuit-alleges-coca-cola-american-beverage-association-deceiving-public-about-soda-related https://cspinet.org/news/lawsuit-alleges-coca-cola-american-...

yodsanklai 7y ago
Talking about Coca Cola, they spend literally billions in advertisement annually. I find it quite fascinating to think that maybe nobody would drink Coca Cola anymore, would they stop advertising it. What a crappy product if you think about it...
nathancahill 7y ago
https://twitter.com/drinkwaterslut https://twitter.com/drinkwaterslut
girvo 7y ago
So that is where the “hydrohomies” stuff comes from on Reddit? Probably a second order effect though, considering that communities original name
- pingyong 7y ago
  Uh... I really don't think so. Those communities are very specifically about only drinking water, ideally tap water, and absolutely hate soda. As tongue-in-cheek as the entire thing is, soda is the enemy there. If rasz thinks that the people spamming about hydration in Twitch chat (or anywhere else) have anything to do with Coca-Cola or any other company, he's wrong, and simply jumped to conclusions based on previous experience. This entire "movement" is literally about only drinking water, and the health benefits it provides over drinking soda, juice, etc. Maybe it's sponsored by lemon companies, since a slice of lemon is about the only thing that those communities allow in their precious water.

colordrops 7y ago

RussiaGate was generated by the DNC as a post-hoc justification of their loss to Donald Trump. Most people on the left bought into it. The org central to manufacturing the narrative was Hamilton 68, which was a creation of the think tank "The Alliance for Securing Democracy". It had both Democrats and Republicans on the board, including Neocons like Bill Kristol. https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/hamilton-68/ https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/hamilton-68/ Noam Chomsky made one of the more enlightening statements on RussiaGate: https://www.democracynow.org/2018/7/27/noam_chomsky_on_mass_media_obsession https://www.democracynow.org/2018/7/27/noam_chomsky_on_mass_...

prawn 7y ago

I suspect that shampoo/conditioner/etc are two of them. Many skin/beauty products also. A lot of what is advertised versus what isn't.

colordrops 7y ago
Conditioner is indispensable for untangling long curly hair.
- prawn 7y ago
  Conditioner as it is sold now, or something particular to the formula? The conditioner I see promises to nourish hair, add strength and elasticity, hydrate, balance, deal with "split ends", etc.
  - colordrops 7y ago
    Yeah that's a bunch of BS

flukus 7y ago

> I wonder what kind of such campaigns are going on today, changing our thoughts without us noticing. Practically all advertising is designed to change your thoughts/behaviors. The delineation between real content and advertising is thinner than ever and the ads are more targeted than ever. Looking at global warming we have large scale disinformation campaigns that include politicians, "news" outlets like fox news and astro turfing. Astro turfing is becoming more and more frequent as the web becomes more centralized.

philwelch 7y ago

Veganism is an obvious one.

hnick 7y ago

Baby formula is one I often think about. There are a lot of people who need it for biologicial reasons, but for the rest most of the research I hear about says that breast milk is better overall. For the same reason we cannot catalogue and add every essential nutrient and vitamin into a 'meal pill', I wouldn't trust them to be able to do it for baby formula either. Yet the formula is very popular, especially in China (they have to limit the quantities per person here in Australia since they grab so much to send home). So sometimes I wonder if this is a problem or not.

taneq 7y ago
Formula is pretty popular in Australia too, it's just that middle-class Chinese don't trust the local product to be safe (and arguably rightly so, given the number of issues they've had with it).
hyko 7y ago
Baby formula is fine for everyone, at least where there is access to clean water. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/a-nuanced-view-on-breast-vs-formula/ https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/a-nuanced-view-on-breast-vs...
- zhoujianfu 7y ago
  Yeah, please don’t try and guilt new moms into feeling bad if they have a hard time breast feeding, or can’t, or even don’t want to. Formula is perfectly fine and really makes the whole first year of child rearing way way way more manageable.
  - hdfbdtbcdg 7y ago
    A very small number of women genuinely don't produce enough milk. Most will produce enough but struggle to keep up for the first 10 or so days. Using formula in that period means they will never increase production enough. Breastfeeding after that is way way easier than pissing around with powders and bottles.

sametmax 7y ago

My personal favorite are currently "Bill Gates is a great guy", and "Microsoft loves open source". They have been fantastically orchestrated for the last few years in regular medias, but also on sites like HN, reddit or even imgur (!). And it worked very, very well. The pro BG and MS sentiment is growing more and more every day, while 15 years ago, they were evil. Partly because the communication was amazingly good, smart, and on the long run. Partly because they Gates and Big M did do good things in the mix to support the narrative, and so it looks very real. It's nicely done, you'll notice a few posts here and there, but the real work is done in the comment, like gardening.

kashyapc 7y ago
On "MS loves open source" ... I'm a long-time Red Hatter, and it's been nearly 12 years (or maybe more) since I installed a Windows Desktop. With that out of the way ... I see what you mean (some of it might well be orchestrated), still, we should try extra hard in not letting prejudices or cynicism come in the way of sincerely giving credit where it belongs. (I know you are acknowledging MS's contributions to open source, albeit in a back-handed way :-))