5 ms·

Public relations != advertising. Ed Bernays != spokesperson for all PR professionals. There are shady people in every industry.

kerkeslager 7y ago
> Public relations != advertising. Not a distinction I care to make. The problems with both are fundamentally the same. > Ed Bernays != spokesperson for all PR professionals. Okay, but all PR professionals and advertisers are trying to manipulate people. That is literally the job. Everyone else in the industry has the same goals--Bernays may have been willing to do more unscrupulous things to achieve those goals, but the goals are fundamentally unscrupulous. > There are shady people in every industry. But some industries, the purpose of the industry itself is shady. Advertising and PR are such industries.
- nickelcitymario 7y ago
  Question for you then: Are you or are you not trying to manipulate me to share your point of view? If all advertising is manipulation, then so are all conversations. Every debate, every argument, every statement of fact or opinion. I don't consider it manipulation if it's honest. If I run an ad that says "These burgers cost only $1.25" and they really do cost $1.25, that's hardly manipulation. If, on the other hand, I say "This burger cost only $1.25" but I was referring only to the patty, and not the bun and toppings and whatever else you see pictured, then that's manipulation (bordering on out-right lying). Bernays said a lot of things that simply weren't true because he didn't care about the truth. And yeah, a lot of PR and advertising people would share his immoral stance on things. But most of the people I know in the industry aren't like that. We strive to create honest work that is entertaining enough to catch your attention so we can tell you something true about the product. There's an idea out there that advertising is about selling you things regardless of whether you'd benefit from it or not. In my books, this is a stupid way to spend your advertising dollars. Instead, you should do the hard work of figuring out who, if anyone, would benefit from the product, and then create a campaign to reach them. Obviously, some advertisers have no such ethical dilemma. Not to point fingers, but there are plenty of products that only do damage to people's lives. I'd like to think the clients I currently work with do not fall into this category, but that hasn't always been the case and feel free to judge me for that.
  - kerkeslager 7y ago
    > Question for you then: Are you or are you not trying to manipulate me to share your point of view? You go on after this question to explain what manipulation is, so it seems like you understand the concept, and can probably figure out how it doesn't apply to this conversation. > There's an idea out there that advertising is about selling you things regardless of whether you'd benefit from it or not. In my books, this is a stupid way to spend your advertising dollars. Instead, you should do the hard work of figuring out who, if anyone, would benefit from the product, and then create a campaign to reach them. If your actual goal is to help people find things they would benefit from, then what's the best way to do that? Some ideas: 1. Review sites that try to be unbiased and share expert opinions on possible solutions to your problem. Obviously there are pitfalls here: the best solutions are ones where the site receives money from consumers, not companies with products to sell. 2. Word of mouth recommendations from friends and family, who intimately know your actual needs and genuinely want you to be successful. 3. People often know their own needs and go out to find solutions to their own needs, soliciting advice from 1 and 2, but also by asking experts (doctors, mechanics, etc.) who they pay to give them good advice. 4. A minimalist movement that views the entire idea of purchasing something with skepticism. I'm not against paying for products, but I do think it's important to see that paying for products is a tradeoff. Paying for a solution isn't always the best way to solve a problem, and in fact isn't always better than the problem itself. Literally no part of a reasonable solution for helping people involves showing them only your product (not your competitors'), and/or only the positive aspects of your product. And that's the absolute best case for advertising. And to be clear, that's not honest, it's lying by omission. If you're any good at your job, you know who your competitors are, and you know their strengths, but you're not sharing that information with your target audience. That's information that's relevant to the wants/needs of your target audience, but you're withholding that information, because it benefits you/your clients. The idea that this is you trying to go out and help people find and choose the best products for their needs is very naive. Contrary to your belief, advertising actively prevents people from finding products that best solve their problems. Worse products beat out better products if they have better advertising, and this is the norm, not the exception, because every dollar spent on advertising is a dollar not spent on producing the best product possible. In theory, a company that makes profit from advertising can reinvest that profit into R+D, but in practice the incentives don't lead in that direction. A company that makes a profit by advertising has no reason to take a risk by changing strategy.
wyldfire 7y ago
> Bernays did not smoke cigarettes himself, and persistently tried to induce his wife Doris to quit.[49] After his semi-retirement in the 1960s, he worked with the pro-health anti-smoking lawyer John Banzhaf's group, ASH, and supported other anti-smoking campaigns.[citation needed] I skimmed the Wikipedia article on Bernays [1] and found this interesting. At first, I think 'Oh hey, he realized his mistake and tried to make amends?' But that "citation needed" is curious. Did he merely tell his wife to stop smoking because he cared about her and knew how dangerous it was, but didn't actually support anti-smoking campaigns? Is the Wikipedia article content itself a product of deceptive PR about Bernays' legacy? EDIT: that last bit was mostly in jest: the section of the article about his work w/United Fruit Co is not at all positive in hindsight. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
wpietri 7y ago
All three things are technically true. All miss my point. Bernays did a lot of what would be called advertising work today. He isn't a spokesperson, what with being dead and all, but his work was foundational. What mainly distinguishes him from today's practitioners is that he was pretty straightforward about what what he was doing, while these days people apply his principles while talking about PR and advertising. And yes, there are shady people everywhere, but some industries are shadier than others.
- nickelcitymario 7y ago
  I don't presume to know how shady the people in other industries are. I've met very few of them in advertising. Alas, they tend to be in the executive suite. (I suspect that's equally true in most industries, but that's pure speculation.) The vast majority of the actual people in this industry are good people who try their best to do good work. They're looking to make an honest buck and feel good about what they do. That said, Bernays is not someone I'd consider a role model.
  - wpietri 7y ago
    Sure. I've known people who work in advertising. They all are pretty swell. They want to feel good about who they are and what they do. That's universal. Of course, I also once worked for what was basically a scam. As a teen, I answered an ad in the paper. We did telephone-based charity fundraising. Basically, telemarketing but "for good". Turns out the average amount passed on to charities was in the 10%-15% range. The rest, we kept. Those people also felt good about who they were and what they did. And there's no bottom to this. Scroll down here to the photo of a bunch of happy women on a day trip and see what their job was. These look like people who were trying their best to do good work. Who feel good about what they do. But what did they do? https://www.theguardian.com/books/gallery/2016/nov/22/nazis-retreat-ss-holiday-hut-auschwitz-pictures-mengele-photographs https://www.theguardian.com/books/gallery/2016/nov/22/nazis-... My point being that you can't evaluate the morality of of a group of people from inside the frame of that group. Humans can always find a way to justify whatever they're doing. Bad things aren't done mostly by bad people. They're done by good people in bad systems. And the harm is mostly seen as external to the system, perhaps even unrelated to it. As the study shows, advertising is intrinsically harmful to its viewers. But even if it weren't, it's enormously wasteful. It's mainly an arms race; companies mostly advertise because their competitors advertise. If we just banned it in the US, we'd have circa an extra $500 billion a year. That's free college for everyone, forever. (And that's not counting billions extra people would have from not buying stuff they don't really need or want.) And in my view, the industry is irredeemably immoral, because manipulating people to fill your pockets is wrong. People in the industry don't think so, of course, because they either change their thinking or don't stay in the industry. You may not see Bernays as your role model, but I think his work was foundational to the modern advertising industry. And as much as I dislike what he did, I'll give him credit for at least being clear-eyed about it. The only advertising people I know who can talk honestly and clearly about what the work means are the ones who've left the industry.

kerkeslager 7y ago

> Public relations != advertising. Not a distinction I care to make. The problems with both are fundamentally the same. > Ed Bernays != spokesperson for all PR professionals. Okay, but all PR professionals and advertisers are trying to manipulate people. That is literally the job. Everyone else in the industry has the same goals--Bernays may have been willing to do more unscrupulous things to achieve those goals, but the goals are fundamentally unscrupulous. > There are shady people in every industry. But some industries, the purpose of the industry itself is shady. Advertising and PR are such industries.

nickelcitymario 7y ago
Question for you then: Are you or are you not trying to manipulate me to share your point of view? If all advertising is manipulation, then so are all conversations. Every debate, every argument, every statement of fact or opinion. I don't consider it manipulation if it's honest. If I run an ad that says "These burgers cost only $1.25" and they really do cost $1.25, that's hardly manipulation. If, on the other hand, I say "This burger cost only $1.25" but I was referring only to the patty, and not the bun and toppings and whatever else you see pictured, then that's manipulation (bordering on out-right lying). Bernays said a lot of things that simply weren't true because he didn't care about the truth. And yeah, a lot of PR and advertising people would share his immoral stance on things. But most of the people I know in the industry aren't like that. We strive to create honest work that is entertaining enough to catch your attention so we can tell you something true about the product. There's an idea out there that advertising is about selling you things regardless of whether you'd benefit from it or not. In my books, this is a stupid way to spend your advertising dollars. Instead, you should do the hard work of figuring out who, if anyone, would benefit from the product, and then create a campaign to reach them. Obviously, some advertisers have no such ethical dilemma. Not to point fingers, but there are plenty of products that only do damage to people's lives. I'd like to think the clients I currently work with do not fall into this category, but that hasn't always been the case and feel free to judge me for that.
- kerkeslager 7y ago
  > Question for you then: Are you or are you not trying to manipulate me to share your point of view? You go on after this question to explain what manipulation is, so it seems like you understand the concept, and can probably figure out how it doesn't apply to this conversation. > There's an idea out there that advertising is about selling you things regardless of whether you'd benefit from it or not. In my books, this is a stupid way to spend your advertising dollars. Instead, you should do the hard work of figuring out who, if anyone, would benefit from the product, and then create a campaign to reach them. If your actual goal is to help people find things they would benefit from, then what's the best way to do that? Some ideas: 1. Review sites that try to be unbiased and share expert opinions on possible solutions to your problem. Obviously there are pitfalls here: the best solutions are ones where the site receives money from consumers, not companies with products to sell. 2. Word of mouth recommendations from friends and family, who intimately know your actual needs and genuinely want you to be successful. 3. People often know their own needs and go out to find solutions to their own needs, soliciting advice from 1 and 2, but also by asking experts (doctors, mechanics, etc.) who they pay to give them good advice. 4. A minimalist movement that views the entire idea of purchasing something with skepticism. I'm not against paying for products, but I do think it's important to see that paying for products is a tradeoff. Paying for a solution isn't always the best way to solve a problem, and in fact isn't always better than the problem itself. Literally no part of a reasonable solution for helping people involves showing them only your product (not your competitors'), and/or only the positive aspects of your product. And that's the absolute best case for advertising. And to be clear, that's not honest, it's lying by omission. If you're any good at your job, you know who your competitors are, and you know their strengths, but you're not sharing that information with your target audience. That's information that's relevant to the wants/needs of your target audience, but you're withholding that information, because it benefits you/your clients. The idea that this is you trying to go out and help people find and choose the best products for their needs is very naive. Contrary to your belief, advertising actively prevents people from finding products that best solve their problems. Worse products beat out better products if they have better advertising, and this is the norm, not the exception, because every dollar spent on advertising is a dollar not spent on producing the best product possible. In theory, a company that makes profit from advertising can reinvest that profit into R+D, but in practice the incentives don't lead in that direction. A company that makes a profit by advertising has no reason to take a risk by changing strategy.

wyldfire 7y ago

> Bernays did not smoke cigarettes himself, and persistently tried to induce his wife Doris to quit.[49] After his semi-retirement in the 1960s, he worked with the pro-health anti-smoking lawyer John Banzhaf's group, ASH, and supported other anti-smoking campaigns.[citation needed] I skimmed the Wikipedia article on Bernays [1] and found this interesting. At first, I think 'Oh hey, he realized his mistake and tried to make amends?' But that "citation needed" is curious. Did he merely tell his wife to stop smoking because he cared about her and knew how dangerous it was, but didn't actually support anti-smoking campaigns? Is the Wikipedia article content itself a product of deceptive PR about Bernays' legacy? EDIT: that last bit was mostly in jest: the section of the article about his work w/United Fruit Co is not at all positive in hindsight. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays

wpietri 7y ago

All three things are technically true. All miss my point. Bernays did a lot of what would be called advertising work today. He isn't a spokesperson, what with being dead and all, but his work was foundational. What mainly distinguishes him from today's practitioners is that he was pretty straightforward about what what he was doing, while these days people apply his principles while talking about PR and advertising. And yes, there are shady people everywhere, but some industries are shadier than others.

nickelcitymario 7y ago
I don't presume to know how shady the people in other industries are. I've met very few of them in advertising. Alas, they tend to be in the executive suite. (I suspect that's equally true in most industries, but that's pure speculation.) The vast majority of the actual people in this industry are good people who try their best to do good work. They're looking to make an honest buck and feel good about what they do. That said, Bernays is not someone I'd consider a role model.
- wpietri 7y ago
  Sure. I've known people who work in advertising. They all are pretty swell. They want to feel good about who they are and what they do. That's universal. Of course, I also once worked for what was basically a scam. As a teen, I answered an ad in the paper. We did telephone-based charity fundraising. Basically, telemarketing but "for good". Turns out the average amount passed on to charities was in the 10%-15% range. The rest, we kept. Those people also felt good about who they were and what they did. And there's no bottom to this. Scroll down here to the photo of a bunch of happy women on a day trip and see what their job was. These look like people who were trying their best to do good work. Who feel good about what they do. But what did they do? https://www.theguardian.com/books/gallery/2016/nov/22/nazis-retreat-ss-holiday-hut-auschwitz-pictures-mengele-photographs https://www.theguardian.com/books/gallery/2016/nov/22/nazis-... My point being that you can't evaluate the morality of of a group of people from inside the frame of that group. Humans can always find a way to justify whatever they're doing. Bad things aren't done mostly by bad people. They're done by good people in bad systems. And the harm is mostly seen as external to the system, perhaps even unrelated to it. As the study shows, advertising is intrinsically harmful to its viewers. But even if it weren't, it's enormously wasteful. It's mainly an arms race; companies mostly advertise because their competitors advertise. If we just banned it in the US, we'd have circa an extra $500 billion a year. That's free college for everyone, forever. (And that's not counting billions extra people would have from not buying stuff they don't really need or want.) And in my view, the industry is irredeemably immoral, because manipulating people to fill your pockets is wrong. People in the industry don't think so, of course, because they either change their thinking or don't stay in the industry. You may not see Bernays as your role model, but I think his work was foundational to the modern advertising industry. And as much as I dislike what he did, I'll give him credit for at least being clear-eyed about it. The only advertising people I know who can talk honestly and clearly about what the work means are the ones who've left the industry.