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>As an ad insider I know first hand that the tactics used by Cambridge Analytica and other agencies work, thats why people pay me to do it. As another ad insid

>As an ad insider I know first hand that the tactics used by Cambridge Analytica and other agencies work, thats why people pay me to do it. As another ad insider I know first hand that people are willing to pay me to do a ton of things that don't actually work. (They often continue trying to do so after I tell them it doesn't work and it's a bad idea) People and companies pay millions for things that don't work all the time, especially in advertising. The saying that 'if it didn't work, people wouldn't pay for it' is false, provably false. After privately doing research and testing for my own clients for years and reading the research of others, I'm not convinced these tactics work at all.

dangerface 7y ago
> I know first hand that people are willing to pay me to do a ton of things that don't actually work. (They often continue trying to do so after I tell them it doesn't work and it's a bad idea) Hehehe very true. I tell people what works then they ask me to do random shit. I can't deny you are right at the end of the day I do what they will pay for whether it works or not.
- logfromblammo 7y ago
  Hello, chain of ancestor posters, each saying the same shocking thing. I have been making things that work, and getting paid for them, for more than 20 years now, and I would like some advice on how to transition my career into making things that do not work, for which the customer has specifically been informed that they will not work, and still get paid for them--preferably paid more than I am currently getting for working things. Is this just customer management? How do I find stupider, richer customers and convince them to trade the non-working thing they are currently overpaying on, for a non-working thing that I haven't even made yet, and then charge more for it? It seems very alien to my brain that anyone can function in this manner, but it is very important to me that I get some of this money that is apparently controlled by idiots, so that I can do sensible things with it, such as pay for food and housing. I am aware that this is somewhat hypocritical to take a fool's money and spend it wisely, but I promise that if I ever get enough, I will do something incredibly stupid with the excess. Please help.
  - rfergie 7y ago
    You need a whole industry of people telling your customers that these things do work. I think it is quite difficult to accomplish entirely by yourself
  - dangerface 7y ago
    It's a customer management thing. We can't change peoples minds we can only get people to act. If the client comes in with an open mind we can help, if they come in with a problem and a solution that isn't working we are kinda fucked, generally they won't accept a solution to the problem, they want their solution to work. Here is the most common example: Small business come up with their marketing strategy A and it works they are pretty happy so they invest more into the strategy and get more results, great! They keep doing this and make a small or large fortune doing it, eventually the law of diminishing returns kicks in and they have a problem, they want more results by doing more of A but that isn't working anymore so they come to us and have this conversation. Client: We have had great results doing A and we want more. Me: A is working well for you but if you want more results you need to do A and B. Client: A has worked really well for us so really we want to do more A and get more results. Me: But doing more of A isn't getting more results, if you want more results you need to do A and B. Client: Why are you not listening to me? A works really well for us, it gets us good results in the past and we want to do more of it. How much do you charge to do more A? At the end of the day the client knows for a fact A works and that they are happy with the results and want more. I don't think it's possible to change some ones mind but I can defiantly target people in the right mindset and then encourage them to act on it. If the client comes to a marketing agency and wants more A they will do more A, if the client wants more results they will do A and B. Me: We can do more A for more money! Client: Fantastic! a few months later the client will complain they are not getting more results and we will have this same conversation.
- QuantumGood 7y ago
  Evaluating what works by what the dumbest people do is not science. Marketing results are measurable. That people will measure improperly, not at all, or ignore proper measurement approaches is not about what is measured, it's about the people. Yes, there are things that can't be measured well. Smart operators tend to not do those things, no matter how common or popular they are. The very old joke "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half" (John Wanamaker, 1838-1922) was always more about advertising companies pushing advertising than about whether results could be measured. In politics, look at real people on social media sharing false information and commenting about how they agree with it. Politics is the easiest place for advertising to succeed, because you can use mind control techniques more readily (where you need an "other group" to dislike to cement the self-perception being sold).
  - quanticle 7y ago
    >Smart operators tend to not do those things, no matter how common or popular they are. What evidence do you have that political campaigns are "smart operators"? Every experience I've had working with political campaigns has indicated otherwise. The performance of political campaigns is exactly what one would expect if you mixed together a bunch of inexperienced volunteers with snake-oil salesmen and showered them with money.
  - chrisco255 7y ago
    That joke was made precisely because it's difficult to measure results from advertising. Sure, online banner ads can be precisely measured for click rates, but having spent money on things like billboards, magazine ads, etc. It's difficult to consistently capture the particular ad or place that someone heard about a business. It's difficult to know how many exposures it takes to make an ad effective without going overboard (you can oversaturate, as Bloomberg has proven). Also, IQ is no defense for persuasion techniques. If you're not keen on the biases influencing your decisions and filters on the world, no amount of intelligence will save you. I think that requires practicing skepticism, both of yourself and of others.
    - edmundsauto 7y ago
JPKab 7y ago
Thank you. Most advertising does nothing. I'm sick of people lazily assuming that people that don't vote the way they do must have been manipulated. It is a self-defeating idea in the first place. By the way the Cambridge analytica data was incredibly similar to something that I used working for a democratic campaign in 2014 midterm elections. Trump and brexit both won with voters due to the fact that we have for years had policies which benefited the financial and managerial classes over the working classes. These policies created a higher aggregate GDP but did so while concentrating it in the hands of the urban and managerial classes. This is a little bit more complicated than just saying they stole the election by manipulating rednecks. Which is why so many people believe it. I continue to be astonished by how few people in the community of software engineers understand the countries they live in. If you live in London go to northern England and look around. If you live in San Francisco go inland and take a look at what it looks like when a factory shuts down. Trump doesn't have the answers to these problems, but he was the first politician on the right to admit they exist. Sanders on the left was routinely squashed by the post Clinton DNC, which traded in supporting unions for the professional and managerial classes.
- n4r9 7y ago
  I get what you're saying, that Brexit was in a sense a protest vote against the current state of things. But if it was purely down to the working class feeling disenfranchised, then it gets very hard to explain why Labour did so dismally in 2015 and still not great in 2017 even whilst promising to respect the EURef outcome and having widespread union support and a raft of policies which would benefit the working class. I think you can't avoid the fact that narrative plays a huge role, and that facebook played its own part in both informing and disseminating that narrative.
a0zU 7y ago
Just out of curiosity what are common things that people try that don't work?
- jvagner 7y ago
  * Buying lists, dumping money in email campaigns to lists * Losing patience with the development of a sales funnel, dumping money into ads that have no reasonable copy, targeting, offer * Repeating offers because the development of a sales strategy is hard * Ignoring blockers to brand development.. such as changing the company name/logo often, ignoring feedback from current customers about things like broken products and poor customer experiences, etc., and instead, dumping money into ad campaigns instead etc etc
billmalarky 7y ago
Reminds me of the old phrase John Wanamaker coined in the late 1800s: "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half."

dangerface 7y ago

> I know first hand that people are willing to pay me to do a ton of things that don't actually work. (They often continue trying to do so after I tell them it doesn't work and it's a bad idea) Hehehe very true. I tell people what works then they ask me to do random shit. I can't deny you are right at the end of the day I do what they will pay for whether it works or not.

logfromblammo 7y ago
Hello, chain of ancestor posters, each saying the same shocking thing. I have been making things that work, and getting paid for them, for more than 20 years now, and I would like some advice on how to transition my career into making things that do not work, for which the customer has specifically been informed that they will not work, and still get paid for them--preferably paid more than I am currently getting for working things. Is this just customer management? How do I find stupider, richer customers and convince them to trade the non-working thing they are currently overpaying on, for a non-working thing that I haven't even made yet, and then charge more for it? It seems very alien to my brain that anyone can function in this manner, but it is very important to me that I get some of this money that is apparently controlled by idiots, so that I can do sensible things with it, such as pay for food and housing. I am aware that this is somewhat hypocritical to take a fool's money and spend it wisely, but I promise that if I ever get enough, I will do something incredibly stupid with the excess. Please help.
- rfergie 7y ago
  You need a whole industry of people telling your customers that these things do work. I think it is quite difficult to accomplish entirely by yourself
- dangerface 7y ago
  It's a customer management thing. We can't change peoples minds we can only get people to act. If the client comes in with an open mind we can help, if they come in with a problem and a solution that isn't working we are kinda fucked, generally they won't accept a solution to the problem, they want their solution to work. Here is the most common example: Small business come up with their marketing strategy A and it works they are pretty happy so they invest more into the strategy and get more results, great! They keep doing this and make a small or large fortune doing it, eventually the law of diminishing returns kicks in and they have a problem, they want more results by doing more of A but that isn't working anymore so they come to us and have this conversation. Client: We have had great results doing A and we want more. Me: A is working well for you but if you want more results you need to do A and B. Client: A has worked really well for us so really we want to do more A and get more results. Me: But doing more of A isn't getting more results, if you want more results you need to do A and B. Client: Why are you not listening to me? A works really well for us, it gets us good results in the past and we want to do more of it. How much do you charge to do more A? At the end of the day the client knows for a fact A works and that they are happy with the results and want more. I don't think it's possible to change some ones mind but I can defiantly target people in the right mindset and then encourage them to act on it. If the client comes to a marketing agency and wants more A they will do more A, if the client wants more results they will do A and B. Me: We can do more A for more money! Client: Fantastic! a few months later the client will complain they are not getting more results and we will have this same conversation.
QuantumGood 7y ago
Evaluating what works by what the dumbest people do is not science. Marketing results are measurable. That people will measure improperly, not at all, or ignore proper measurement approaches is not about what is measured, it's about the people. Yes, there are things that can't be measured well. Smart operators tend to not do those things, no matter how common or popular they are. The very old joke "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half" (John Wanamaker, 1838-1922) was always more about advertising companies pushing advertising than about whether results could be measured. In politics, look at real people on social media sharing false information and commenting about how they agree with it. Politics is the easiest place for advertising to succeed, because you can use mind control techniques more readily (where you need an "other group" to dislike to cement the self-perception being sold).
- quanticle 7y ago
  >Smart operators tend to not do those things, no matter how common or popular they are. What evidence do you have that political campaigns are "smart operators"? Every experience I've had working with political campaigns has indicated otherwise. The performance of political campaigns is exactly what one would expect if you mixed together a bunch of inexperienced volunteers with snake-oil salesmen and showered them with money.
- chrisco255 7y ago
  That joke was made precisely because it's difficult to measure results from advertising. Sure, online banner ads can be precisely measured for click rates, but having spent money on things like billboards, magazine ads, etc. It's difficult to consistently capture the particular ad or place that someone heard about a business. It's difficult to know how many exposures it takes to make an ad effective without going overboard (you can oversaturate, as Bloomberg has proven). Also, IQ is no defense for persuasion techniques. If you're not keen on the biases influencing your decisions and filters on the world, no amount of intelligence will save you. I think that requires practicing skepticism, both of yourself and of others.
  - edmundsauto 7y ago

JPKab 7y ago

Thank you. Most advertising does nothing. I'm sick of people lazily assuming that people that don't vote the way they do must have been manipulated. It is a self-defeating idea in the first place. By the way the Cambridge analytica data was incredibly similar to something that I used working for a democratic campaign in 2014 midterm elections. Trump and brexit both won with voters due to the fact that we have for years had policies which benefited the financial and managerial classes over the working classes. These policies created a higher aggregate GDP but did so while concentrating it in the hands of the urban and managerial classes. This is a little bit more complicated than just saying they stole the election by manipulating rednecks. Which is why so many people believe it. I continue to be astonished by how few people in the community of software engineers understand the countries they live in. If you live in London go to northern England and look around. If you live in San Francisco go inland and take a look at what it looks like when a factory shuts down. Trump doesn't have the answers to these problems, but he was the first politician on the right to admit they exist. Sanders on the left was routinely squashed by the post Clinton DNC, which traded in supporting unions for the professional and managerial classes.

n4r9 7y ago
I get what you're saying, that Brexit was in a sense a protest vote against the current state of things. But if it was purely down to the working class feeling disenfranchised, then it gets very hard to explain why Labour did so dismally in 2015 and still not great in 2017 even whilst promising to respect the EURef outcome and having widespread union support and a raft of policies which would benefit the working class. I think you can't avoid the fact that narrative plays a huge role, and that facebook played its own part in both informing and disseminating that narrative.

a0zU 7y ago

Just out of curiosity what are common things that people try that don't work?

jvagner 7y ago
* Buying lists, dumping money in email campaigns to lists * Losing patience with the development of a sales funnel, dumping money into ads that have no reasonable copy, targeting, offer * Repeating offers because the development of a sales strategy is hard * Ignoring blockers to brand development.. such as changing the company name/logo often, ignoring feedback from current customers about things like broken products and poor customer experiences, etc., and instead, dumping money into ad campaigns instead etc etc

billmalarky 7y ago

Reminds me of the old phrase John Wanamaker coined in the late 1800s: "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half."