4 ms·

i can't imagine how somebody could see the creative process in Mad Men and think that's something to be emulated. It's a bunch of privileged rich people (ad ex

i can't imagine how somebody could see the creative process in Mad Men and think that's something to be emulated. It's a bunch of privileged rich people (ad execs) coming up with ideas that they think are clever, and the only criteria for whether or not those ideas are good is if other privileged rich people (client company execs) agree. There's no objective measures of success, just a bunch of people patting each other on the back because they all see the world the same way.

hn_check 6y ago
I'm pretty sure there is an "objective measure of success" in the most plainly obvious way possible -- sales. Versus the bullshitty stats like impressions or accidental click-throughs that dominate online advertising.
- cpach 6y ago
  “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”
  - hn_check 6y ago
    "So give me some horseshit garbage numbers and we'll call it a day!" In the end what actually elicits a feeling about a brand, or a choice to act, is in no way the thing that people are actually measuring.
- notatoad 6y ago
  If you're only running one campaign in one channel, and your product hasn't improved, and the competition's product and marketing hasn't changed, and there are no external events that will trigger a change in demand, then i suppose you could take sales as a measure of success.
  - shkkmo 6y ago
    The only true metric that motivates marketing companies is ad sales. As another commenter mentions, the creative department in Mad Men existed mostly to help sell ads rather than the the products in the ads. I think advertising metrics and targeting serve a similar role today.
    - fmajid 6y ago
      Marketing departments want metrics that justify ad budgets and thus the Marketing department's budget. Ad metrics that show ads are ineffective, while valuable to the business, run counter to the Marketing department's incentives, and are thus suppressed. In a rational company, ad attribution, or aggregate-level analysis using techniques like Vector Autoregression (VAR) should be owned by the CFO to avoid that conflict of interest, as shown in this article: https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-here-its-called-online-advertising https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-h...
- rsynnott 6y ago
  It's remarkably difficult to measure the actual impact of that sort of brand-building marketing. And was basically impossible in the timeframe that Mad Men was set; they just didn't have the observability.
throwaway122378 6y ago
You must be real fun

hn_check 6y ago

I'm pretty sure there is an "objective measure of success" in the most plainly obvious way possible -- sales. Versus the bullshitty stats like impressions or accidental click-throughs that dominate online advertising.

cpach 6y ago
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”
- hn_check 6y ago
  "So give me some horseshit garbage numbers and we'll call it a day!" In the end what actually elicits a feeling about a brand, or a choice to act, is in no way the thing that people are actually measuring.
notatoad 6y ago
If you're only running one campaign in one channel, and your product hasn't improved, and the competition's product and marketing hasn't changed, and there are no external events that will trigger a change in demand, then i suppose you could take sales as a measure of success.
- shkkmo 6y ago
  The only true metric that motivates marketing companies is ad sales. As another commenter mentions, the creative department in Mad Men existed mostly to help sell ads rather than the the products in the ads. I think advertising metrics and targeting serve a similar role today.
  - fmajid 6y ago
    Marketing departments want metrics that justify ad budgets and thus the Marketing department's budget. Ad metrics that show ads are ineffective, while valuable to the business, run counter to the Marketing department's incentives, and are thus suppressed. In a rational company, ad attribution, or aggregate-level analysis using techniques like Vector Autoregression (VAR) should be owned by the CFO to avoid that conflict of interest, as shown in this article: https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-here-its-called-online-advertising https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-h...
rsynnott 6y ago
It's remarkably difficult to measure the actual impact of that sort of brand-building marketing. And was basically impossible in the timeframe that Mad Men was set; they just didn't have the observability.

throwaway122378 6y ago

You must be real fun