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The people I find interesting are all over the board at self-promotion! It's barely correlated. That's the point. The self-promotion is completely unhelpful

The people I find interesting are all over the board at self-promotion! It's barely correlated. That's the point. The self-promotion is completely unhelpful in directing my attention to anything useful, but it is designed specifically to try to fool me. Nobody needs advertising to be "willing to buy stuff." Advertising shifts demand around from companies that are worse at advertising to companies that are better at it. What do you suppose people would do with their portion of the GDP if there were less advertising? Sit on their hands, because they don't aspire to anything? Would men, their savings accounts bulging with useless money, moan, "I only wish I wanted an iPad more?" Although I admit that it is unavoidable, I find it non-obvious that commercial advertising contributes anything at all to the economy, and supposing it does, I find it completely unbelievable that it is worth the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of labor spent on it.

bluekeybox 15y ago
> Nobody needs advertising to be "willing to buy stuff." Untrue. First of all, even if advertising "only shifted demand around," it would still be worthwhile because our country participates in a global economy and we export many products abroad (as well as import others, but that's a different question). Second, the statement that advertising "only shifts demand around" is just plain wrong. Advertising creates demand, and this creation is overall a positive thing (admittedly there are plenty of specific negative examples). For one positive example: Americans didn't buy into cars simply because of utility. They bought into cars because of the entire "lifestyle" image created around owning a car -- and this image was created in large part thanks to advertising campaigns. There would be many fewer cars around today, and our economy would be much slower were it not for advertising. To naysayers below: as Henry Ford's famous expression went, "if I asked my customers what they wanted, they'd tell me they want a faster horse." In other words: people did not immediately buy into the idea that a car is something desirable. At the time, cars were clumsy, noisy, not very comfortable or easy to drive. The whole idea of a car as something to aspire to had to be "pushed" onto the audience, and Ford was not shy about doing it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_T#Advertising.2C_marketing.2C_and_packaging http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_T#Advertising.2C_mar...).
- dhume 15y ago
  There would be many fewer cars around today, and our economy would be much slower were it not for advertising. Or we wouldn't have built sprawling suburbs that make cars necessary.
  - bluekeybox 15y ago
    Thus failing to put to good use of one of the biggest assets the U.S. had in comparison to the rest of the world -- space and cheap land.
    - ericd 15y ago
      Is this an example of something that helps the economy (since your premise above was that advertising is very important for the economy)? It certainly doesn't help productivity for every family to have a large house to take care of, and most of the spending to outfit and run that house is ultimately a waste. A much better use would be, say, farming.
- marshray 15y ago
  Americans didn't buy into cars simply because of utility. They bought into cars because of the entire "lifestyle" image created around owning a car -- and this image was created in large part thanks to advertising campaigns. Nah. Show me a country with a similar low density as America where people don't buy cars almost as soon as they can afford them. The advertising was certainly prominent, but it didn't drive the fundamentals.
  - akgerber 15y ago
    Most Americans don't live in particularly low-density areas. The Los Angeles metro area is about as dense as that of New York; the fact that LA is car-based whereas New York is based on rail is due to infrastructure choices made based on people's desire to drive more instead of walking or taking mass transit. That desire was in large part created by marketing portraying automobiles as signs of wealth, power, modernity, and of course sexual potency.

bluekeybox 15y ago

> Nobody needs advertising to be "willing to buy stuff." Untrue. First of all, even if advertising "only shifted demand around," it would still be worthwhile because our country participates in a global economy and we export many products abroad (as well as import others, but that's a different question). Second, the statement that advertising "only shifts demand around" is just plain wrong. Advertising creates demand, and this creation is overall a positive thing (admittedly there are plenty of specific negative examples). For one positive example: Americans didn't buy into cars simply because of utility. They bought into cars because of the entire "lifestyle" image created around owning a car -- and this image was created in large part thanks to advertising campaigns. There would be many fewer cars around today, and our economy would be much slower were it not for advertising. To naysayers below: as Henry Ford's famous expression went, "if I asked my customers what they wanted, they'd tell me they want a faster horse." In other words: people did not immediately buy into the idea that a car is something desirable. At the time, cars were clumsy, noisy, not very comfortable or easy to drive. The whole idea of a car as something to aspire to had to be "pushed" onto the audience, and Ford was not shy about doing it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_T#Advertising.2C_marketing.2C_and_packaging http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_T#Advertising.2C_mar...).

dhume 15y ago
There would be many fewer cars around today, and our economy would be much slower were it not for advertising. Or we wouldn't have built sprawling suburbs that make cars necessary.
- bluekeybox 15y ago
  Thus failing to put to good use of one of the biggest assets the U.S. had in comparison to the rest of the world -- space and cheap land.
  - ericd 15y ago
    Is this an example of something that helps the economy (since your premise above was that advertising is very important for the economy)? It certainly doesn't help productivity for every family to have a large house to take care of, and most of the spending to outfit and run that house is ultimately a waste. A much better use would be, say, farming.
marshray 15y ago
Americans didn't buy into cars simply because of utility. They bought into cars because of the entire "lifestyle" image created around owning a car -- and this image was created in large part thanks to advertising campaigns. Nah. Show me a country with a similar low density as America where people don't buy cars almost as soon as they can afford them. The advertising was certainly prominent, but it didn't drive the fundamentals.
- akgerber 15y ago
  Most Americans don't live in particularly low-density areas. The Los Angeles metro area is about as dense as that of New York; the fact that LA is car-based whereas New York is based on rail is due to infrastructure choices made based on people's desire to drive more instead of walking or taking mass transit. That desire was in large part created by marketing portraying automobiles as signs of wealth, power, modernity, and of course sexual potency.