6 ms·

Can I politely suggest that you share with us the holes you see in the arguments and how you see them? Whether or not Rand is any good at what he does or says w

Can I politely suggest that you share with us the holes you see in the arguments and how you see them? Whether or not Rand is any good at what he does or says will be clear by your expert disassembly of his arguments.

bliteben 5y ago
you don't even have to be polite can't believe I read that whole comment
- aerosmile 5y ago
  Rereading the post, I agree it came across as more personal than it should have been. I wish I was able to frame it more as a response to all the people advocating for alternative marketing ideas which frankly never work out. Instead, I brought in his own company into the narrative, which was below the belt. I know first hand how hard it is to get something to work, and how unlikely it is to happen time after time. I wish I could edit the comment, but HN won't let me at this point.
engineeringwoke 5y ago
People on this board love the idea that anyone who isn't an engineer is an idiot and everything that everyone else does that isn't writing code is somehow worthless. In broad strokes, they think that all people who do people-facing work are charlatans that are constantly trying to hide how worthless they are because talking to people, etc. can't possibly provide value. Then, they (like so), ask you to break down your arguments so they can pin the tail on the donkey that is the logical fallacy that they will use to discount your (almost certainly correct and informed) opinion. Unsurprisingly, those people are wrong and marketing works.
- photochemsyn 5y ago
  It's also fair to say that if you let the marketers drive business decisions it's a recipe for disaster. Pushing low-quality product out the door just to hit some quarterly sales goal, that's what marketers will push. Epic failures with disastrous long-term consequences are the typical result (Boeing MAX for example).
  - lukestevens 5y ago
    If you think the Boing 737 MAX disaster was caused by those idiots in marketing calling the shots then you just proved engineeringwoke’s point.
    - redis_mlc 5y ago
      Actually, the 737 MAX disaster was driven from the business side. Somebody promised Southwest $1 million per airframe if differences training was needed. The organization was too brittle to accept criticism from their eng. organization, as most are, until a crisis.
    - aerosmile 5y ago
      This comment is pure gold
    - photochemsyn 5y ago
      My understanding was that Boeing wanted to prevent Airbus from winning contracts and so pushed the schedule hard. That's the sales and marketing division talking isn't it?
  - rchaud 5y ago
    Are you saying Boeing's engineering problems could have been avoided if they cut their ad budget?
aerosmile 5y ago
- Brian's comments about Airbnb's approach to performance marketing are used to imply that Airbnb's lessons apply to other businesses. Very few businesses - especially those that start from small numbers and need to grow them - have 90% of their traffic mix come from repeat customers. Using Brian's comments helps fuel the narrative that brand marketing is a better investment than performance marketing, which is correct in some cases (Nike, Airbnb), and not in others (most startups). Also, as another member pointed out, Airbnb's performance marketing budget is still well over $200M/year, which no responsible/public company would spend if it wasn't returning a great ROAS. Finally, Airbnb is known for all sorts of marketing shenanigans in their early days, and they certainly can't take the credit for a pure brand play. - Calling performance marketing platforms a scam (repeatedly, both in the title and in the narrative) doesn't explain how those same performance marketing platforms are carrying the majority of traffic acquisition in most of the B2C companies that went public this year (and practically all of the DTC ones). Calling into question the accuracy of measurement is one thing. Calling it a scam is wrong and designed to rank on HN rather than to be reflective of the true value of those platforms. - As I pointed out in my original post, all you have to do is use incrementality studies and 98% of the criticism instantly goes away. Rand implies that you have to do your own studies (by eg, following Avinash Kaushik's methodology) which is 100% wrong - Facebook will do them for you if you reach a certain spend limit, or 3rd parties will as well with no spend limits. Also, from experience, this really becomes an issue once you spend meaningful amounts on two platforms at the same time. His rant on this subject has an iota of truth and a whole lot of sensationalism mixed together, and overall leads to wrong conslusions. - He conflates "paid search" with "all performance marketing platforms", including "paid social." It would have been helpful to point out that the challenges with branded terms are entirely isolated to paid search and have nothing to do with paid social. - My favorite sensationalist tactic: frame a strong accusation as a question. This way you get the clicks, but you can still cover your ass by linking to resources that with enough research would allow the reader to answer the question with a "No." But in lieu of that research, the implication is that the answer is a "Yes." You'll see this tactic used by less reputative media sources, and I was disappointed to see Rand do the same. I could go on but hopefully this will suffice.
- lostinquebec 5y ago
poetaster 5y ago
Hmmm. Marketing works!? Well having been a sucessfull .com era ad co. founder, I suceeded in raking in the cash of the uniniated (automobile, etc, so no tears) only to see companies literally obliterated by marketing. TV was then still 20 times the spend. Still, marketing had 0 clue. Fun to drink with at the theatre, sure. I was CTO, so, shrug? No, I was incensed and tried to talk other managers client side out of giving ME money. I know some clever people in marketing, but when they smell budget, it's a movie shoot in the sahara time. I do think things are better in some sense today. But it is a hungry beast, marketing. Oh, and lies and statistics.

bliteben 5y ago

you don't even have to be polite can't believe I read that whole comment

aerosmile 5y ago
Rereading the post, I agree it came across as more personal than it should have been. I wish I was able to frame it more as a response to all the people advocating for alternative marketing ideas which frankly never work out. Instead, I brought in his own company into the narrative, which was below the belt. I know first hand how hard it is to get something to work, and how unlikely it is to happen time after time. I wish I could edit the comment, but HN won't let me at this point.

engineeringwoke 5y ago

People on this board love the idea that anyone who isn't an engineer is an idiot and everything that everyone else does that isn't writing code is somehow worthless. In broad strokes, they think that all people who do people-facing work are charlatans that are constantly trying to hide how worthless they are because talking to people, etc. can't possibly provide value. Then, they (like so), ask you to break down your arguments so they can pin the tail on the donkey that is the logical fallacy that they will use to discount your (almost certainly correct and informed) opinion. Unsurprisingly, those people are wrong and marketing works.

photochemsyn 5y ago
It's also fair to say that if you let the marketers drive business decisions it's a recipe for disaster. Pushing low-quality product out the door just to hit some quarterly sales goal, that's what marketers will push. Epic failures with disastrous long-term consequences are the typical result (Boeing MAX for example).
- lukestevens 5y ago
  If you think the Boing 737 MAX disaster was caused by those idiots in marketing calling the shots then you just proved engineeringwoke’s point.
  - redis_mlc 5y ago
    Actually, the 737 MAX disaster was driven from the business side. Somebody promised Southwest $1 million per airframe if differences training was needed. The organization was too brittle to accept criticism from their eng. organization, as most are, until a crisis.
  - aerosmile 5y ago
    This comment is pure gold
  - photochemsyn 5y ago
    My understanding was that Boeing wanted to prevent Airbus from winning contracts and so pushed the schedule hard. That's the sales and marketing division talking isn't it?
- rchaud 5y ago
  Are you saying Boeing's engineering problems could have been avoided if they cut their ad budget?

aerosmile 5y ago

- Brian's comments about Airbnb's approach to performance marketing are used to imply that Airbnb's lessons apply to other businesses. Very few businesses - especially those that start from small numbers and need to grow them - have 90% of their traffic mix come from repeat customers. Using Brian's comments helps fuel the narrative that brand marketing is a better investment than performance marketing, which is correct in some cases (Nike, Airbnb), and not in others (most startups). Also, as another member pointed out, Airbnb's performance marketing budget is still well over $200M/year, which no responsible/public company would spend if it wasn't returning a great ROAS. Finally, Airbnb is known for all sorts of marketing shenanigans in their early days, and they certainly can't take the credit for a pure brand play. - Calling performance marketing platforms a scam (repeatedly, both in the title and in the narrative) doesn't explain how those same performance marketing platforms are carrying the majority of traffic acquisition in most of the B2C companies that went public this year (and practically all of the DTC ones). Calling into question the accuracy of measurement is one thing. Calling it a scam is wrong and designed to rank on HN rather than to be reflective of the true value of those platforms. - As I pointed out in my original post, all you have to do is use incrementality studies and 98% of the criticism instantly goes away. Rand implies that you have to do your own studies (by eg, following Avinash Kaushik's methodology) which is 100% wrong - Facebook will do them for you if you reach a certain spend limit, or 3rd parties will as well with no spend limits. Also, from experience, this really becomes an issue once you spend meaningful amounts on two platforms at the same time. His rant on this subject has an iota of truth and a whole lot of sensationalism mixed together, and overall leads to wrong conslusions. - He conflates "paid search" with "all performance marketing platforms", including "paid social." It would have been helpful to point out that the challenges with branded terms are entirely isolated to paid search and have nothing to do with paid social. - My favorite sensationalist tactic: frame a strong accusation as a question. This way you get the clicks, but you can still cover your ass by linking to resources that with enough research would allow the reader to answer the question with a "No." But in lieu of that research, the implication is that the answer is a "Yes." You'll see this tactic used by less reputative media sources, and I was disappointed to see Rand do the same. I could go on but hopefully this will suffice.

lostinquebec 5y ago

poetaster 5y ago

Hmmm. Marketing works!? Well having been a sucessfull .com era ad co. founder, I suceeded in raking in the cash of the uniniated (automobile, etc, so no tears) only to see companies literally obliterated by marketing. TV was then still 20 times the spend. Still, marketing had 0 clue. Fun to drink with at the theatre, sure. I was CTO, so, shrug? No, I was incensed and tried to talk other managers client side out of giving ME money. I know some clever people in marketing, but when they smell budget, it's a movie shoot in the sahara time. I do think things are better in some sense today. But it is a hungry beast, marketing. Oh, and lies and statistics.