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Marketing and advertising is largely a propoganda game anymore. I don't disagree that there's value in awareness, discovery, and solution/need matching--I don't

Marketing and advertising is largely a propoganda game anymore. I don't disagree that there's value in awareness, discovery, and solution/need matching--I don't think any engineer is going to be upset if you hand them the perfect solution to their problem at a reasonable cost: they're going to take it and use it and move on. The issue is that those marketing and advertising are only partly about correct match making, they're also about deceit and the underlying goal is to drive revenue and ultimately profit in. Correctly matchmaking a need with your solution is just a side effect, ultimately they want to maximize how much they can extract from the population. Sometimes that's in providing a solid recurring solution, sometimes that deceiving someone to grab a few short term purchases, sometimes it's convincing someone they need something they don't and an array of other unscrupulous strategies. The issue is that in a competitive market, lying and deceit is often a relatively low cost effective strategy. You ultimately end with someone in the market who will stretch the truth to make their solution appear better than it is. Competitive forces make better solutions lower the bar and follow suit to some degree, either inflating their solution or debunking dubious claims from others (not too common due to liable cases). So we get the race to the bottom of advertising which is why now I can't believe anything that isn't highly regulated and even then have to pick through each word for ambiguities that may be hiding some truth. I'm perfectly fine if you provide me a nice list of solutions I need that make my life easier at a reasonable cost. I'm not so fine when your goal is to pretend to do this while just looking for ways to extract wealth from me.

scubbo 4y ago
This perfectly articulates a lot of frustration I've felt with marketing, and why "why don't you want to be told about things you would enjoy?" is not a good argument in its favour. Thank you.
cm2012 4y ago
In the end, centralized sources of business information just don't work. Top down planned economies don't do as well for a variety of reasons. Allowing companies to market themselves with some regulations is messy but better for the world as a whole.
- deleted 4y ago
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DoctorNick 4y ago
"anymore"? It's ALWAYS been propaganda. The term "public relations" was coined by Edward Bernays because "propaganda" had taken on a negative term, and he readily admitted this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dtg-qFPYDE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dtg-qFPYDE
- pessimizer 4y ago
  He created a very typical English language split. Two terms for the same thing, but one mean the "bad" or the "cheap" kind, and the other means "good" or "fancy." It sometimes makes our arguments for something exactly follow (in substance) our arguments against something, except when we're for a thing we use a different set of words than we use when we're against the thing. It's also the reason why there are so many stupid arguments about the "real definition" of a term like "propaganda" or "oligarch" or "terrorist"; entire arguments hinge on just repeating the bad word. More characters have been spilled on the definition of "propaganda" than have been written about physics. Propaganda is some idea that you want to propagate. That's it. If I want people to think Tide makes clothes whiter than any other detergent, that's propaganda.
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stonemetal12 4y ago
> lying and deceit is often a relatively low cost effective strategy Only in the short term. Eventually you end up where we are now, no one believes anything you say. Then the cost of chasing customers rises because you have to come up more ways to get your lies to come off as not advertising.
PradeetPatel 4y ago
>the underlying goal is to drive revenue and ultimately profit in. Correctly matchmaking a need with your solution is just a side effect As someone who worked in public relations, I'd like to play the devil's advocate for a moment. The ultimate goal for all business is to drive revenue, and it is imperative that this is achieved in a legal manner that abides with the local regulatory/compliance requirements. Public relations provide a crucial role to a business by expanding its market reach through raising awareness and educating the public on the potential benefits of a product. Other times they shield a company from potential negative, and often unjustified public outrage by carefully shaping the social narrative. At the end of the day, it is up to our governments to create legislations that provide guidance and restrictions on what's allowed in advertisements. It has been established that a legal imperative, and thus a financial incentive will always triumph over the perceived "moral" choice, which often provides suboptimal value to the shareholders.
- GrinningFool 4y ago
  > The ultimate goal for all business is to drive revenue, and it is imperative that this is achieved in a legal manner that abides with the local regulatory/compliance requirements. This belief that "if nobody said it's wrong, it's okay" means driving "legal revenue" is always a race for loopholes. I had a disturbing look at the everyday work of a PR disaster management company, and watched how they subtly directed the entire flow of a minor internet firestorm the way they wanted it to go. Few people saw what was happening, including some of those who knew that a PR firm was involved and were on the lookout for it. If this is something that individual small-to-medium- sized companies can afford, what are the big players doing that we never see? And if we never see it, how does it get regulated? But it's OK, because there is no rule against it.
openfuture 4y ago
Frustrating thing is that "if you want to go far go together" so everyone needs to finish converging before we can move on. Here is my lie: https://sr.ht/~ilmu/tala.saman/ https://sr.ht/~ilmu/tala.saman/
deleted 4y ago
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scubbo 4y ago

This perfectly articulates a lot of frustration I've felt with marketing, and why "why don't you want to be told about things you would enjoy?" is not a good argument in its favour. Thank you.

cm2012 4y ago

In the end, centralized sources of business information just don't work. Top down planned economies don't do as well for a variety of reasons. Allowing companies to market themselves with some regulations is messy but better for the world as a whole.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

DoctorNick 4y ago

"anymore"? It's ALWAYS been propaganda. The term "public relations" was coined by Edward Bernays because "propaganda" had taken on a negative term, and he readily admitted this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dtg-qFPYDE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dtg-qFPYDE

pessimizer 4y ago
He created a very typical English language split. Two terms for the same thing, but one mean the "bad" or the "cheap" kind, and the other means "good" or "fancy." It sometimes makes our arguments for something exactly follow (in substance) our arguments against something, except when we're for a thing we use a different set of words than we use when we're against the thing. It's also the reason why there are so many stupid arguments about the "real definition" of a term like "propaganda" or "oligarch" or "terrorist"; entire arguments hinge on just repeating the bad word. More characters have been spilled on the definition of "propaganda" than have been written about physics. Propaganda is some idea that you want to propagate. That's it. If I want people to think Tide makes clothes whiter than any other detergent, that's propaganda.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

stonemetal12 4y ago

> lying and deceit is often a relatively low cost effective strategy Only in the short term. Eventually you end up where we are now, no one believes anything you say. Then the cost of chasing customers rises because you have to come up more ways to get your lies to come off as not advertising.

PradeetPatel 4y ago

>the underlying goal is to drive revenue and ultimately profit in. Correctly matchmaking a need with your solution is just a side effect As someone who worked in public relations, I'd like to play the devil's advocate for a moment. The ultimate goal for all business is to drive revenue, and it is imperative that this is achieved in a legal manner that abides with the local regulatory/compliance requirements. Public relations provide a crucial role to a business by expanding its market reach through raising awareness and educating the public on the potential benefits of a product. Other times they shield a company from potential negative, and often unjustified public outrage by carefully shaping the social narrative. At the end of the day, it is up to our governments to create legislations that provide guidance and restrictions on what's allowed in advertisements. It has been established that a legal imperative, and thus a financial incentive will always triumph over the perceived "moral" choice, which often provides suboptimal value to the shareholders.

GrinningFool 4y ago
> The ultimate goal for all business is to drive revenue, and it is imperative that this is achieved in a legal manner that abides with the local regulatory/compliance requirements. This belief that "if nobody said it's wrong, it's okay" means driving "legal revenue" is always a race for loopholes. I had a disturbing look at the everyday work of a PR disaster management company, and watched how they subtly directed the entire flow of a minor internet firestorm the way they wanted it to go. Few people saw what was happening, including some of those who knew that a PR firm was involved and were on the lookout for it. If this is something that individual small-to-medium- sized companies can afford, what are the big players doing that we never see? And if we never see it, how does it get regulated? But it's OK, because there is no rule against it.

openfuture 4y ago

Frustrating thing is that "if you want to go far go together" so everyone needs to finish converging before we can move on. Here is my lie: https://sr.ht/~ilmu/tala.saman/ https://sr.ht/~ilmu/tala.saman/

deleted 4y ago

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