3 ms·
Normal humans don't try to communicate directly with each other through the media.
by anigbrowl 3y ago
Normal humans don't try to communicate directly with each other through the media.
- tptacek 3y agoHave you ever been on public transit in DC? There are billboards all over the place (or were a decade ago when I was there last) that are clearly sales efforts targeting like 4 people. It's not that weird.
- csteubs 3y agoExtremely accurate. L3Harris pumped so much ad money into the walkways at Dulles I'm surprised they don't have naming rights to a terminal. There was a time not too long ago where you couldn't listen to WTOP without hearing Mitre and ManTech ads with the term "Digital Twin".
- tptacek 3y agoWhich like, seems entirely rational? You're a sales team pursuing a deal with an 8-9 figure outcome, of course you would buy a billboard on on the decision maker's commute, it's a rounding error expense.
- csteubs 3y agoCompletely rational. It makes sense that an area with a highest concentration of defense/government contractors would see a ton of ads geared towards the procurement folks. I grew up in the beltway and interned with some bigger defense contractors in college, just pointing out that it's a phenomenon unique to the DMV area (with some more memorable examples).
- g8oz 3y agoAgain, not normal humans.
- morelisp 3y agoAbsolutely more normal than someone paranoid they might reveal their MBTI.
- anigbrowl 3y agoI have not, though this doesn't surprise me from seeing how lobbyists buy ads on TV and the net. What I'm saying is that the people paying $$$ to communicate with US Senators or Fortune 500 CEOs like that are operating on a different level from regular people. If you write a letter to the newspaper, you might hope to influence one person, or the general audience of the paper. If you feel so strongly about something that you compose an op-ed, you'll also have to do the work of persuading a feature editor to publish it (although this isn't too hard, if it seems like it fills the news hole). That's a bit less accessible than a letter to the editor. If you're buying full page ads, you're leveraging capital that most people don't have to go outside of regular interpersonal communication channels.
- tptacek 3y agoI think they're operating on the level of people who are working to close deals worth 8-9 figures who know exactly where the 4 decision makers they're targeting are going to be at 8:30AM and 5:30PM. There's not much more to it than that; the only real observation to make here is "these deals are worth a lot of money". I've priced doing billboards just for funsies --- to make a (snarky) point, not to make money. It's not that expensive! Also: how could it be? Look at some of the terrible billboards out there. There are a series of I-55 billboards advertising a single self-published book of poetry. Your original statement was "normal humans don't try to communicate directly with each other through the media". I think you're using a pretty idiosyncratic definition of "normal" there. The phenomenon you're labeling abnormal is I think actually pretty common.
- morelisp 3y agoWhile creepier, tbh, that is also not actually very unusual for the kinds of contracts Palantir takes on.
- staticautomatic 3y agoB2B companies do this via LinkedIn ads on the regular.