5 ms·
Many wonderful paragraphs here, but to pull out perhaps a crux: > If you were advertising a car, was it better to show a picture of a car, or of a pretty woman
by aaronharnly 3y ago
Many wonderful paragraphs here, but to pull out perhaps a crux:
> If you were advertising a car, was it better to show a picture of a car, or of a pretty woman? If one was selling shirt collars, was it better to do so under the headline “Murder!” or the headline “Quality Shirt Collars”? To make a long story short (and to skip over the proto-pataphysical techniques by which Nixon established what we might call a “science of irrelevancy”), Nixon found that “irrelevant illustrations do attract more attention and hold interest longer than do relevant ones.” 8 Which is to say: systematically doing violence to sense raised revenue. This could be proven in his laboratory. Would it be wrong to say that we live, in many respects, in the world evolved from that finding?
- rubslopes 3y agoMaybe that's why there's a trend in mobile games ads in which the ad shows a gameplay that has nothing to do with the actual game. For instance: https://old.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/co8m3b/gardenscapes_mobile_ad_that_shows_gameplay_that/ https://old.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/co8m3b/garde...
- HankB99 3y agoThere are repeated ads on my (Android) phone touting free solar installation in my state, apparently done by or for women with tight sweaters and large breasts. I guess the ad worked on me. :-/
- Gigachad 3y agoThis is weirdly common on Twitter right now. Most of the ads seem to be mobile games and the actual video content never has anything to do with the game. The same game will be advertised with a huge range of random CGI videos.
- finger 3y agoThanks for sharing this. I have seen these ads numerous times, but I wasn’t aware that the actual gameplay was different. What a weird advertising tactic for a game.
- joshspankit 3y agoThat tells you what works short-term, but fails at telling you happens after people acclimate. Look at web ads: at first they grabbed attention, but now everyone ignores them out of habit which imo is a net negative.
- mathgeek 3y agoI recommend trying to actively watch just about any ad out there and trying to find one that doesn't show or sell you the idea of something unrelated to that product. They are rare. For example: most ads for prescription medicine these days try to show you folks or cartoons of people doing irrelevant activities. They do that because it makes folks feel a lot more positive than actually talking about the drugs.
- dylan604 3y agoI had bigPharma ads as much as the next person, but "irrelevant" might be a bit too harsh. For some of the things being targeted, just the implication that the prescription will allow you to do said irrelevant activities would be a huge selling point.
- JoshTriplett 3y ago> but now everyone ignores them out of habit which imo is a net negative People ignoring ads is a net positive for the world. Unfortunately, enough people still pay attention to them to make them economically viable.
- CatWChainsaw 3y agoBeing immune to pathological psyops is not a "net negative" unless you are the person benefiting from people's lack of immunity.
- joshspankit 3y agoEdit: By “net negative” I’m speaking in context of the post and therefore to the perspective of the advertiser.