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I'm of the opinion that applying logic to advertising is a fruitless effort. The largest and most successful companies in the world regularly waste insane sums

by devmor 2y ago

I'm of the opinion that applying logic to advertising is a fruitless effort. The largest and most successful companies in the world regularly waste insane sums of money on avenues of advertisement that can't even be measured. I've sat in on meetings with marketing teams ordering hundreds of thousands of dollars of custom development work for ad campaigns with research entirely based on what I can only describe as "vibes". They will hire psychologists to tell them that flashing the color yellow while playing a tone in C-flat increases the viewer's desire to spend money on floral scents and no one in the room will question it. There are reasonable advertisements that would not annoy consumers, but those aren't what keep an industry of middle managers and scam artists alive.

autoexec 2y ago
> They will hire psychologists to tell them that flashing the color yellow while playing a tone in C-flat increases the viewer's desire to spend money on floral scents and no one in the room will question it. Sadly some of those psychologists aren't lying or scamming. There are all kinds of weaknesses and vulnerabilities in the human brain (some universal and some cultural) that can be exploited, at least often enough for it to be worth doing. There's an entire dark psychology industry around it and it involves human experimentation, including experiments on infants and children (https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/even-3-year-old-knows-brands-flna1C9443417 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/even-3-year-old-k...), research into centuries of real world data on what tends to work well for scammers, fraudsters, preachers, cult leaders, and politicians, and the cutting edge of neuroscience. I mean, yeah, some of it really is bullshit with very shitty science behind it, but it's easy (and tempting) to dismiss how effective and manipulative advertising is. We all want to think we're smart enough to see through it and are therefore immune, but like many optical illusions even when you know what's really going on your brain can't help but accept the lies. We're full of blind spots, cognitive biases, and hubris which is why such insane amounts of cash get pumped into ads and ad research. To an uncomfortable extent, it works. We can arm ourselves with knowledge and critical thinking skills, but the most important thing you can do to protect yourself is to just avoid advertising wherever and whenever you can.

by devmor 2y ago

autoexec 2y ago

> They will hire psychologists to tell them that flashing the color yellow while playing a tone in C-flat increases the viewer's desire to spend money on floral scents and no one in the room will question it. Sadly some of those psychologists aren't lying or scamming. There are all kinds of weaknesses and vulnerabilities in the human brain (some universal and some cultural) that can be exploited, at least often enough for it to be worth doing. There's an entire dark psychology industry around it and it involves human experimentation, including experiments on infants and children (https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/even-3-year-old-knows-brands-flna1C9443417 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/even-3-year-old-k...), research into centuries of real world data on what tends to work well for scammers, fraudsters, preachers, cult leaders, and politicians, and the cutting edge of neuroscience. I mean, yeah, some of it really is bullshit with very shitty science behind it, but it's easy (and tempting) to dismiss how effective and manipulative advertising is. We all want to think we're smart enough to see through it and are therefore immune, but like many optical illusions even when you know what's really going on your brain can't help but accept the lies. We're full of blind spots, cognitive biases, and hubris which is why such insane amounts of cash get pumped into ads and ad research. To an uncomfortable extent, it works. We can arm ourselves with knowledge and critical thinking skills, but the most important thing you can do to protect yourself is to just avoid advertising wherever and whenever you can.