4 ms·
Imagine there is a cause, mission, or vision that you care deeply about. And you want larger numbers of people to care about it, too. And you're willing to pa
by mvkel 2y ago
Imagine there is a cause, mission, or vision that you care deeply about.
And you want larger numbers of people to care about it, too.
And you're willing to pay someone to help you distribute the message that will persuade those people to care.
That's advertising.
There's a tobacco lobby. There's also an anti-tobacco lobby.
- add-sub-mul-div 2y agoImagine you're a small burger place that opened somewhere other than the center of town and you want people to at least know there's a new option besides slop from McDonald's.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoIn our world, where the advertisers are already making so much noise that the only way to be heard is to pay an advertiser to shout louder than the others... yes, that's probably what you have to do. But in the absence of all of that noise in the first place, I think we could design something that does a much better job than ads do. As it is you have to pit your bank account against McDonald's and compete for attention, but think about how much money you could save (or spend on tastier things) if it was instead the quality of your burger that determined how widely known you ended up being. I don't have the game theoretic secret sauce that would make that happen, but I believe that it's out there and that it would be cheaper and more effective than what we're doing if we just collectively stopped tolerating ads of any kind and focused on solving the where-can-I-get-a-good-burger type problems directly.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- AngryData 2y agoIn my experience nearly every decent product ive ever wanted I either sought out myself first or found through word-of-mouth, almost none of it through marketing materials which these days I completely disregard because it is 99.99% bullshit. And I believe word-of-mouth would be even more effective and useful if mass advertising simply didn't exist to pollute peoples thoughts and preferences with a bunch of deceptive marketing garbage. I firmly believe over 99% of marketing could be easily replaced by simple word-of-mouth if it wasn't drowned out by marketing materials and advertisements.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoAgreed. If anything, excessive ads are an indication of a product whose design or implementation was neglected because it's easier to paper over the deficit with ads.
- yetihehe 2y agoStand on a corner and approach some people holding a big plate with tasty things. If those things are tasty enough, you will have some free advertising to their friends (almost like influencers, but more organic).
- drawkward 2y agoas if we don't have the internet for that. at this stage of communications development, advertising should all be on a pull-based, rather than push-based model.
- gausswho 2y agoAnd that person you pay fakes the numbers on your invoice, because everyone else does.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoI understand that, but what's your point? It doesn't get less sleazy when it happens to be a cause that I like. Maybe I have terrible taste. Why should I be allowed to subject people to my terrible taste without their consent? Why should being rich increase my ability to do so? If it's actually such a good idea it should be possible to spread it consensually--that is, unless the intervening space was weaponized against us by advertisers.