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Imagine 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 f

Imagine 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 ago
In 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 ago
In 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 ago
  Agreed. 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 ago
Stand 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 ago
as 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.

Imagine 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 ago

In 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 ago

In 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 ago
Agreed. 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 ago

Stand 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 ago

as 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.