Hacker News Reader

What's frightening is that advertising does work on all of us, even when we find it offensive.

I buy warehouse store house-brand laundry detergent, but if you put me on Family Feud and asked me to name a detergent brand, it'd be Tide.

View on HN

Name/brand recognition doesn't mean it "worked". In order for it to have worked, you need to actually spend money on the product or cause someone else to spend money on the product.

I'm reasonably certain that advertising works on most people, even if they don't realize it. Being told a modified and heavily-biased narrative of the world repeatedly, for literal hours a day is likely to have an effect, even if it's subtle.

Maybe you're one of the lucky people that advertising truly does not work on, and fair enough, but I seriously doubt that these big megacorporations would spend billions of dollars on ads if there weren't some measurable effect on a majority of people.

I call everything by the name brand, but only buy the store brand.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com