Comment by thomaskcr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thomaskcr | Hacker News Reader

I don't get the big deal on ads - I find the ad-block crowd dramatic, entitled and annoying and the internet without ads sounds like a huge pain (basically only going to sites I am subscribed to or that have organic advertising instead of explicit ads).

Just thinking back to my childhood, the things/toys other children got had a much bigger affect on me than what was advertised on TV. I think this is a non-issue.

Maybe I overestimate people, but I don't really see how by the time you would be more influenced by ads/media than your peers you haven't figured out that the person creating that ad is paid to sell you that item regardless of their personal feelings, the truth, etc. They're a way to find new things - I never even knew a product like "Power Swabs" existed until I heard their ad. I didn't just buy them, when I got home I looked up their reviews and decided against the purchase.

I've discovered a lot of stuff through ads, honestly mostly through targeted ones online - I don't really think of everything that makes my life better. I don't know how people are narcissistic enough to believe they will independently think of everything they ever want so that they can research a company that makes that. As long as you are cognizant of the motivations of the person creating that advertisement - why live a life afraid of the effect advertising may have on you?

Sadly, what you say is only a small aspect of Advertising, or should I say, marketing? The major share of it is manipulative and geared towards creating a need or preferences towards a particular product.

My argument is that, we as a society, should grew some form of resistance against such manipulations. Why? Because when a society responds to manipulation and marketing much better than the actual quality of the product, where is the incentive for the companies to improve the quality of the actual product? Hence all the efforts that should ideally go towards the creation of a better product goes into more aggressive marketing.

One can already see this happening with the blockbuster movies. Big studios start hyping up big releases as early as 2 years and continue to maintain the hype by releasing trailer and trailers of trailers, articles about how the director is a master of the craft and how the movie is going to be insane. But when you see the movie, it will be often mediocre. But the movie will be a hit regardless.

Another example. When you can influence doctors and can make then write prescriptions of your companies drug, does it make sense to spend more money improving the drug or spend a fraction of that amount, increasing marketing towards the doctors?

So I think if we grow more susceptible to such manipulations, the quality of things will continue to go down..

If more marketing results in more sales, that's what they're going to do. Living a life paranoid about marketing seems like a severe overreaction -- why not just be a more discerning customer? It's pretty clear the vast, vast majority of sales are driven by marketing and not quality - to the point that quality in a lot of industries is considered a niche. Living a life afraid of marketing and feeling like a victim seems a lot worse than buying some crappy stuff. The more positive use of your energy in my opinion is just being a more discerning customer.

> One can already see this happening with the blockbuster movies. Big studios start hyping up big releases as early as 2 years and continue to maintain the hype by releasing trailer and trailers of trailers, articles about how the director is a master of the craft and how the movie is going to be insane. But when you see the movie, it will be often mediocre. But the movie will be a hit regardless.

This is the movie industry reacting to a changing market more than anything else in my opinion. Movies are just moving towards the new LCD of people who will actually pay for movies. People are watching less movies, and lets face it a lot of the people who enjoy the types of movies I assume you enjoy (I am just assuming we have similar taste) are people who are likely to pirate -- the movie industry isn't going to cater towards a demographic that is relatively unlikely to pay for their content.

People obviously enjoy the behind the scenes stuff, so its a pretty obvious move to give more access to the public "faces" for your movie (namely director and major stars).

Releasing trailers early and gauging interest lets them know how much money to sink into the movie -- they need a higher hit rate than they've had in the past to make money on their "portfolio". So obviously they are going to change the process and move towards safer movies (reboots are becoming more frequent for example).

> The major share of it is manipulative and geared towards creating a need or preferences towards a particular product.

Okay? Isn't that basically the definition of marketing? The entire formula is the more people that know your product and feel like they need it, the more people buy it.

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