alt Hacker News> Coming from a relatively hardened mindset, it is startling to understand how impressionable people must be for modern advertising to be worth the cost.
There's a lot of question as to how much advertising is actually worth the cost, at least in terms of actual sales. I suspect that many companies could scale back their spending on marketing substantially and never notice any difference in sales.
Advertising does more than push sales though, it also manipulates consumer perspectives and our culture. It sets expectations. It tries to make you feel inadequate, insecure, and unfulfilled. It modifies how we act and the ways we express ourselves. It changes how we see ourselves and the world. Maybe that is what's really worth the money.
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I think this is right on the nose. Advertising as it exists today is not so much about inducing customers to buy your product, as it is propaganda to convince people that your product holds a natural place in society.
When you view ads through this lens, the number of ads for things that consumers do not even directly purchase — like prescription drugs, or oil - makes a lot more sense.
Marketing ≠ Advertising ≠ Sales As a tech guy, it took me a lot longer than I like to admit to fully understand this. There is tons of money in advertising, but most of it is wasted: As the old saying goes, "I know half my advertising budget is wasted - the problem is I don't know which half!"
And for the record, the last one (sales) is what really matters. As another old saying goes, "Nothing happens until you get a purchase order."
Really aligning sales incentives with the company's goals is surprisingly rare, and seems much rarer now than it was 20 years ago becasue of digital media.
I’m sure we can trust the folks whose whole business model is “we’re real good at convincing people to spend their money” when they say their product is a super effective tool that every business owner should spend money on. Right?
My brother worked for Proctor & Gamble, which is a company whose success is built entirely on the magical effect of advertising.
As part of his training he had to run an advertising campaign for a minor P&G shampoo brand. Training for a finance position, not a product management position! Why would you make somebody in finance handle marketing for a shampoo? Because they need to understand the fundamental mechanics that drive the business. There's no such thing as a good or a bad ad. The only thing that matters is that you flash the name of your product into peoples' primitive lizard brain over and over and over. Pantene, Pantene, Pantene, Pantene. People buy commodity products, and are willing to pay more, solely based on whether they recognize the name or not. Humans have no defense against this.