Are Advertising and Marketing Pseudosciences?

[just Reading a post]

I can vividly remember paying a lot of money to have people to teach me things they were obviously completely disconnected from. More than once.

You are absolutely 100% correct. Most of the intro to marketing is basically, just outdated platitudes and stiff adherence to books that were written in the 80s.

I think that most people you see teaching or talking about marketing don't know the first thing about it.

Again you are correct.
I am not even sure i know every little trick, every change of interests and tastes of the general public. And my current job concerns it.

And if we begin to consider digital marketing, I think there is no leg to stand on to say it's a pseudo science, unless you wanna say data science is.

We have exact tools to show click throughs and purchases. So we can quantify ad effectiveness. Based on that. I think the claim that the """""pseudoscience"""" comes in is the arguments over how the public react to the ad. Like the new Jaguar ad.
They will be able to tell who and how many clicked through the ads and went on to complete a purchase. But like i explained above. Most people do the retard argument of all press is good press. So they seem to count at people sharing the ad around and laughing at it as some sort of effective marketing. Yes it gets eyeballs on the ad. But they seem to forget the mouth that comes with the eyeballs saying "look at these raging faggots, who fuck would buy a Jaguar now".
Or as Kant put it Feels over Reals. lol

Today people see so many ads that some of them even blur for me. I feel that we are at the digital equivalent of the cyberpunk city. With the countless Neon signs, that seem to be growing around each other. I have 0 idea how people even see the ads we produce.

 

[gobbles]

In economics, advertising is typically classified as either informative or persuasive. Both cases are effective but have different market results and optimization. In either case, an ad is either raising a consumer's happiness from consumption or lowering a consumer's cost of purchase.

In short, the math works. The assumptions are generally sound, and furthermore they're borne out in real life. Taco Bell didn't introduce the Doritos Locos Tacos out of culinary curiosity: a novelty brings people into the restaurant and sells other, more profitable, food, too. Of course, when TB introduces its new food, it also has to make consumers aware that a new product exists--through advertising. The advertising drives the consumption.

 

[rel=alternate]

You are absolutely 100% correct. Most of the intro to marketing is basically, just outdated platitudes and stiff adherence to books that were written in the 80s.

Again you are correct.
I am not even sure i know every little trick, every change of interests and tastes of the general public. And my current job concerns it.

We have exact tools to show click throughs and purchases. So we can quantify ad effectiveness. Based on that. I think the claim that the """""pseudoscience"""" comes in is the arguments over how the public react to the ad. Like the new Jaguar ad.
They will be able to tell who and how many clicked through the ads and went on to complete a purchase. But like i explained above. Most people do the retard argument of all press is good press. So they seem to count at people sharing the ad around and laughing at it as some sort of effective marketing. Yes it gets eyeballs on the ad. But they seem to forget the mouth that comes with the eyeballs saying "look at these raging faggots, who fuck would buy a Jaguar now".
Or as Kant put it Feels over Reals. lol

Today people see so many ads that some of them even blur for me. I feel that we are at the digital equivalent of the cyberpunk city. With the countless Neon signs, that seem to be growing around each other. I have 0 idea how people even see the ads we produce.

We agree on many things, but I refuse to accept that Jaguar is an example of marketing.

It is a desperate move it looks like. Something to kick up interest in a fading brand. Had they made an actual Jaguar ad, nobody would have given it a second thought. Because there is nothing much else they have but the name.

 

[just Reading a post]

but I refuse to accept that Jaguar is an example of marketing.

Well someone has to be the bad example. And Jaguar, decided to go full retard and volunteer. lol

 

[rel=alternate]

Well someone has to be the bad example. And Jaguar, decided to go full retard and volunteer. lol

When someone has their back against the wall, I suppose any strategy is a good strategy. Better come out swinging when you still can.

In this case, I have to admit it's quite over the top. I am not sure where they are thinking they are heading with this. Best move would be to disavow. But it does not seem they are heading this way.

At the same time, bad marketing is not representative of the profession as a whole. Especially not if you look at the carcasses that are somehow still moving.

ETA Software is where it's at in the automotive industry, and I am pretty sure they can't perform, let alone compete. They are in big trouble most likely.

 

[MagneticTowels]

Not a single one of you pseudoscience peddlers can answer these simple questions:

1. If advertising and marketing work, logic dictates that as more and more people buy the brand, the need for advertising and marketing should decrease. Instead, it's increased. Why is that?
2. Cigarettes aren't allowed to be advertised on TV. How do tobacco companies stay afloat?
3. Show me the logical, straightforward process to reviving dead products, fads, and/or memes using advertising and marketing.

 

[Hunter Hearst Helmsley]

All social science runs into the same problems:

(1) Humans are adaptable. They change their minds. When a field like marketing is trying to harm them by taking their money often for products that they don’t need or are harmful, they are motivated to change.

(2) Humans are aware they are being studied.

(3) Humans can study the scientists back.

If a God who got annoyed with scientists decided to change the way the natural world worked because he was annoyed that scientists were finding exploits to do things like make nukes, then science wouldn’t work. Humans can do that shit as far as their own viewpoints.

Even surveys on topics as simple as “Which of these two candidates will you vote for?” are providing misleading results.

Economics, psychology, sociology…all of it breaks down into game theory but the opponent can read the entire strategy too which is when your strategy will break down.

 

[protomartyr]

Meaningful differentiation between science and pseudoscience is not possible and taking for granted that it is gives more credit to corrupt and ineffectual institutions than they deserve.

That said, clearly the marketing guys are on to something. Society has been transformed almost beyond recognition since Edward Bernays invented modern advertising and PR. Whether they understand what they're doing and why it produces the results it does is a different question.

1. If advertising and marketing work, logic dictates that as more and more people buy the brand, the need for advertising and marketing should decrease. Instead, it's increased. Why is that?

Consumer retention.

 

[MagneticTowels]

Consumer retention.

Not a very promising explanation.

 

[National Defense Advocate]

Yes.
"Bro I'm heckin manipulating you to buy my stuff bro, I'm making you want to worship Niggers with subliminal messages!"

 

[protomartyr]

Not a very promising explanation.

Coke has had a chokehold on the global cola market basically forever, but were losing ground to Pepsi in the 80s because of the latter's effective marketing. Then you had the New Coke fiasco and they clawed all the ground back by marketing the return of Old Coke, the exact same product that had been getting less and less popular in the first place. A lot of the advertising industry is a scam but it's clearly doing something some of the time. And as I mentioned initially, I don't think you can ignore the transformation of the economy and society at large since the invention of modern marketing.

 

[MagneticTowels]

A lot of the advertising industry is a scam but it's clearly doing something some of the time.

Oh, it is? Is it too far to call it a pseudoscience?

 

[protomartyr]

Oh, it is? Is it too far to call it a pseudoscience?

The distinction between science and pseudoscience is meaningless. Was Galileo pseudoscientific when he used a weird metal and glass tube nobody had ever heard of before to prove the Earth orbited the sun? He wasn't adhering to the scientific standards of the time and he outright ignored a load of evidence that contradicted his findings.

Advertising/marketing/PR have clear, measurable effects on public behaviour. The fact that a lot of firms are bad at it doesn't negate that.

 

[MagneticTowels]

Advertising/marketing/PR have clear, measurable effects on public behaviour.

Burden of proof is on you. Go ahead and provide your evidence.

 

[Toji Suzuhara]

Not a single one of you pseudoscience peddlers can answer these simple questions:

1. If advertising and marketing work, logic dictates that as more and more people buy the brand, the need for advertising and marketing should decrease. Instead, it's increased. Why is that?

Because other companies also do advertising and people tend to forget about things.

2. Cigarettes aren't allowed to be advertised on TV. How do tobacco companies stay afloat?

Because tobacco is an addictive substance and they can advertise elsewhere.

3. Show me the logical, straightforward process to reviving dead products, fads, and/or memes using advertising and marketing.

If people liked something in the past but forgot about it over time, advertisement can make them remember the thing that they liked. Of course you don't simply advertise the old product again, it has to have something new to successfully come back

 

[MagneticTowels]

Because other companies also do advertising and people tend to forget about things.

So in a saturated market, advertising and marketing are completely ineffective. In a monopoly market, advertising and marketing wouldn't be required.

If people liked something in the past but forgot about it over time, advertisement can make them remember the thing that they liked. Of course you don't simply advertise the old product again, it has to have something new to successfully come back

So why are there dead products, fads and memes? Those mean a huge loss of money for the company.

 

[protomartyr]

Burden of proof is on you. Go ahead and provide your evidence.

I already gave the example of the Coke Wars, which is as cut and dry as you can possibly get.

There's also the very first instance of a modern marketing gimmick, Ed Bernays' Torches of Freedom campaign which increased the number of female smokers by hundreds of percentage points over a few years.

And the whole consumer society that we live in, which didn't exist until modern marketing was invented in the 1920s.

 

[MagneticTowels]

There's also the very first instance of a modern marketing gimmick, Ed Bernays' Torches of Freedom campaign which increased the number of female smokers by hundreds of percentage points over a few years.

How did Ed Bernays do it? Explain.

 

[Toji Suzuhara]

So in a saturated market, advertising and marketing are completely ineffective. In a monopoly market, advertising and marketing wouldn't be required.

In saturated markets it's less effective than in a growing market, but it's still necessary as the competition would kick you out of it first if you don't do marketing. In a monopoly it's not required to advertise the existing products, but new products would always need to be advertised due to both the tendency that consumers have towards conformism and the fact that rival products may appear and steal large sections of the market.

So why are there dead products, fads and memes? Those mean a huge loss of money for the company.

Because of technological or cultural innovations that shift the necessities or percieved necessities of the consumers, causing old products to fall behind. For example, you will never be as comercially successful as an smartphone if you are selling telegraphs, no matter how much advertisment you do. Honestly you should just look at the Consoomer thread and see why people act like that

 

[protomartyr]

How did Ed Bernays do it? Explain.

From memory, women didn't smoke cigarettes very much before the 20s as it was considered a masculine thing to do. So Bernays was hired by a cigarette company that wanted to crack that market and have half the population's market share to itself. He then hired a bunch of women who were going to be on a big parade float in New York to all light up cigarettes at the same time in view of the news cameras, then go around to the press saying they were doing it for feminism. He planted the "torches of freedom" headline with a sympathetic journalist and created a mental association between cigarettes and the women's liberation movement, causing the feminists of the time to take up smoking as a countercultural statement.