"Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs."
-Banksy
I’d be curious to know if ads actually work as much as they are supposed to since they’re basically shoved down our throats. How many people have really gone and seen an ad and then said ‘that, I’m going to buy that’?
It’s more subtle than that. Marketing costs some companies millions of dollars per year. They wouldn’t be spending that money if marketing weren’t effective.
They have entire teams of full time employees whose job it is to try and psychologically manipulate you out of your money. Which honestly wouldn’t be so bad if it was just telling you about their product/service, but they know that the most effective way to sell you shit is to make you feel bad about yourself and your life, so you have to spend money to feel better.
And even that wouldn’t be so bad, except that the sheer amount of advertising that we get dumped on us daily at every turn effects us psychologically in ways that we don’t understand.
Anyways, I could go on and on - I really hate advertising - but I’ll try and find some resources written by professionals who can explain this better.
That’s what I wonder though, are those marketing teams really being effective or is it by coincidence that numbers go up on sales (maybe due to other factors like product quality or word of mouth - way more effective IMO than just forced ads; hell, ubiquity of things like coke could be a factor, too - and then just flooding the market is more effective than advertising) and then at the end of the year the marketing department just shows some progress it appropriates. Like firemen at a fire - them being there didn’t cause it.
Maybe if people believe something for long enough (in this case the effectiveness of plastering ads everywhere) they start seeing connections where there are none and start a whole field of study on this matter and drawing more non existant connections in an effort to self-preserve, conscious or not.
I may be living in a bubble trying to avoid ads and actively rebelling against them but I sort of refuse to believe that seeing somevody drink a coke in a commercial makes people go like ‘Hmm… that’s something I really want now’.
Advertising and marketing are massive industries, and they keep a close eye on their numbers to know what is effective or not. The effectiveness is definitely not a collective hallucination nor a coincidence. Advertising works, and the resource they are reaping is our insecurities and dissatisfaction with life.
I also try and avoid ads/be aware of them, but unfortunately knowing about psychological manipulation techniques doesn’t necessarily make one immune to them. From the placement of the ads, what time of day you see them, to the colours and design chosen, the imagery and lighting, etc etc etc - those are all very carefully chosen in order to manipulate you psychologically. And that’s not even getting into ads that pretend to be other forms of media, or targeted ads.
How to apply psychology in marketing from Forbes This helpful guide shamelessly describes a few techniques to use in advertising, which to me sound like pure emotional and psychological manipulation. Here’s a post about my favourite of those techniques: conditioning. We’re not much different from Pavlov’s dog.
This reminds me of something I read, that if you want men to buy something, just package it in a black tin. But I’d argue that while still marketing, that’s not actually advertising.
The way I see it, yeah, products do need some sort of appeal - usually sensory. Food tastes good, cars feel and look good. You’re less likely to buy mints in a paper bag vs a tin (though case in point - I buy Fisherman’s Friend in a bag, because I know it and oddly enough not through advertisement). I suppose the point I was contesting was mainly the intrusive advertising, like youtube ads and ads with click counters (is that still a thing?). I fear we’re becoming slowly like that one Black Mirror episode with the treadmills.
I think about that a lot - how advertising would look like in my “perfect world”. I’m just your average consumer, so what do I know. But in my fantasies I start with something like this:
-advertising should be consensual, meaning that advertising in public spaces would be banned. Maybe you’d still have to look at ads that are relevant to something you chose to do anyway - like vodka ads in a bar, or clothing ads in a mall.
-if you want to know if a product exists, you have to look it up, and go to their website, and there you will find all relevant information.
-Logos blurred out in media
-The quality of the product or service should speak for itself and most brand awareness would be spread by word of mouth (I have no idea how this would work in a world where online reviews exist and can be manipulated)
-All ads have to be marked clearly as an adI don’t know. I just know the current state of advertising adds to our misery and discontent. I see friends getting plastic surgery, loved ones drowning in things they bought online, colleagues going into debt for piles of clothes they never wear once, and I just think: this discontent with life, and need to consume, was manufactured and fostered and encouraged. There has to be a better way.
!["Asking for permission [to mess with advertising] is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head."](https://sopuli.xyz/pictrs/image/c62bf5a6-7a98-4b60-afd4-3e5931785d67.webp){kind=link}