The claims made in adverts are so often so far out of reality that at least I don’t believe in what they claim unless I see it with my own eyes. In fact I am less likely to be convinced by advertisers to buy the products they peddle as I am to not to buy.
The boy that cried wolf. That’s how I feel about them.
What do you think?
Yep, my opinion is that the claims of the product(s) being advertised are nothing more than a baldfaced lie
I need an edited Hosts file for reality, to block all advertising at it’s source
Not only that, but advertising’s lost faith in us. Look at all the lame concept campaigns that don’t have dick to do with promoting the brand, and often don’t even help you* remember* the brand.
At this point I suspect it’s all just marketers marketing to marketers anyway. The viewers are just eyeballs with numbers on 'em.
I wonder if all that prisoner’s dilemma stuff would apply here. As in, if both advertisers decide to be truthful (in this case with the public), they may both get a moderate payoff, but if one cheats (lies out his bunghole), he gets the jackpot while the one who attempted to remain honest about his product’s claims sees his sales plummet. But if they both lie and BS their way through the ads they both suffer in the long run, as eventually nobody believes either. Because this kind of real-world situation doesn’t have the tidy payoffs you see in the classic scenarios (specifically it may not necessarily be zero-sum), I don’t know how much you can apply them here, but I think it may have some relevance.
John DiFool makes a good point. In a similar vein, the situation also has some parallels to the tragedy of the commons (link below). Although the mechanism is a little different, basically when everyone (or many people) acts in their own short-term self-interest the whole system erodes (even though there is a short-term benefit to be had by being selfish before the other guy). This model is probably most applicable to one-off transactions, though, such as ordering an egg peeler based on an infomercial. For repeat purchases, where buyers can easily switch to competing products, there is little to be gained. No matter how cute the babies on your commercial are, if your diapers leak people will stop buying them.
Are you saying I won’t be able to tow and airplane with my truck? That Axe body spray won’t make hot girls want to sex me up in elevators? I thought it was only a matter of time…
Advertising still gets to a lot of people. The way you think advertising is supposed to work - they give you info on their product and you decide whether to buy or not based on the info - is not how advertisers operate.
Nike doesn’t have so many customers because they convinced them that their shoes are the most efficient for sports. They simply convinced people that everyone good at sports wears Nike. That was enough. No need to think about the next logical step in that argument - whether the shoes are actually the best shoes for sports.
No one takes ads literally any more, true, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t buying their products.
It’s not that I don’t take them at their word that I’ll have Venus Williams’ body if I buy a pair of Nike, it’s that I don’t believe in their products at all. Advertising turns me off. I buy whatever product does not advertise (or I haven’t seen it) over the one that does if the prices are similar.
I have been burned too many times (And I will never, ever, buy some of the As Seen on TV products type. Once was enough.
Word of mouth, it’s the way to go. Make a product that works and doesn’t cost a fortune. My friends will tell me about it.
Yes, as I understand it, the vast majority of advertising today is designed to influence, not how you think about a product, but how you feel about the product.
Considering how much money is spent on advertising in all its various forms, it must be effective.
In a sense, one of advertising’s major strategies is to provide pseudo word-of-mouth. At the unconscious level, people’s brains don’t always clearly distinguish between what “my friends” told me about and what “that smiling, trustworthy-looking woman on TV who talked the way my friends talk to me” told me about.
They do even more than provide pseudo word-of-mouth. Grey Goose actually sent people into popular bars in order to get others to buy the drink. From what I hear, they became really popular after one of the girls from Sex and the City ordered a Grey Goose Cosmo on TV.
I’ve seen some of the salesgirls for the Russian vodka Russian Standard. They are both stunningly gorgeous and charismatic. You drop them in any bar and the whole place will be ordering Russian Standard in no time.
I can’t lose what I’ve never had.