Likewise, advertising on its own at its core is useful: there might be something that adds value to your life that someone else is trying to provide and the only missing link is that you don't know about it.
In both cases, it seems totally fine to have strict guardrails about what kinds of practices we deem not okay (e.g. banning advertising to children, or banning physical ads larger than some size or in some locations), but the extreme take of the article felt like it intentionally left no room for nuance.
>What the advertiser needs to know is not what is right about the product but what is wrong about the buyer. And so the balance of business expenditures shifts from product research to market research, which means orienting business away from making products of value and toward making consumers feel valuable. The business of business becomes pseudo-therapy; the consumer, a patient reassured by psychodramas.[2]
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
[2]: Technopoly by Neil Postman
But, I’ll play along for a moment: If trying to convince people they need something that oftentimes they simply don’t isn’t manipulation, then what is it? It isn’t simply informative because it’s attempting to change one’s mind.
It becomes very clear when you move to a different country where you don't speak the language. Suddenly, advertisers cannot tell you that you need their products. And it is very emancipating mentally.
Journalists exist.
The best way to learn about new products is through influencers/reviewers/experts in their field. I'd even say its superior, which is why advertising companies ~sponsor~ bribe influencers to promote their products. Companies can also promote a product by sending it to reviewers.
So ads are not the only way to inform consumers, and the benefits IMO don't outweigh the cost.
In the same sentence, you give a possible solution and the reason why it wouldn't work.
Ban ads and companies are going to pay more and more for sponsored content to the point you can't differentiate what is legit from what is not.
Many “influencers” would have to go back to being amateurs. That’s ok. Some would accept backhanders, but they risk prosecution, which is actually possible [0].
[0] https://www.nzherald.co.nz/kahu/government-orders-maori-infl...
This would also include down propaganda on social media.
We could then work backwards to define exceptions such as politicians speaking in moderated debates, signage in shops, etc...
Defining this correctly will be difficult, but that's the case with any law. GDPR was watered down, and I'm still glad it's there.
No I don’t think so. I would genuinely guess that 97% of the ads I see are irrelevant garbage or, more commonly, bids by products I know to raise awareness to increase the probability of their sale. I discover the vast majority of what I care about through word of mouth and I suspect I’d be fine without ads. There are so many negative externalities that it’s actually ridiculous.
People who come across the product in a shop or in/on a market.
Reading (unpaid) reviews.
There are vastly many ways that unbiased, factual information about a new product can be disseminated to those who are looking for it that are not advertising.
Also, that we won't be able to make it perfect is not an argument against trying to improve.
Anyone?
This whole “advertising is useful” thing sounds like the spherical cow of marketing to me. It might make sense in abstract but it doesn’t reflect reality.
But it only works where you have specialized focus and experienced/informed consumers that are able to separate the sizzle from the steak. For example, doctors and other medical professionals are generally well qualified to assess the claims of pharmaceutical advertising, consumers are not - even though I am comfortable reading the fine print in such ads and even reading papers about clinical trials, I still rate my evaluative ability as mediocre compared to a professional.
Mass market advertising for general consumers is generally cancer, imho.
I hate the step after raking where you have to use the rake and one hand to carry the leaves to the bin. There was an ad for "rake hands" where you just hold a small hand-formed rake in each hand and scoop them both.
Twenty bucks, vastly improved yardwork experience, and I would have literally never thought to look for something like that.
Also: sales. I have bought things in sales that I would not have bought otherwise (because its value to me is higher than the sale price but lower than the normal price) where I was only aware of the sales from ads.
If it were a truly demotic activity you would have a point. But as it is, lobbying (in the US at least) is almost exclusively by/for large/moneyed interests, and the part of it which isn't is considerably less effective than that which is.
That you don't bother engaging and others do doesn't give them an unfair advantage.
That being said, the US system sounds like a shitshow of bribery and corruption.
