Perhaps not, but things seem to have a way of, eventually, circling back around.Sadly, we are now living in a rude, impatient, and graceless age.
I don't expect anything much to improve in the remainder of my lifetime.
do marketers lie to us too much?
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That is not mutually exclusive with honest children getting a high IQ score. This is much similar to the claim that children good in mathematics have a tendency to have a high IQ. However, children good in, say languages and the arts, can also be very bright in their subjects.As an interesting aside, I think there is a study which showed a high positive correlation between intelligence and deceitfulness in children.
Intelligence is a complex ability with many different abilities. A person can be highly intelligent in one area, and a complete idiot in another. The latter, does not make such a person not intelligent.
But, Sir!
Of course does it go wild, as it has to permanently up the ante (of claims).
I don’t remember the mentioned ads, but, back in the early 90ies, they had a festival at cannes, for the best ads in the world, of the year. We went to cinema to get a 2 hours long shower of TV-ads, can you imagine? Good thing is, these were so funny, they didn’t have to lie:
But then, they did: https://jalopnik.com/netflix-docume...cial,incredibly advanced military fighter jet.
Of course does it go wild, as it has to permanently up the ante (of claims).
I don’t remember the mentioned ads, but, back in the early 90ies, they had a festival at cannes, for the best ads in the world, of the year. We went to cinema to get a 2 hours long shower of TV-ads, can you imagine? Good thing is, these were so funny, they didn’t have to lie:
Oh man, well you're going to be REALLY UPSET when you find out about all the signage involving smiling putatively cannibalistic pigs selling pork.The emotional disposition of lobsters heading to a horrible death was incongruous and very offensive to me. So yes, marketers are idiots for not realizing this.
Don't they pay you guys to think this stuff out? If you don't get what I'm talking about then you're just making my point.
And you'll be surprised to know they actually pay us a small bonus when we get an ultra-literal-minded person on the internet worked up by portraying unrealistic psychosocial scenarios involving cartoon food.
It's a small perk of being part of an evil cabal of cretins who make our livings through sheer deceit and perfidy. It helps us forget that we're all morons.
Pretty similar to my experiences. The marketer typically won't want to lie because the backlash (if there is any) will tend to hit them first.Agreed that it was relevant. I still stand by my comment re: inept at worst, and toothless at best. This is a clear example (IMO) of ineptitude, and one that makes me a bit queasy. There was another thread re: an individual wondering how their amplifier complied with EU regulations. I was actually quite fascinated in how things worked in that trade region, right up until the mods shut it down (for reasons I have yet to understand). From what I could gather the EU has some guidelines I'd consider quite fair, but admittedly have not dug too deeply into.
This is how they 'get ya'. Nobody takes the time to do a bit of reading the fine print. <sarc> There's no need to wonder. 😉 An inference or two might need to be made, but it's fairly straight forward to me. IMO, it's intentionally deceptive at worst, irrelevant data at best, but likely factual and able to be substantiated.
PS - From my own experience with a reasonably large marketing-focused company, which spent upwards of 100's of millions USD per year in marketing, it was mostly the department / product heads that pushed for dubious / tenuous claims. The conversation usually went something like...
Product head - Can we say 'this'?
Legal and engineering - No!
Product head - What can we say?
Legal and engineering - Anything that is true, non-deceptive, and can be substantiated with data on hand or a paid independent study.
Product head - I'm not paying for a study / more testing.
Legal and engineering - OK
Product head - Our competitors say 'this'.
Legal and engineering - OK
Product head - What's our liability if we say 'this'?
Legal - <GROAN!>
Product head - I'll send it over to marketing.
Product head later sends tenuously worded email to marketing opening with something akin to... I just had a wonderful meeting with Engineering and Legal... accidentally leaving engineering and legal off the cc:
This lead to changes in policies re: official sign offs for any new product marketing claims.
The cop out of a boss or boss's boss in my experience was not the situation. Everyone has a boss, and I understand that in some cultures, push back can get you fired, but I sure as hell never signed off on anything I felt uncomfortable with.
Marketing (generally) had nothing to do with actual claims. They were given the claims. As someone pointed out earlier, they provided extensive research toward using department dollars to most effectively reach intended customers and chose the appropriate media.
Anecdotal at best, but my guess is others have a similar experience in the field.
I straddle the product and marketing roles, mainly we just want to highlight the best aspects of the products to the people who will actually care about those benefits, and ideally without losing money in the process. We care about our reputation so tend not to exaggerate, let alone lie, if we can avoid it.
A better overall question for the thread would be "why are companies willing to risk their reputations to lie to consumers"? And the answer will either be 1) because it's profitable or 2) because it's profitable to the people who are in charge, for a short time.
On the point of #2 I'd argue it's because share prices are much more strongly driven by recent (6-12 months at the longest) earnings performance than long-term changes in the reputation of the business, which are harder to measure and evaluate.
Gilette made an adverisement video for their razorblades in which they blamed their main customers (men I hope 😉) for toxic masculinity. I found it an absurd move and felt offended. Both for pushing woke through our throats and for the illogical offensive move declaring men to be guilty.
Haven’t bought anything from Gilette ever since that although I still think their products were/are good or maybe even best.
That is advertisement that works 🙂
Haven’t bought anything from Gilette ever since that although I still think their products were/are good or maybe even best.
That is advertisement that works 🙂
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I saw the Gillette ad and didn’t understand the fuss. It seems most of the offence was stirred up by the press as the ad was incoherent. Gillette is a major employer in my town so I support them by buying their products. But at one blade a month they won’t notice my contribution.
We (as in: the average male Gilette customer) apparently did understand their intended fuss quite well as it cost them a lot of money:
“Procter & Gamble, the parent company of Gillette, announced Tuesday they had taken over $5 billion in losses for the quarter, after Gillette had an 8 billion write down after its market share for razors fell over the last three years”. -Washington examiner 2019
Many drops make an ocean it seems. Glad to feel my and other male brothers contributions did make a difference. Never felt the power of voting with feet before. Gilette better had just produced good blades instead of offending their customers.
“Procter & Gamble, the parent company of Gillette, announced Tuesday they had taken over $5 billion in losses for the quarter, after Gillette had an 8 billion write down after its market share for razors fell over the last three years”. -Washington examiner 2019
Many drops make an ocean it seems. Glad to feel my and other male brothers contributions did make a difference. Never felt the power of voting with feet before. Gilette better had just produced good blades instead of offending their customers.
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I'm not familier with "De Oratore", however, I stick to what my own conscience tells me, and so far it works out just fine.
That advertisement is indeed offensive, and ugly.Gilette made an adverisement video for their razorblades in which they blamed their main customers (men I hope 😉) for toxic masculinity. I found it an absurd move and felt offended. Both for pushing woke through our throats and for the illogical offensive move declaring men to be guilty.
Haven’t bought anything from Gilette ever since that although I still think their products were/are good or maybe even best.
That is advertisement that works 🙂
It smells of the typical propoganda spewed today.
The thing is, video is a powerful device used to implant ideas in people's brains.
And in this case it fosters things like division, hatred, and bias.
Pfffffff……
Just like politics are not allowed here a razorblade manufacturer should not be busy with telling or suggesting men are not OK. Or any negative suggestion or insinuation or even resemblance of either of those at all really.
If political view can be coupled to that bad ad then billions of loss tell that there are many men of that political minority.
I think they just pissed off many buyers that don’t like a razorblade manufacturer telling them that they suck. Many if not most just want blades to shave and feel good.
Just like politics are not allowed here a razorblade manufacturer should not be busy with telling or suggesting men are not OK. Or any negative suggestion or insinuation or even resemblance of either of those at all really.
If political view can be coupled to that bad ad then billions of loss tell that there are many men of that political minority.
I think they just pissed off many buyers that don’t like a razorblade manufacturer telling them that they suck. Many if not most just want blades to shave and feel good.
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Yeah if you can’t win you can always ridicule someone. A bit like with the Gilette ad it is the suggestion that is not accepted. So if one does not like an ad then one is member of a certain political minority!? Maybe the ad was made by such a minority as well. It has a nasty content either way.
It was the sound of the Gilette marketing lady hyperventilating.
It was the sound of the Gilette marketing lady hyperventilating.
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In my opinion, good and proper advertising is supposed to make people feel good about a product - without insinuating anything, without putting down other manufacturers, and types of people.Pfffffff……
Just like politics are not allowed here a razorblade manufacturer should not be busy with telling or suggesting men are not OK. Or any negative suggestion at all really.
If political view can be coupled to that bad ad then billions of loss tell that there are many men of that political minority.
I think they just pissed off many buyers that don’t like a razorblade manufacturer telling them that they suck. Many if not most just want blades to shave and feel good.
And...... done with some class, and honesty.
Indeed. Even if the message would be right it would still not appeal to me.
Well I still use the blades. A commercial that some find offensive isn't going to change my mind. I also know I don't suck. 😉I think they just pissed off many buyers that don’t like a razorblade manufacturer telling them that they suck. Many if not most just want blades to shave and feel good.
jeff
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