Mastodawn

Does advertising really work?
Everyone I know mutes TV ads when they come on.
Everyone I know uses ad-blockers online.
I avoid sites that say 'You can't view this site unless you turn off your ad-blocker.'
And some ads are so annoying &/or repetitive that I refuse to use the product on principle.

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GeofCox Feb 10

@Richard_Littler

Advertising may not work on you Richard - but if it didn't work on most people, big business wouldn't be spending 1.4 trillion dollars on it every year.

Apart from being designed, obviously, to extract our hard-earned money from us, I think the most pernicious effects of advertising are:
1. It makes us unhappy. That's the whole point. It is fundamentally based on making us feel we'd be better, more attractive, popular, successful, etc, if only we buy this or that latest cosmetic, car, whatever; and
2. It shapes social expectations - it makes having new, more expensive things, holidays, etc, look and feel desirable, it associates happiness with wasteful consumerism, so we come to really believe that having a 'luxury lifestyle' - big house, fancy car, swimming pool, jet-setting, etc - is better than living contentedly in caring families, communities and the natural world.

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Woozle Hypertwin

@GeofCox @Richard_Littler

I'm actually a teeny bit suspicious of the idea that it works as well as they think it does. Where's the science?

The types of people who make these decisions seem to me less like the kinds of people who would rigorously follow the evidence and more like the kinds of people who are most susceptible to advertising tactics (though perhaps a minority of people in general) and/or the types of people who would make sweetheart deals with advertisers that benefit themselves (and the advertiser) much more than the company they are advertising.

(Just a conspiracy theory; feel free to ignore me.)