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Death to Bullshit

deathtobullshit.com

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Re: Death to Bullshit

#81

Post by Killswitch »

interesting_att wrote: post #79

I was just thinking yesterday how inundated we are by ads these days. You see ads on television, the radio, the internet, billboards, public transportation, sports stadium/jerseys, magazines, guerrilla marketing, product-placements and celebrity endorsements, and not to mention PR (which is just advertising by other means). Talk about mental pollution!

So I got my start in ad based websites. If it wasn't for ads, I would have never really gotten into what we do. I'd have done something away from the internet because I never grew up with a computer and wasn't fascinated by them as a young child.

So because of that, I had always been in favor of ads. Not as in I'd plaster my site with ads, but if a site displayed ads, I would endure them because if I wanted the content that's the trade off. Otherwise I could find similar content somewhere else.

Then The Verge's article about slow browsing came about, and the retorting articles about things and I realized ads have gone way to fucking far.

17 years I have been online. 17 years I had never installed an ad blocking plugin or anything. Last month I installed uBlock Origin and turned it into blacklist mode.

I still feel sites who have ads in place that aren't intrusive and annoying deserve to be displayed, but sites like The Verge, or CNN or anything like that which blast you with 300 requests where 90% of them are ads. Or sites where ads become more important than the content; These sites get instant ad blocking enabled for them.

It's time to take a step back.

Re: Death to Bullshit

#82

Post by TeMPOraL »

fredkbloggs wrote: post #61
shostack wrote: post #10

As much as I dislike some of the current trends (and I do digital media for a living mind you), I do have to point out that this stuff wouldn't be done if it didn't work. Ultimately this implies that there are enough people out there who engage with or...dare I say...want...the bullshit, that their collective voice outweighs those that do not simply by the fact that those are often the users who click ads, share thin…

> As much as I dislike some of the current trends (and I do digital media for a living mind you), I do have to point out that this stuff wouldn't be done if it didn't work. Are we sure of that? It might depend on our definition of "work". A lot of the people responsible for doing this stuff may just be doing it because if they admit that none of it works, they'll have nothing else to offer and will be out of a job. I…

> It's not terribly hard to make up data showing some kind of effectiveness, or just to misinterpret real data in a way that can convince others to let you keep doing it. For every marketing or advertising craftsman out there who builds something that works, gathers useful data, and interprets that data honestly, there are probably 20 people who have no clue and just keep churning out the same stuff because they don't have anything else to offer.

Let me share a personal anecdote from watching a social media marketing company at works.

These marketing people got contracts to do brand/site/service promotion on everyone's favourite social networking and image collecting sites. They wrote many posts, made interesting graphics, etc. Generally did a good, honest work at that. Then every month they had to write reports detailing the effectiveness of their efforts. The way they did it was like this:

1) gather metrics provided by social media platforms they used

2) put them in a DOC file

3) start with the conclusion that they did their job well and helped the marketed company tremendously

4) invent some plausible-sounding reasons to connect the data from 1) to conclusion in 3)

And mind you, this wasn't intentional dishonesty. They simply have no fucking clue about the meaning of the data, or what can (and can not) be reasonably inferred from it, so they don't even try. They don't even know what they don't know. But their clients don't know anything too; it's basically both sides not knowing what those colorful graphs and tables of numbers mean and bullshitting one another without even realizing it.

I guess one can't generalize from one example, but mind this: social media marketing companies are not staffed by math PhDs, they're staffed by social sciences undergrads who decided that, given current state of the job market, learning Photoshop is better than working at McDonalds. They may be good at making interesting content, but they have zero necessary knowledge for getting right conclusions from data.

Re: Death to Bullshit

#83

Post by XorNot »

spacehome wrote: post #78
Animats wrote: post #60

Advertising in the US doesn't create demand. It just moves it around. America is spent out. The US personal savings rate is under 5%. Everything else gets spent, and the saved money gets spent later. There's no "pent-up demand" waiting to be unlocked by advertising. Advertising is thus a net lose for Americans. All that effort adds to cost. For some products, including movies, long distance phone service, and many pr…

The savings rate being low is insufficient to justify your claim that advertising does not create net demand. It's also possible that people choose to work more to afford more goods. I see Americans working very hard when I feel they would get more life satisfaction out of cutting expenses, primarily the big three: transportation, housing, and food.

You mean the 3 expenses that are entirely non-optional?

Re: Death to Bullshit

#84

Post by davemel37 »

Animats wrote: post #75
davemel37 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>neither Amazon nor walmart advertises much... What? Amazon is googles largest advertiser and walmart outspends target almost 2:1 ... http://adage.com/article/digital/amazon-tops-list-google-s-2...

That's spending on Google ads, not total ad spend. The ad industry complains that WalMart doesn't spend enough on ads.[1] Amazon's ad spending went way up in 2013, but it didn't help; too much was related to their mobile devices, which flopped.[2][3] [1] http://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/fix-walmart-s-woes-spe... [2] http://adage.com/article/agency-news/amazon-reviews-media-ac... [3] http://adage.com/article/digi…

I don't have time to track down other articles, but if your point was that there are very valuable brands that don't advertise as much as others, you are right.

However, advertising when you are a large brand serves a different function than when you are smaller. Large brands need to protect their position in the market, smaller brands need to drive sales.

My guess about your original comment is that you were exposed to Target back to school commercials recently and so they appeared like a larger advertiser than amazon or walmart who focus less on back to school.

The reality though is that advertising comes in many shapes and sizes, and is bought in many different ways. Limiting this to direct media buying is a little deceptive as some brands engage in PR and other strategies that serve the same goal as advertising, without paying a publisher for placement.

It isn't an equal comparison to use direct ad buying as a barometer to prove that advertising just shifts demand and doesn't create it, when PR and other marketing strategies are arguably the same exact thing, just bought in a different way.

Re: Death to Bullshit

#85

Post by narrator »

My way to avoid bullshit is to only read a very highly curated twitter feed. Anybody who mentions a "big" news story gets booted. Like if it's on the front page of the New York times, you get booted. I'll find out about it just by looking at the random media device blaring mainstream bullshit from every airport and doctors office waitimg room, so quit thinking you're the new Paul Revere by retweeting. I value niche information very specific to things I am trying to accomplish.

Re: Death to Bullshit

#86

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast »

Animats wrote: post #75
davemel37 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>neither Amazon nor walmart advertises much... What? Amazon is googles largest advertiser and walmart outspends target almost 2:1 ... http://adage.com/article/digital/amazon-tops-list-google-s-2...

That's spending on Google ads, not total ad spend. The ad industry complains that WalMart doesn't spend enough on ads.[1] Amazon's ad spending went way up in 2013, but it didn't help; too much was related to their mobile devices, which flopped.[2][3] [1] http://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/fix-walmart-s-woes-spe... [2] http://adage.com/article/agency-news/amazon-reviews-media-ac... [3] http://adage.com/article/digi…

I don't really watch TV anymore but I remember Walmart having no shortage of 'falling prices' ads.

Re: Death to Bullshit

#87

Post by qwtel »

mojuba wrote: post #28
shostack wrote: post #10

As much as I dislike some of the current trends (and I do digital media for a living mind you), I do have to point out that this stuff wouldn't be done if it didn't work. Ultimately this implies that there are enough people out there who engage with or...dare I say...want...the bullshit, that their collective voice outweighs those that do not simply by the fact that those are often the users who click ads, share thin…

Certain types of bullshit (if not all) are built on the phenomenon of Eternal September[1]. There are always those who are clueless enough to trust a spam/scam email or who'd believe that the hamburger on the billboard would be as beautiful in reality. The rest of us who already have the experience and skills for separating the seeds from the fluff, suffer only losses from the bullshit that surrounds us. But the prof…

> But the profit made on the few clueless ones keeps the bullshit economy going

You make it sound like the clueless ones are always the same people though. I certainly paid for my share of BS (and guilt-tripped my parents into paying before that) and now I feel like I'm not doing that any more (even though there was no point when I didn't feel this way..).

Re: Death to Bullshit

#88

Post by interesting_att »

spacehome wrote: post #78
Animats wrote: post #60

Advertising in the US doesn't create demand. It just moves it around. America is spent out. The US personal savings rate is under 5%. Everything else gets spent, and the saved money gets spent later. There's no "pent-up demand" waiting to be unlocked by advertising. Advertising is thus a net lose for Americans. All that effort adds to cost. For some products, including movies, long distance phone service, and many pr…

The savings rate being low is insufficient to justify your claim that advertising does not create net demand. It's also possible that people choose to work more to afford more goods. I see Americans working very hard when I feel they would get more life satisfaction out of cutting expenses, primarily the big three: transportation, housing, and food.

To your point, some of the biggest advertisers are car companies + insurance companies, banks + credit card companies, and food companies. By taxing advertising, the average American will think 'more objectively' and will cut down costs on transportation, housing, and food.

Re: Death to Bullshit

#89

Post by MichaelGG »

tjohns wrote: post #49
mojuba wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen a QR code that wouldn't lead to a plain online ad for a long while. Their other, "sincere" uses have diminished most likely because there are always more reasonable alternatives, such as a short and memorable brand/trade name that can be easily found online if needed. QR codes are really just an awkward way of collecting "clicks" so to say, and they require too much effort for that (take out your phone…

It's probably worth distinguishing between QR Codes used for advertising, vs other uses. For example, I print QR codes on the back of my business cards containing a VCard record, to make it easier to import them into an address book if needed. Or at home, I have a QR code that automatically populates credentials for my WiFi network when guests come over. It's also the easiest way to add a TOTP code to Authy or Google…

>QR codes on the back of my business cards containing a VCard record

Isn't this almost certainly done better with a link to a vcard file?

Re: Death to Bullshit

#90

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast »

andyidsinga wrote: post #36

see also, the book, "On Bullshit" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit ) This book should have a spot on everyone's desk in hard copy. Use it as a coaster, walk around with it in the hallways, take it to meetings. No need to preach from it though - its very presence will be enough of a sign to others re: your tolerance levels of the amount of bullshit stinking up the current situation. EDIT: BTW, I do indeed h…

I tend to agree with Geoff Pullum: http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-Grammar/2549... when it comes to Elements of Style.
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