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Can You Trust Those Awards You See in Auto Ads? (2010)

consumerreports.org

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Re: Can You Trust Those Awards You See in Auto Ads? (2010)

#4

Post by 3D30497420 »

sixQuarks wrote: post #3

Consumer reports is funded by the Ford foundation. Interesting they didn’t mention that

I'm not familiar with the Ford Foundation or its work. However, from reading their Wikipedia article, I get the sense that they are pretty independent from the Ford company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Foundation

Per Wikipedia: "Between 1955 and 1974, the foundation sold its Ford Motor Company holdings and now plays no role in the automobile company."

Re: Can You Trust Those Awards You See in Auto Ads? (2010)

#5

Post by ghaff »

kimi wrote: post #2

Can you trust any "industry awards" at all?

Yes/no. There are sources of bias everywhere ranging from outright pay for play to more subtle types of influence that some companies are better able to exert or just are better at it. (For example, there are a lot of industry awards/Top 100 lists out there that are determined by random people on the Internet voting and who knows how many of those come from some big company PR department encouraging employees to vote for their company's best-place-to-work/product/podcast/etc.?

Re: Can You Trust Those Awards You See in Auto Ads? (2010)

#6

Post by Justsignedup »

ghaff wrote: post #5
kimi wrote: post #2

Can you trust any "industry awards" at all?

Yes/no. There are sources of bias everywhere ranging from outright pay for play to more subtle types of influence that some companies are better able to exert or just are better at it. (For example, there are a lot of industry awards/Top 100 lists out there that are determined by random people on the Internet voting and who knows how many of those come from some big company PR department encouraging employees to vote…

Right, but then there are also industry awards like the crypto ones which are literally just pay to win.

I trust awards like I trust video game analytics... if the biggest argument they got (in video games) is that you can "walk XXXXX miles" and "XXXXX hours of dialogue" and "XXXXXXX planets you can land on" I immediately assume the game will suck. Because if analytics is what gets people excited about it, anyone can manipulate a turd with good analytics. Same with awards. I can make a crypto tomorrow with an award for "most innovative in X space" within a day. I can even get a celebrity tell everyone how it changed their lives.

This is why advertising sucks, and awards are advertising. Its all about trying to pretend like anything you say has merit.

Re: Can You Trust Those Awards You See in Auto Ads? (2010)

#8

Post by daft_pink »

Youi can't trust JD Power's awards because of methodology. Initial Quality is a useful metric for the manufacturer, but not htat useful for the consumer, because plenty of vehicle might have high initial quality, but low long term quality.

I've found that JD Power's rankings of customer service for financial companies to be far more useful as customer service is useful to the consumer on an instant basis.

Re: Can You Trust Those Awards You See in Auto Ads? (2010)

#9

Post by tomalpha »

I like to think some awards are less bad than others. See Autocar’s blog[1] about how they voted for the Car Of The Year award which they do every year. It seems to be reasonably transparent.

[1] https://www.autocar.co.uk/opinion/new-cars/how-autocar-voted...

Re: Can You Trust Those Awards You See in Auto Ads? (2010)

#10

Post by kimi »

ghaff wrote: post #5
kimi wrote: post #2

Can you trust any "industry awards" at all?

Yes/no. There are sources of bias everywhere ranging from outright pay for play to more subtle types of influence that some companies are better able to exert or just are better at it. (For example, there are a lot of industry awards/Top 100 lists out there that are determined by random people on the Internet voting and who knows how many of those come from some big company PR department encouraging employees to vote…

I work in telcos, and literally all of them are pay-to-win. When I see those badges on a website I consider them "badges of demerit".
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