Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ads work by cultural imprinting, not emotional inception

meltingasphalt.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 103 posts

Re: Ads work by cultural imprinting, not emotional inception

#51

Post by vbs_redlof »

salmonellaeater wrote: post #25

There's an excellent book called Rational Ritual[1][2][3] which develops this idea much more fully. The thesis is that common knowledge (I know something, and I know everyone else knows it too ) is very powerful and rationally drives people's behavior. One of the arguments in the book revolves around the absurd pricing of advertising during big public events like the Super Bowl. If advertisers weren't concerned about…

It's not so clear coordination games apply to advertising though. The original applications of coordination games were in modelling economic situations in which there were benefits to mass coordination--events like bank runs and speculative currency attacks where there is an explicit monetary payoff for players to correctly identify and coordinate on a mutual outcome.

With advertising, it's not so clear whether people derive value from buying the same beer everyone is buying (although for certain products, sure). Is someone more inclined to buy a Corona or a bag of Doritos from merely knowing that others have seen the ad?

Then again, if the ad is particularly funny or surprising then knowing that others know about the ad certainly makes it easier to casually converse about the ad with others. Maybe then I'll buy a corona just for shits and giggles, who knows. If this is what is meant by 'entering the culture', then maybe this theory holds water. It just seems like a really expensive way to do it.

Re: Ads work by cultural imprinting, not emotional inception

#52

Post by philh »

DanBC wrote: post #46
gabemart wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sorry, saying 4/5 doctors recommend X is not a rational cue to buy X If we assume for a moment that 4/5 doctors really do recommend X, and that X is something related to one's health, why is it not a rational cue to buy X?

Doctors are human and are subject to the same cognitive biases as everyone else. What you want is a bunch of statisticians looking at the research and patient outcomes.

If 4/5 dentists (with no financial motivations) were asked "is there one brand of toothpaste in particular that you recommend?" and answered "toothident", then that would be a sensible reason to use toothident.

(If a bunch of statisticians looked at the research and patient outcomes and disagreed, then that would be an even more sensible reason not to. But in lieu of that, we expect dentists to have a reasonable idea what they're talking about.)

What actually happens (or so I hear) is that dentists are asked "do you recommend brushing twice a day with toothpastes such as toothident", and they say yes, because even though they've never heard of toothident, brushing your teeth is a good idea.

So an ad that seys "4/5 dentists recommend toothident" doesn't actually mean that 4/5 dentists recommend toothident, and is not a sensible reason to buy toothident. But the way people interpret the ad is a sensible reason to buy toothident, it's just false.

Re: Ads work by cultural imprinting, not emotional inception

#53

Post by DanBC »

philh wrote: post #52
DanBC wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doctors are human and are subject to the same cognitive biases as everyone else. What you want is a bunch of statisticians looking at the research and patient outcomes.

If 4/5 dentists (with no financial motivations) were asked "is there one brand of toothpaste in particular that you recommend?" and answered "toothident", then that would be a sensible reason to use toothident. (If a bunch of statisticians looked at the research and patient outcomes and disagreed, then that would be an even more sensible reason not to. But in lieu of that, we expect dentists to have a reasonable idea…

> If 4/5 dentists (with no financial motivations) were asked "is there one brand of toothpaste in particular that you recommend?" and answered "toothident", then that would be a sensible reason to use toothident.

No! Just because they think it works doesn't mean it does work. Toothident might be the first toothpaste that comes to mind but that doesn't mean it's better than any other toothpaste - and it might be worse than other toothpastes. Perhaps the toothident company just have much better pens and sticky fixit pads than the other toothpaste companies.

Re: Ads work by cultural imprinting, not emotional inception

#54

Post by joars »

I would love to read this article in a shorter, more concice format. From the paragraphs I read the author spends most of his time trying to describe the common (mis)conceptions held by a layman in advertising by giving numerous citations and examples, which is weird and repetitive when his argument is that we already know and hold the assumptions.

Re: Ads work by cultural imprinting, not emotional inception

#55

Post by joars »

I would love to read this article in a shorter, more concice format. From the paragraphs I read the author spends most of his time trying to describe the common (mis)conceptions held by a layman in advertising by giving numerous citations and examples, which is weird and repetitive when his argument is that we already know and hold the assumptions.

Re: Ads work by cultural imprinting, not emotional inception

#56

Post by joars »

I would love to read this article in a shorter, more concice format. From the paragraphs I read the author spends most of his time trying to describe the common (mis)conceptions held by a layman in advertising by giving numerous citations and examples, which is weird and repetitive when his argument is that we already know and hold the assumptions.

Re: Ads work by cultural imprinting, not emotional inception

#57

Post by jgamman »

thinking fast and slow is the book for you. nobel prize winner gives the skinny... and yeah, there's actual experiments that show merely familiarity breeds positive responses. NB there's a bit of commentary going on at the moment about the reproducibility of the experiments in this field

Re: Ads work by cultural imprinting, not emotional inception

#58

Post by AlisdairO »

smsm42 wrote: post #43
bowlofpetunias wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how come this doesn't work for me? I am not influenced by advertising in the least. I find it all equally annoying. I'm not being pretentious, but when I look at the stuff I buy (and I'm as materialistic as the next person, slightly obsessed with 'design', and attached to a brand like Apple), none of it I've seen in ads. Advertising uniformly has the effect of pissing me off and can even turn me off brands. And I'…

The irony of a person being "attached to a brand like Apple" and claiming he is not influenced by advertising is so rich it's hard to take it all in one setting. I may have to ask for a takeout box to take some home with me.

Not that I doubt the efficacy of Apple's marketing in any way, but it's perfectly possible to be attached to a brand for fairly rational reasons. If you have a good history with the company and have had consistently positive experiences/interactions, buying regularly from the same brand can make perfect sense.

Re: Ads work by cultural imprinting, not emotional inception

#59

Post by philh »

tedks wrote: post #16

Oh man. That's a doozy. Well, uh. >We may not conform to a model of perfect economic behavior, but neither are we puppets at the mercy of every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a billboard. We aren't that easily manipulated. Yeah. Yeah we are. It looks like the author of this is just some random engineer without a lot of backround in marketing or persuasion psychology. That's a shame because he's clearly interested in it an…

I feel like you're dismissing the article without responding to its arguments. E.g., why don't we (often) see bedsheet ads in the same style as corona or coke ads? Why don't brands dilute themselves to appeal to more sections of the market?

I also feel like you're using the word "rational" differently to the author. It seems like he's using it to mean roughly "sensible", and you're using it to mean something more like "well-reasoned". We don't spend a lot of time on our decisions, but that doesn't mean we're making bad decisions. If system one is causing us to make good decisions without thinking about it, that seems like it falls under the author's idea of "rational", but not yours.

Re: Ads work by cultural imprinting, not emotional inception

#60

Post by makomk »

salmonellaeater wrote: post #42
chrismcb wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would imagine the cost per viewer for a Super Bowl commercial isn't that high. Super Bowl commercials are expensive because there are so many viewers. In addition to the extra press surrounding them.

Super Bowl ads cost about the same per viewer as prime-time TV slots ($35 per thousand in 2014). Both cost about four times as much per viewer as daytime TV. Primetime: http://www.tvb.org/trends/4718/4715 Daytime: http://www.tvb.org/trends/4718/4710

With daytime TV you can only reach consumers that are watching TV during the daytime though. That's a lot of potential customers that will never, ever see any of your ads.
Post reply on HN