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

Researchers find inverse correlation between advertising and life satisfaction

hbr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 359 posts

Re: Researchers find inverse correlation between advertising and life satisfaction

#231

Post by tombert »

wrkronmiller wrote: post #225
slumdev wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These stories are too common. I would guess that the median* wage on HN is probably around 5x what your brother-in-law makes. And I would also guess that many of us are perfectly content with old phones, old cars, and generally reduced consumption. Hell, I buy clothes at thrift/resale shops when I find something nice that fits. What are people of means (relatively) seeing? Is it because we have more leisure time and…

Another possibility is that people on HN are wealthier, in part, because they are better than average at delaying gratification.

I think any doctor would tell you that the amount of fast food I eat demonstrates that I am absolutely terrible at delaying gratification :)

I'm not a huge fan of the "rich people are more naturally inclined to be rich, which is why they're rich" arguments. There are plenty of examples about how the system is somewhat rigged to keep people poor.

Re: Researchers find inverse correlation between advertising and life satisfaction

#232

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan »

pascalxus wrote: post #212

I have a hard time relating to these findings. Advertisement almost never works on me. And, the few times it does work on me, I'm actually quite glad and appreciative because I only buy products I really want or really need. If I look at all my credit card, amazon and ebay purchases for the last several years, which i do often, i see it's just the things I need/want: gas, maintenance, groceries a few times going out…

There's a concept in the marketing world named "reminder advertising."

Forgive me if I botch some of the details, but a few decades back Coca-Cola conducted an experiment where they tracked, in excruciating detail, all coke sales in a small town for a month. Then they turned all the ads off. All the television ads, newspaper ads, all the signs and and all the billboards. Coke sales immediately dropped ~30%.

Everyone knows what Coca-Cola is, and yet they have one of the largest advertising budgets in the world. You think that split second decision at the restaurant last week where you asked for a Coke instead of a water, a beer, or a Pepsi was of your own volition, but it very well may have been because you drove past a coke billboard on your way to work that morning, or because you saw a commercial a couple weeks ago.

Everyone thinks advertising doesn't work on them, but human psychology is tremendously complex and chock-full of easily exploitable bugs.

Re: Researchers find inverse correlation between advertising and life satisfaction

#233

Post by MandieD »

darkarmani wrote: post #147
tartoran wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally would feel quite ashamed to have the latest IPhone, I'd feel that I'd fallen prey to apple's marketing. I live pretty well with a 5 year old SE. For the same reason I refuse to wear visibly branded clothes and am not ashamed to buy some used items. Living frugally by choice gets you back some freedoms.

> I live pretty well with a 5 year old SE. I love my SE. I really don't want a phone any bigger than the SE.

When my SE finally stopped charging and I found out that I’d missed the window for a subsidized battery, I resigned myself to Apple never introducing that SE2, and bought a used 7 to see if I could come to grips with the larger size.

It’s ok, but still a bit bigger than I’d like. Several apps are now usable again, such as the DB (German railways) app, which I became really dependent on after selling my car.

I can’t stomach the thought of spending 500 EUR on a phone, much less 1100. I’ve gotten cheap as I enter middle age.

Re: Researchers find inverse correlation between advertising and life satisfaction

#235

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan »

logjammin wrote: post #5

I spent a lot of time in Vermont many years ago. I'd been there a little while, blissfully unaware, before someone told me "yeah, they banned billboards here in the sixties - you didn't notice?" I hadn't consciously noticed, no, but I'd spent my time there until that comment driving around stunned at how beautiful the place was. Now I knew the reason for that (well, partial reason - billboards or not, it's a pretty p…

Banned in most of Orange County, California as well. It's an immediate, drastic change driving south on The 5 from LA.

Re: Researchers find inverse correlation between advertising and life satisfaction

#236

Post by ansible »

TheGallopedHigh wrote: post #17
xtracto wrote: post #8

This reminds me of an anecdote a friend told me: This friend dedicates his time in going to very rural areas/towns here in Mexico to implement government programs. At some point in the past he got to a town were the cantina had just gotten the only TV in town... apparently people in the town were generally happy, and they had everything they needed... so in their view they were not poor. But once they started watchin…

Said succinctly: Comparison is the thief of joy

I saw this on a television show (don't remember which one), but a father was scolding his child who was complaining about another child having more candy or something.

He said: "The only time you look in your neighbor's bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don't look in your neighbor's bowl to see if you have as much as them."

Re: Researchers find inverse correlation between advertising and life satisfaction

#237

Post by nickelcitymario »

kaibee wrote: post #223
nickelcitymario wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it seems to me you're trying to have it both ways. Does advertising cause people to spend more than they would otherwise, or not? If it does, then eliminating advertising would reduce spending which is what causes a recession. If it doesn't, then what's all the fuss about? Recessions in North America (can't speak for any other context unfortunately) have ended due to concerted efforts to get people to spend mor…

> Does advertising cause people to spend more than they would otherwise, or not? Yes, it does, though not as much as they wish they could spend. Hence the unhappiness. However, it also distorts the allocation of that spending. > If it does, then eliminating advertising would reduce spending which is what causes a recession. People would not stop buying stuff without advertising. They would be more likely to spend the…

> Yes, it does, though not as much as they wish they could spend.

...is that not the cause of recessions?

> People would not stop buying stuff without advertising.

Outright "stop", no. Reduce, yes. How much of a reduction is anyone's guess, but I suspect it'd be by a whole lot more than anyone is comfortable with.

> How many of them were caused by banning/regulating direct-to-consumer advertising?

DTC is regulated, as all advertising is. Also I thought we were discussing all advertising, not DTC specifically, and I'm not sure what that specific category of marketing would bother you more than any other. Unless of course you're talking about all the online tracking, which I'm fully onboard with banning.

Re: Researchers find inverse correlation between advertising and life satisfaction

#238

Post by nickelcitymario »

kaibee wrote: post #216
nickelcitymario wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in an American context... NPR and PBS exclusively then? Because people have proven for quite a long time that they are not willing to foot the bill. (I'm from Canada so our equivalent would be CBC and TVO.) My guess is that if advertising was banned, the news media would become even more reliant on billionaires to keep them going, and I can't imagine that's healthy for a democracy. I know advertisers have impacted…

> So in an American context... NPR and PBS exclusively then? Because people have proven for quite a long time that they are not willing to foot the bill. New York Times, The Young Turks, etc. If people aren't willing to foot the bill, then that's fine. The market-niche will be freed up for another business to take a better and more sustainable approach. > My guess is that if advertising was banned, the news media wou…

> If people aren't willing to foot the bill, then that's fine. The market-niche will be freed up for another business to take a better and more sustainable approach.

There's nothing stopping other business models to take hold, unless of course those business models are insufficient to support the operation.

Also, NYT is supported by a $250 million loan from billionaire Carlos Slim.

Re: Researchers find inverse correlation between advertising and life satisfaction

#239

Post by nickelcitymario »

wpietri wrote: post #228
nickelcitymario wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public relations != advertising. Ed Bernays != spokesperson for all PR professionals. There are shady people in every industry.

All three things are technically true. All miss my point. Bernays did a lot of what would be called advertising work today. He isn't a spokesperson, what with being dead and all, but his work was foundational. What mainly distinguishes him from today's practitioners is that he was pretty straightforward about what what he was doing, while these days people apply his principles while talking about PR and advertising.…

I don't presume to know how shady the people in other industries are.

I've met very few of them in advertising. Alas, they tend to be in the executive suite. (I suspect that's equally true in most industries, but that's pure speculation.) The vast majority of the actual people in this industry are good people who try their best to do good work. They're looking to make an honest buck and feel good about what they do.

That said, Bernays is not someone I'd consider a role model.

Re: Researchers find inverse correlation between advertising and life satisfaction

#240

Post by barrkel »

Legogris wrote: post #49
eloff wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another example, Apartheid South Africa got TV in 1976, six months later the riots started, coincidence? I think as soon as black people in South Africa could see how black people in America lived, they truly realized how bad they had it. Here it contributed to the undoing of an unjust government, so it's not always a force for evil. I think the most dangerous thing to North Korea is western media. I know the South K…

I was listening to the Unchained podcast when DPRK defector Yeonmi Park was a guest. She escaped from the DPRK when she was 16 and just having watched the movie Titanic (that her uncle had gotten hold of) once as a kid influenced her thinking a lot. https://unchainedpodcast.com/yeonmi-park-on-why-doing-busine...

I started reading that transcript and my BS detectors were bouncing off the charts. I think she's peddling a profitable narrative; from other sources [1], it seems clear that her position in NK was privileged in relative terms. No doubt she's had hardships, but all her incentives as a professional - what, exactly? witness? victim? - are to exaggerate the harshness of her experiences.

[1] https://thediplomat.com/2014/12/the-strange-tale-of-yeonmi-p...

Post reply on HN