From: Arlo Bensinger (ajb102@psu.edu)
Date: Wed Oct 26 2005 - 18:20:27 BST
[Case]
There is a huge difference. Advertising is a much more subtile form of
coersion and far more effective as a result. If you are truely concerned
with powerful forces meddleing in your affairs, you might ought to consider
that the guys compeling you with guns are too obvious to really be a treat.
It is the sneaky ones who get you to do their bidding and surrender
joyfully that are dangerous. Can you spell cheeseburger?
[Platt]
So you are smart enough to see through "coercive" advertising, but I and
everybody else isn't? We are all dupes of those clever, evil purveyors
of useless products? C'mon Case. We're all not that stupid, really.
[Arlo]
Perhaps, if advertising does not influence people to value things they
would not otherwise value, Platt can explain why last year "more than five
hundred billion dollars was spent on advertising and marketing in the
United Stateshalf the worldwide total" (source, The New Yorker). Or why
over the counter pill consumption increased from $10 billion dollars a year
in 1990 to over $20 billion in 2002, a year in which $2.5 billion dollars
was spent on advertising by pharmaceutical companies, which is up to $4.5
billion today.
If advertising was simply getting message that your product is available
out to a population that then irrespective of advertising makes its own
value judgement, why do advertising campaigns nearly always mean success or
failure in the marketplace? Everyone knows McDonald's exists, so why does
it spend a half a billion in year in advertising? Why pay celebrities
millions of dollars for endorsements, if people are smart enough to not
care whether Bill Cosby or Joe Schmoo tells them about the new line of
Jell-o Snacks? Or why the amount spent yearly on "product placement" has
jumped to the billions?
Advertising is coersive influence that alters one's potential value
judgement. There is simply no other explanation. Eliminate advertising, and
you'd get a clearer picture of which products would succeed or fail in the
marketplace by virtue of their "Quality".
Arlo
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