Thread

1. boesboes · 1790075706 · focus · HN ↗

   Marketing, the great value siphon. Marketing adds NOTHING of value of the world.

   1. adrianN · 1790075867 · focus · HN ↗

      Product discoverability has some value, but marketing is largely a zero sum game.

      1. pluc · 1790077292 · focus · HN ↗

         Marketing is the art of fucking with discoverability so that your shit gets discovered instead of what is relevant.

         1. strictnein · 1790083414 · focus · HN ↗

            You are familiar with Nike and Adidas. I want to start a shoe brand that makes shoes that would coincidentally be perfectly suited for your needs (whatever sport, activity, etc you enjoy). How do I get you to notice them?

            1. pluc · 1790085057 · focus · HN ↗

               You make it relevant instead of merely making it present.
            2. account42 · 1790090371 · focus · HN ↗

               Why do you think I am familiar with Nike and Adidas? Why would someone look to buy them instead of looking objectively at whats available?

               You're competing against the very thing you're arguing for.

            3. mrguyorama · 1790107239 · focus · HN ↗

               Why should I want your shoe brand? Why should I have to notice your shoe brand? Is your shoe not so good on it's own that anyone who buys one will go out of their way to tell everyone they know?

               It isn't?

               Then go away.

               It's my attention. What right do you have to purchase it?

      2. mordae · 1790077440 · focus · HN ↗

         Discoverability is trivially solvable by dedicating journalists to products. There are already events the companies use to present their products, frequented by journalists who then proceed to write periodicals with new product categories, benchmarks and comparisons.

         Those do get gamed and might cheat since they'd get kickbacks, but that should result in a reputation loss as other journalists point it out. There are also various cooperative models that work here well as members can just vote kickback-taking staff out.

         People used to actually subscribe to magazines (and some still do) in areas they are interested in. And they still go and visit the shops to see if anything interesting pops up and there is word of mouth.

         So I believe discoverability is not really a problem. The fact is that polished advertisements take up bandwidth that would be more productively utilized by a benchmark comparison chart with a commentary on differentiators. People would get more performant and/or better fitting products and services and the overall productivity and happiness would increase.

         1. iamacyborg · 1790078893 · focus · HN ↗

            What you are talking about is marketing and advertising. You’re not solving anything.
      3. someguynamedq · 1790079403 · focus · HN ↗

         Hedonistic treadmill says there is little to no value in product discoverability. Marketing is usually creating a new feeling of need, not servicing an authentic existing one.
   2. snemvalts · 1790077236 · focus · HN ↗

      The sport wouldn't be as popular or have as much funding. The reason football is where it is because of marketing.

      This can be extended to all other sports. A sport needs to be easy to follow and easy to advertise with to get funding. Being able to practice it cheaply on a grass-roots level helps.

      1. rationalist · 1790078984 · focus · HN ↗

         > The sport wouldn't be as popular or have as much funding.

         The sport, or the franchise?

      2. voidUpdate · 1790079339 · focus · HN ↗

         Would less football be a bad thing? It's the only sport I know where the governing body have to advise the police on how to deal with fan violence, such as "please don't use tear gas on them"
      3. latexr · 1790079867 · focus · HN ↗

         > The sport wouldn't be as popular or have as much funding.

         And that’s bad because… I’m really asking. What’s the good thing about having millionaires running around a field passing a ball to each other, while billionaires are raking in even more cash by manipulating you with adverts? Not to mention all the other issues with the industry (John Oliver has multiple episodes on FIFA).

         If the sport wouldn’t be as popular without marketing, maybe it isn’t that interesting to being with.

         1. strictnein · 1790083280 · focus · HN ↗

            > And that’s bad because… I’m really asking

            I mean, you're not really, considering everything that follows that statement.

            The money in sports allows for people to focus on it and perform at the highest levels possible and compete against others who also have this same focus. Advertising is what allows for this to happen.

            People, in general, enjoy seeing athletes do things that most normal people could not achieve. Watching the Tour de France, reading about ultramarathons, etc is enjoyable. The same thing is true with musicians, actors, artists, etc. I may not be interested in, say, eight string guitars, but I will still find it fascinating to see someone who has mastered the instrument.

            The fact that these athletes are paid so well is a good thing. They are getting a significant share of the revenue they generate, at least in American sports where the revenue is more or less split evenly with the teams. That was not the case decades ago.

            1. latexr · 1790083953 · focus · HN ↗

               > I mean, you're not really, considering everything that follows that statement.

               I am. Everything that follows is merely the negatives I see to provide context as to why I’m asking. It’s there so you can understand my point of view and rebut it. If we don’t know each other’s views, we can’t convince each other.

               > The money in sports allows for people to focus on it and perform at the highest levels possible and compete against others who also have this same focus. Advertising is what allows for this to happen.

               And my point is that I don’t think the bad of the latter outweighs the good of the former.

               > The fact that these athletes are paid so well is a good thing.

               That they are paid well, sure. That they are paid so well, I’m not convinced. Either way, the amount of money the industry moves (and how it is spent and acquired) is more problematic than the money individual athletes get.

            2. another-dave · 1790084117 · focus · HN ↗

               > The money in sports allows for people to focus on it and perform at the highest levels possible and compete against others who also have this same focus. Advertising is what allows for this to happen.

               Erling Haaland gets half a million a week. His contract is worth £260m.

               These guys take the money because it's on offer to them, and fair play to them.

               But I don't think they'd decide not to play football and go off to do something else if he were to "only" get, say £5.2m over 10 years instead (£10,500 per week).

         2. snemvalts · 1790146851 · focus · HN ↗

            This funding does not only apply to the top level, it applies all the way down to national club level and below.
      4. another-dave · 1790083611 · focus · HN ↗

         > The sport wouldn't be as popular or have as much funding. The reason football is where it is because of marketing.

         wouldn't have as much funding, sure, but football was massively popular long before they started putting logos on shirts & hoardings.

         If there was less money involved in football, then the likes of the free-to-air stations would be in a better position to compete to show more matches, too

   3. sethammons · 1790090974 · focus · HN ↗

      Marketing is the interplay of product, promotion, price, and distribution. It is not simply promotion/advertising. Shitty ads exist and are a poor facet of marketing, not the whole of it.

      If I want a humane mousetrap, the product must exist and I have to know about it, be able to afford it, and be able to acquire it. Me getting a humane mousetrap add value to my world, and the mouse's. And the seller of the trap. And all the interconnected economies that give others jobs and money to the trap is marketable.

      1. tavavex · 1790096784 · focus · HN ↗

         They're not just talking about shitty ads, the entirety of the ad industry has infested our world so much that every ad is by definition a shitty one.

         The problem with the steelman argument for marketing is that the scenarios people end up defending can be likened to a medieval shop owner putting a sign in fron of their establishment or a customer browsing a shopping aisle of items with packaging that perfectly represents the function of each item. But that argument must inevitably hit reality, where the industry spiraled into insanity and utter corruption of everything it touches. Lies, abuse, manipulation, FOMO, misrepresentation, scams. These are the primary values of that industry today. Maybe it was sane once upon a time, but that was centuries ago. Now they're unstoppable.

         We do not need to endure modern marketing to have product discovery. Imagine if we had a universal service that acted as containment for advertising, where anyone could list their good or service, provide a standardized and fairly objective summary of what makes it good (no mind trickery) and post it to be displayed alonside everyone else's, without even favoring the richest with the most ads or the biggest ads. Then you could find as many mousetraps as you could ever need, while the rest of the world would be spared from the concentrated stream of garbage in the form of advertising that it's currently being firehosed with.

   4. Veserv · 1790099987 · focus · HN ↗

      Almost all marketing is actively detrimental to the world. Marketing that is intentionally truthful and intentionally avoids over-promising is actually of value to the world. Marketing where in a court of law they would not go: "Technically your honor..." and backpedal on everything they say using tortured interpretations that would make a genie blush.

      The problem is that a vanishingly small amount of marketing is that way, and when done is mostly the purview of good hard-working individuals with no "marketing" experience. Almost all marketing is intentionally deceptive and fraudulent where the entire goal is to say something that only a genie would agree is technically correct, while intentionally focus grouping until every single member of the focus group believes you said something other than what your lawyers would say. That is pure, intentional, pre-meditated deception and fraud. That should be advertising fraud.

      "Technically your honor" should be a instant loss in the courts. The more time you spend crafting your message, the more accurate it should be required to be. If your focus group does not think you said what your lawyers are going to say, "Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go." If your target demographic does not overwhelmingly think you said what your lawyers are going to say, that had better be a case where all the money you spent on crafting the message and the proportionally expensive preventative measures failed.

      Allowing deception and fraud is the harm that suppresses good, hard-working, honest individuals and companys and replaces them with liars and cheats making the whole world poorer.

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