Answers for Adam: Is advertising spin actually good?
In his regular column Adam Ferrier poses a question to the industry. Today he asks is advertising spin as bad as it is made out to be?
Advertising is bad right? We coerce people into buying stuff they don’t need. Further, as TV show The Checkout points out (most weeks) we sometimes just put a descriptive word like ‘Baby’, or ‘Premium’ on a certain product, and then charge more for exactly the same thing. For example, all shampoos are basically made of the same stuff – so why are some priced at $3.00 a bottle whilst ‘Premium Salon Quality’ alternatives (at product parity) cost $30 (or more)?
Advertising creates perceived value, as Jef Richards said “Advertising is the ‘wonder’ in Wonder Bread”, and consumers are more than happy to pay for this image. We will pay significantly more for exactly the same product if it’s wrapped in a layer of aspirational imagery tapping into our desires or fears.
So here’s the thing. Advertising is good because it creates demand, and consumers buying stuff represents around 65 per cent of our GDP. Yet we all know:
I think you’re deluding yourself!
Works but only if companies don’t want to sell more physical product – and of course most of them do.
Sure you can sell less for more to an extent – but how many CEO’s or company boards do you genuinely think will stop there? Not many if any.
They will not be content selling less for more if they can sell more for more. Given the usually exectuive Job and person spec is a decent profile for a person with anti-social personality disorder and “caring for the environment” is not a valued peronality trait in the money making business – I don’t think advertsers should hold their breath expecting to be given the task to reduce physical unti sales.
Yeah Nup. I agree and disagree with Adam.
Try explaining that to a true non-advertising cynic and see where it gets ya.
Heh – nice try, Adam. That’s some significant logic gymnastics spinning spin as a good thing. The advertising industry is an industry predicated on lying and people hate liars.
Advertising has one legitimate role – public awareness of the new. Beyond that, it’s all bullshit. It’s like anti-education, falsehoods pretending to be facts. “Your skin will look better. Chicks will dig you. Happy people drink this. Voted the best. 9 out of 10 recommend etc etc”
And for better or worse, it works. Which is why companies spend a fortune trying to manipulate the public. But don’t pretend it’s moral, or ethical, or remotely beneficial to the economy. The only long term gains are a dumbed-down population mired in false information and a bunch of crap being flushed through the economy and out again.
I am not sure this argument is at all sensible. One of the side effects of consumerism is the debt level associated with buying things. You are suggesting to spend more on items that we need to…
Adam, I think all you’re seeing is $30 RRP – $1.50 COGS = $28.50 of potential creative/strategy/media spend.
A good point well made. Much better for the planet if people are spending money on intangible (hence infinite) goods rather than tangible (hence finite) resources. The virtual goods that people buy in games like Farmville are a nice example of this.
@Carla I’m with you. The problem with using Reductio ad absurdum to refute a proposition like this is the original proposition is already absurd.
Interesting strategy that Qantas should look to try and adopt rather than continuing to increase their capacity with more flights/increased costs and through increased supply having to reduce their price.
It’s not like advertising spin is new. The way I see it, it’s pretty simple. People will always look for differentiation, it’s what makes us human. We are naturally competitive and we like and want better things than the next person. It validates us and makes us feel important. And what kind of a crappy, boring world would it be if all products were marketed the same way. We use products and things to tell other people who we are and importantly who we want to be. It has always been that way and will always be that way.
Interesting article though Adam. A nice spin for the Ferrier brand and Cummins Ross. 🙂
Irrational exuberance. Good on you for reminding us all of our vanity and the reason why we buy most everything. Makes we want to drive my Ferrari
“…We use products and things to tell other people who we are and importantly who we want to be….”
I really, really, really pity you.
@groucho I was hoping for more than that. Positive or negative would like to know what you think.
@scamp agree and thanks – online consumption (not related to actual things) is the perfect example.
@Andy Bateman Thanks, and I agree – at the very least this pov can make one feel better about buying overpriced things we don’t actually need.
Adam, your suggestion seems to be that we accept market inefficiencies as a way to reduce global consumption. Why stop with advertising? Advocate for the banning of robotic assembly & international shipping too.
@ Bec
Do you drive a nice car? Would you like to?
Do you have a nice house? Would you like to?
Nice clothes? Are you typing on a high performance computer?
People buy status symbols, that’s irrefutable.
@Adam : The first problem I see with your shampoo example is that the $1.50 mark up probably allows for sufficient promotional spend, but some people will see it as a price which is “too good to be true” The $28.50 mark up would be great if the money went somewhere useful. More likely though it will go on fuel for the corporate jet run by the shampoo company with few other beneficiaries. There is of course a potential Darwinian benefit – when the fools and their money are parted and they starve the average IQ of the population goes up. Unless it is in America of course. Seriously though every lie that works contains a grain of truth and finding the grain in your example is a little difficult. The risk then, is that when more people realise that advertising is so much more lie than truth, is that it becomes less effective as a persuader and reverts to its original role as an informer.
@Bec
Wow… you are really unusual. You must be the only person that consumes PURELY from a functional standpoint. It doesn’t happen. My point was that we need to accept that we are, and always have been, an amalgamation of ourselves, and the stuff we surround ourselves with. Those things are brands and products that we feel reflect who we are, or want to be. It’s not bad or extreme consumerism etc. It’s just fact.
Thanks so much for your pity, but I really, really, really don’t need it.
Advertising is a tool used by Psychpaths to facilitate their capitalist urges.
framed nicley it is about educating and engaging consumers to consume more of MY product. Other wise it is just a pathological abuse of communication expertise to manipulate the maximum yield from an audience with suspended judgement skills.
In a bubble of logic it makes no sense for a capitalist business to consider what is best for consumers or society…its about itself …(OK its about the SIP -self important person who wants extraordinary personal benefits for doing little, if any, more than the rest of the great unworthy masses). If only the masterful communication of “the trickle down effect” were more than a shield for greed.
So conjecturing about this is akin to attempting a discussion on civil rights with Stalin. ad agencies are only licking up the crumbs by helping the psychopath achieve his goals via excellent persuasion skills………………just .looking around….no…. not a moral compass in sight.
I don’t always agree with Mr Ferrier but in this case I agree with this article. Brilliantly insightful.
@Alex By implying that advertising only exists because of “market inefficiencies” assumes that we humans are rational; even the most rational of rational economists would quietly admit that neither markets nor consumers are rational.
Why give people any shampoo at all?
Follow your argument though to its logical conclusion, and you get a perfectly efficient world where everyone unwittingly spends their lives working for entirely intangible goods. No one gets fat, no fossil fuels are burned, and the rain forests are left alone.
It’s genius, Mr Anderson.
Was this article meant to published in a few weeks? Like 1st April?
@ Adam and all,
This discussion has REALLY got me thinking! Having lost virtually ALL of my money via having to sell my home (at huge loss) due to poor impulse around purchasing item’s I wanted but certainly could NOT afford, not once but twice, I believe I represent one of the many ‘victim’s’ of ‘false’ advertising. ….
Gullible ‘in the moment’ for whatever reason, pretty much destroying ourselves to get what we ‘thought’ we needed (particularly us single mothers) trying to keep up with everything our children think, or we adults think they need….
I can’t place the blame for my personal situation anywhere other than on myself, however advertisers need to consider that there is a fallout. False advertising doesn’t just influence the affluent, in fact, they, understanding how to manage money and create wealth, may be more likely to be more discerning as to what and when to buy….
I stand before you naked, embarrassed and ashamed. I have wasted everything I had, on things we didn’t need, and my teenage children and I are without a home, with all of those ‘goods’ piled to the roof of a storage shed….
My credit card racked to limit, facing possible bankruptcy and the loss of the only asset left, a commercial block of land which is on the market with no sniffers as yet…
There is a place for advertising. I love the creativity applied. Some ads are pure brilliance… but ethics must play a role….. corporate greed is out of control. At what point does a creative or agency say, ‘ No. I wont do that’ Pass?
Hi Adam,
I’m just wondering, do you actually believe what you wrote?
Just curious.
Don’t forget folks, we do need to spend our money on something.
finite recourses…?? oh my lordy. a world i’m glad to have left.
Adam, this is old. Vance Packard discussed deceptive premium pricing on soap more than 50 years ago.
@Random Writer. That is a genuinely sad story, but don’t shoot the messenger. No-one in advertising forced you to buy anything.
corporate greed = commercial imperative. We are only some of the oil that greases the machine, not all of it.
Advertising Execs are ranked 2nd to Investment Bankers as professionals who do the least good for society.
Even worse than real estate agents and used car salesman. Fancy that.
“If we can get people to happily pay a higher price for the same product ” Thing is, It’s not the same product. The thing being sold is cleaner hair plus the feelings created by the shape and colour of the bottle, the feel-good TV commercial, the social media change-the-world campaign and whatever else the marketers have dreamed up. What’s in the bottle is a part of the product. But we all know that – me thinks you’re just stirring the possum.