Sheri

its worth fighting for 🌷

Writer of word both truth and tale. Video producer, editor, artist, still human. Hire me?

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Slowly making a visual novel called We Will Not See Heaven, demo is free. Sometimes I stream, or post adult things. Boys' love novel enthusiast. Take care, yeah?

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TECH CAN ONLY BE AS KIND TO US AS WE ARE TO ONE ANOTHER.


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it's a pretty big claim to say ads don't work, cuz they can. but they aren't nearly as effective as you might think, if multiple studies from the past couple decades are to be believed

A diagram from the Generalizable and Robust TV Advertising Effects. It's too long to put into alt text, using a text reader on the PDF itself will do.

generally, ads aren't great at helping small businesses get attention, and mostly work for already extant products, assuming they advertise continuously to normalize them in a culture. a truly stupid amount of money is spent on something that is at best a fraction as effective as often suggested

so, a cultural shift has happened in marketing. the previous shift has been talked about before by smarter and funnier people than me, but the new era is an acknowledgement of marketing's place in our culture as. uh.

being a weird bad thing all of us want to block and get rid of

"Each chapter addresses a different challenge or opportunity. These include: The challenge of defining effectiveness, Solving the brand and performance conundrum, Marketing vs advertising effectiveness, The rise and flaws of ROI The CEO viewpoint, How often to measure, How to communicate success. The report is available for free within the premium subscription package."

"available for free within the premium subscription package" so, not free then that's not free it costs money you see

anyways. advertisers know that people don't like ads, and even people who see them aren't affected by them unless they sustain constant exposure. so! rather than even attempt to advertise, the new move is to associate the desired end point with the product regardless of its function.

no longer do you need to explain how your product works when your entire campaign is "don't worry your empty little head and let us, the people personally responsible for taxes being so complicated, figure out your taxes for you"

this new push from TurboTax is one of the most vile pieces of marketing i've ever seen. at no point is the purpose of the product explained beyond the need to do taxes in general. and as such they spend the entire length of this campaign showing people just. being happy.

at the beach, with their family, cooking, taking care of plants. they don't even begin to market the merit of turbotax, just the feeling of "not doing taxes"

(because taxes suck don't they?? (because turbotax's owners actively made it suck))

quick reminder of the other products and services intuit owns, by the way

A list of products owned by Intuit. TurboTax, Quickbooks, Mint, Pro Connect, Credit Karma, and Mailchimp.

the point of all this is to say: ads aren't actually very effective

but also: our entire modern digital commerce space is built on ads

and since the point of a company is to make more money and grow, it doesn't matter if it turns out their product is actively useless, or if they just lie about it being useful. what matters is they've already supplanted themselves as the backbone of the spaces where digital culture grows

people will keep blocking ads, or finding ways to create ad-free spaces or versions of things they love (thanks, co-host!)

and they'll keep doing it. advertising is not itself a core of humanity, it is simply a trick used to associate a product or company with a feeling. and the feeling most people want right now?

relief. rest. relaxation.

and it's far, far easier to skip past justifying what your product even does to just advertise the feeling of "being free" and "not doing taxes"

happy tax day, marketers! i know you're not paying any yourselves tho haha


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in reply to @Sheri's post:

i do find it wild how advertisements have given up on "here's our product and what it does" in favor of "feels. vibes. the warm summer air. coca-cola". and how much money is being poured down the drain for just, an entire industry of regurgitating it

Do you think ads don't explain their product because the point of ads has changed from "get you to buy our product" to "get you to search for our product"? You may not be able to buy an ad spot long enough to explain how buying the Nutsmacker HX 2007 (TM) will improve your life, but if you can fill a 30 second spot with enough ~vibes~ to at least get a viewer to google it, you can get them on your website where you have all the time in the world to get them through your sales funnel.