The problem is, marketing works primarily to sustain itself.
Now that virtually all Americans shop at virtually identical stores (and websites) which stock virtually identical products, I agree that "brand awareness" is of diminishing value. The one exception might be in-store product placement. Otherwise, the money would be better spent on competitive pricing (people will buy anything that Walmart sells, but prefer the cheaper option).
Why do people install a hundred different apps to access websites (e.g. wsj.com) instead of just using the browser to do the same?
People think that paying 99 cents for something makes it more valuable than if they get it for free. Plus, all those apps totally prove that the money they spend on smart phones and data plans was necessary.
I especially like the one about peeling apples because they have been coated in chemicals. The chemicals they are coated with is simple wax used to replace the naturally occurring wax that is removed during the washing process. Why wash the apples? To remove fungus spores, dirt and insect eggs. Why replace the wax? To prevent premature spoilage due to excess oxygen getting to the fruit.
If the presence of wax allows contaminants to adhere to the apples, and washing removes these contaminants, why isn't it a good idea to avoid consuming the wax and contaminants that are adhered to it? If it is a good idea, why isn't it a good idea to just peel the apple rather than wonder what combination of water temperature and cleaning agents might be required to remove this artificial coating?
Except you are MADE OF chemicals, and not MADE OF snakes
The "chemicals" that people are concerned about are generally synthesized or derived from industrial practices -- i.e. not the chemicals that we are made of and encounter in nature.
Per the previous comment, we know what these people mean. Refusing to address their concerns in good faith only reinforces their skepticism.
That is a stupid and ridiculous statement. This is the 21st century, and air travel is the most common form of transportation for nearly all people is by air, to exercise their constitutional right to petition the government. Burying your head in the sand and pretending that horse and buggy is still an option is simply stupid. The government must change with the times, and these times predominantly use air travel.
The answer to times changing is for the government to come to the people, not prop up some decrepit, corrupt industry and the illusion that as long as people have the option to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on travel their right to petition the government is upheld.
Not that I oppose the Civil Rights Act, but all it seems to have accomplished is for law enforcement to use race-neutral insults while beating and framing young black men. Racism solved by legislation, just like the drug war.
I assure you that while many profound challenges remain, much more was accomplished than what you describe.
My question is that, how dare someone at a top position tell such a big lie? Aren't people supposed to provide a copy of their degrees when they get a job in USA?
No.
Nor should they be, and nor should a degree be required in most cases. A degree proves very little about whether someone is suitable for a given job, and lack of a degree does not necessarily disqualify someone to do a job.
I am all for higher education. I think it is a great experience, and anyone who wants to pursue it should have the opportunity.
I also think that employers should be responsible for vetting applicants based on objective evaluations of relevant skills and experience.
Is football not just another profession to train for? Do you think Universities should only teach classical liberal arts?
They don't grant degrees in "Football", and if players don't progress in some recognized educational pursuit, they cannot participate in sports. There is also no graduation requirement to participate in professional football.
All else equal, taking fighting away from hockey might increase the number of brain injuries. If you take away the players' ability to settle disputes by trading blows, they may decide to retaliate in another way, such as hard checks which involve much greater force and much higher potential for brain damage.
Don't these disputes tend to be caused by hard checks in the first place?
Disputes should be managed by sensible rules and responsible refs (and players). This will discourage both hard checks and the need to retaliate with fights or more hard checks.
Fighting is fairly unique to North American hockey, so the game can be played without it.
I know it sounds counter intuitive, but I think the best way to reduce brain injuries now is to simply remove the helmets from the game.
This might work to discourage people from leading with the head and reduce serious head and neck injuries. However, leading with the head is not likely the primary source of the kind of cumulative brain trauma at issue here.
I'd like to see a comparison outcomes for NFL players and their childhood peers. I.e., If the alternative to "volunteering" to significantly degrade their health and life expectancy is massive and disproportionate unemployment and/or incarceration.
Possibly the biggest question for all sports is what the future may hold if parents keep their children off the playing fields. That's something that will be gradual but I expect that the pool of available talent will start to dwindle as the smarter and more talented athletes choose safer career paths (baseball, investment banking?) and only the desperate take chances with their future sanity and health.
There will always be a steady supply of people desperate enough to risk their future sanity and health.
The only way this will change is if lawsuits by injured/retired players create a sufficient financial incentive for the NFL and other leagues to change the game, or if a sufficient number of spectators are finally overwhelmed by the evidence that they are watching something immoral.
Put shock sensors on the helmet and implement rules about how many hits you can take, and lets get on with life, mkay?
And what if the only reasonably safe number is so low that it is practically impossible for a person to play all the way through childhood, HS, college and become a professional at disabling themselves for the amusement of the masses and the profit of a tiny few?
always appear to be multiple occupants? I've always found that a bit weird.
It is to condition Americans to despise a) sharing and b) small living quarters, yielding a steady supply of cooperation- and organization-averse individualists who seek sprawl and thus fuel the real estate, automobile, & energy industries.
You are someone who enjoys content enough to pay for it, but wants more flexibility in how you consume it -- on your own schedule, with the device of your choosing. I am sure that this is the crux of their "strategy". "People love our content, but are frustrated by the constraints of the old-fashioned cable TV experience."
Hulu has proven to be a viable model, so now the cable companies are trying to transfer their business model onto the Hulu platform.
(I'm not saying I agree with this logic, or eve think it will work out. ..)
Apple isn't so much about making "new categories of consumer product" as they are about finding broken categories of overly complex and unsatisfactory products and re-imagining them as delightful products.
They dumb-down mass-market-intended concepts to the lowest common denominator, then wrap them in dumbed-down "elegance" (its just white plastic and metal, folks).
That's neither marketing genius, nor is it "thinking different". That is McMarketing -- and of course it works. Others failed before them precisely because they were trying to do more, more differently than the average consumer could handle.
As long as your expectations are no more than a millimieter deep, you will be "delighted".
I think we are at a point where most adults have grown up their entire lives with the assumption that certain great discoveries and advancements will be made in their lifetime. Moon bases. Mars missions. Evidence (at least) of extra-terrestrial life. As these folks (I am one of them) hit the downward slope of their life expectancy (which itself hasn't seen the expected advancements), I expect much more wild speculation, straw-grasping and fallacious conclusions about what "must" exist.
If the universe is so immense that it is unlikely that extra-terrestrial life doesn't exist, then it is immense enough that we will probably never find it. Then there is the whole issue of whether that life evolved and died a billion years in the past.
Meanwhile, there are plenty of real problems to be solved and discoveries to be made here on Earth, if anyone is still interested.
He is a very influential employer of programmers, in terms of numbers he employs and the likelihood that similarly clueless but also influential people will listen to him.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is, marketing works primarily to sustain itself.
Now that virtually all Americans shop at virtually identical stores (and websites) which stock virtually identical products, I agree that "brand awareness" is of diminishing value. The one exception might be in-store product placement. Otherwise, the money would be better spent on competitive pricing (people will buy anything that Walmart sells, but prefer the cheaper option).
Why do people install a hundred different apps to access websites (e.g. wsj.com) instead of just using the browser to do the same?
People think that paying 99 cents for something makes it more valuable than if they get it for free. Plus, all those apps totally prove that the money they spend on smart phones and data plans was necessary.
Do or do not, there is no "try". And when it comes to caring about Twitter, there is no "do" either.
I especially like the one about peeling apples because they have been coated in chemicals. The chemicals they are coated with is simple wax used to replace the naturally occurring wax that is removed during the washing process. Why wash the apples? To remove fungus spores, dirt and insect eggs. Why replace the wax? To prevent premature spoilage due to excess oxygen getting to the fruit.
If the presence of wax allows contaminants to adhere to the apples, and washing removes these contaminants, why isn't it a good idea to avoid consuming the wax and contaminants that are adhered to it? If it is a good idea, why isn't it a good idea to just peel the apple rather than wonder what combination of water temperature and cleaning agents might be required to remove this artificial coating?
Except you are MADE OF chemicals, and not MADE OF snakes
The "chemicals" that people are concerned about are generally synthesized or derived from industrial practices -- i.e. not the chemicals that we are made of and encounter in nature.
Per the previous comment, we know what these people mean. Refusing to address their concerns in good faith only reinforces their skepticism.
"I'm a kung-fu hippie from gansta' city!" - Poochie the Dog
Does your state have a helmet law for automobile drivers and passengers?
Because state governments would not let them. Jim Crow Laws were exactly that: Laws passed by state governments.
State governments elected by who? Government Vs. The Market is a false dichotomy.
That is a stupid and ridiculous statement. This is the 21st century, and air travel is the most common form of transportation for nearly all people is by air, to exercise their constitutional right to petition the government. Burying your head in the sand and pretending that horse and buggy is still an option is simply stupid. The government must change with the times, and these times predominantly use air travel.
The answer to times changing is for the government to come to the people, not prop up some decrepit, corrupt industry and the illusion that as long as people have the option to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on travel their right to petition the government is upheld.
Not that I oppose the Civil Rights Act, but all it seems to have accomplished is for law enforcement to use race-neutral insults while beating and framing young black men. Racism solved by legislation, just like the drug war.
I assure you that while many profound challenges remain, much more was accomplished than what you describe.
Wow, you're right. Civil rights legislation completely blew away racism in this country, in just a matter of minutes!!
Strawman unless you can make the case that Civil Rights Legislation was designed to "blow away" racism "in a matter of minutes".
My question is that, how dare someone at a top position tell such a big lie? Aren't people supposed to provide a copy of their degrees when they get a job in USA?
No.
Nor should they be, and nor should a degree be required in most cases. A degree proves very little about whether someone is suitable for a given job, and lack of a degree does not necessarily disqualify someone to do a job.
I am all for higher education. I think it is a great experience, and anyone who wants to pursue it should have the opportunity.
I also think that employers should be responsible for vetting applicants based on objective evaluations of relevant skills and experience.
Is football not just another profession to train for? Do you think Universities should only teach classical liberal arts?
They don't grant degrees in "Football", and if players don't progress in some recognized educational pursuit, they cannot participate in sports. There is also no graduation requirement to participate in professional football.
All else equal, taking fighting away from hockey might increase the number of brain injuries. If you take away the players' ability to settle disputes by trading blows, they may decide to retaliate in another way, such as hard checks which involve much greater force and much higher potential for brain damage.
Don't these disputes tend to be caused by hard checks in the first place?
Disputes should be managed by sensible rules and responsible refs (and players). This will discourage both hard checks and the need to retaliate with fights or more hard checks.
Fighting is fairly unique to North American hockey, so the game can be played without it.
I know it sounds counter intuitive, but I think the best way to reduce brain injuries now is to simply remove the helmets from the game.
This might work to discourage people from leading with the head and reduce serious head and neck injuries. However, leading with the head is not likely the primary source of the kind of cumulative brain trauma at issue here.
All NFL players volunteer to participate.
I'd like to see a comparison outcomes for NFL players and their childhood peers. I.e., If the alternative to "volunteering" to significantly degrade their health and life expectancy is massive and disproportionate unemployment and/or incarceration.
Possibly the biggest question for all sports is what the future may hold if parents keep their children off the playing fields. That's something that will be gradual but I expect that the pool of available talent will start to dwindle as the smarter and more talented athletes choose safer career paths (baseball, investment banking?) and only the desperate take chances with their future sanity and health.
There will always be a steady supply of people desperate enough to risk their future sanity and health.
The only way this will change is if lawsuits by injured/retired players create a sufficient financial incentive for the NFL and other leagues to change the game, or if a sufficient number of spectators are finally overwhelmed by the evidence that they are watching something immoral.
Put shock sensors on the helmet and implement rules about how many hits you can take, and lets get on with life, mkay?
And what if the only reasonably safe number is so low that it is practically impossible for a person to play all the way through childhood, HS, college and become a professional at disabling themselves for the amusement of the masses and the profit of a tiny few?
always appear to be multiple occupants? I've always found that a bit weird.
It is to condition Americans to despise a) sharing and b) small living quarters, yielding a steady supply of cooperation- and organization-averse individualists who seek sprawl and thus fuel the real estate, automobile, & energy industries.
You are someone who enjoys content enough to pay for it, but wants more flexibility in how you consume it -- on your own schedule, with the device of your choosing. I am sure that this is the crux of their "strategy". "People love our content, but are frustrated by the constraints of the old-fashioned cable TV experience."
Hulu has proven to be a viable model, so now the cable companies are trying to transfer their business model onto the Hulu platform.
(I'm not saying I agree with this logic, or eve think it will work out. . .)
How will Apple be able to leverage such a system to sell third-party content and take their cut?
Apple isn't so much about making "new categories of consumer product" as they are about finding broken categories of overly complex and unsatisfactory products and re-imagining them as delightful products.
They dumb-down mass-market-intended concepts to the lowest common denominator, then wrap them in dumbed-down "elegance" (its just white plastic and metal, folks).
That's neither marketing genius, nor is it "thinking different". That is McMarketing -- and of course it works. Others failed before them precisely because they were trying to do more, more differently than the average consumer could handle.
As long as your expectations are no more than a millimieter deep, you will be "delighted".
I think we are at a point where most adults have grown up their entire lives with the assumption that certain great discoveries and advancements will be made in their lifetime. Moon bases. Mars missions. Evidence (at least) of extra-terrestrial life. As these folks (I am one of them) hit the downward slope of their life expectancy (which itself hasn't seen the expected advancements), I expect much more wild speculation, straw-grasping and fallacious conclusions about what "must" exist.
If the universe is so immense that it is unlikely that extra-terrestrial life doesn't exist, then it is immense enough that we will probably never find it. Then there is the whole issue of whether that life evolved and died a billion years in the past.
Meanwhile, there are plenty of real problems to be solved and discoveries to be made here on Earth, if anyone is still interested.
Not saying don't look. Just saying be realistic.
He is a very influential employer of programmers, in terms of numbers he employs and the likelihood that similarly clueless but also influential people will listen to him.
What do you do with everyone who doesn't get a job in management then?
Those lucky bastards get to retire and live off the fruits of their investments in our wise corporations.