Poor facebook employees losing their morale over having gone from ten-millionaires to mere millionaires, just for showing up and driving a desk for 8 hours a day for a couple of years. How awful.
This is almost as bad as the wrap-rage resulting from people having to take a FULL TWO MINUTES to open up their galaxy tabs.
Dear god, I hope that no facebook employees also bought galaxy tabs. The pain, the suffering...the horror they would have to sustain.
They would fit in any larger car too. And more comfortably. And more friends and extended family would fit. Where you draw the line could well be affected by ads without your knowledge.
While thats an accurate statement, it has no bearing on advertising. And I'm quite sure I'm not going to buy something I don't need due to an ad I never saw.
Your language suggests you think one gets influenced deliberately. That could be the reason for your misconceptions.
I'm afraid this is getting a little tedious. As the retired head of strategic marketing for a fortune 50 company, I think I'm well aware of how advertising works, and I'm also quite familiar with how little it affects me, and how little it affects most people. 80% of it sucks and does a poor job at selling and fixing interest or its inapplicable to the audience, another 10% is well done at fixing interest, but the target often can't say what the ad was trying to sell. Some portion of the remaining 10% is well done, well targeted, fixes interest and is applicable to the audience.
I'm not sure craigslist ads quite conform to the type of advertising we're discussing here, nor are you correct about being smart about spending my money. I've actually been turned down for credit card signups with bonus offers because "We determined that we would lose money on you as a customer".
The child corruption is fun for me. When a company poisons my kid to want something that isn't very good, I only purchase items and services from that company when I can get them for free or nearly free as a loss leader. For example, for making my kid want happy meals just to get the stupid prize, we buy almost everything from mcdonalds dollar menu without the high profit sides and drinks, often with a coupon or a freebie.
The one all of my family members and their stuff fits in.
Are you sure you are not influenced by celebrities driving particular sized cars?
No. Why should I be, unless they have the same needs I do? And I think that your typical actor or sports star probably has a different budget and demands than I do.
Costco has directly influenced your decision by your own admission. And why costco, and why amazon? Is this not in some way influenced by advertisements? Ads directly working on you, or working on others and others "working" on you.
Both of them because they've provided me with exemplary customer service, product selection, great return policies and no hassles as a customer. Another place besides good branding that companies don't spend their money on.
I do find some ads marginally helpful. For example, my 7 year old likes the directv commercials such as the one where the guy gets mad at his tv provider, gets an eyepatch and ends up in a roadside ditch. Its a great succinct explanation for how bad decisions can quickly lead to poor results. So when my son is about to get himself into some trouble over a bad decision I just tell him "Don't end up in a roadside ditch now...". Pretty effective.
Or they simply looked at the products available, the features and prices, and bought without ever seeing an ad. Of course, I have a DVR and don't read paper publications, so there isn't a lot of opportunity to influence me with an ad.
Basically I totally disagree with a significant causation for advertising and purchasing. Now if you want to talk about branding, there's a great place to spend your money.
...what bothers me more is that they're mixing in incorrect information to make decisions.
Case in point, I upgraded my insurance for my home and cars to a higher tier, higher coverage, less expensive plan that had a high application hurdle to jump..you had to be pretty squeaky clean.
I got rejected at first, because they had me linked to an ex girlfriend I'd bought a house with almost ten years earlier, because it turns out that her ex husband from ten years prior to that got into some insurance fraud.
So the connection was her ex that I never met from 20 years ago to her who I dated and lived with for 2 years and hadn't seen for 8, to me in current time. Enough incorrect influence to potentially cost me money. But after we went over the 'six degrees of cute fuzzy bunny', they let me in.
Yet I wonder how often someone elses data or influence or the connections made cost me money or exclude me from opportunities.
The other fun portion of this is when you point out to the aggregators and gatherers that they're doing it wrong and have some bad data. They don't want to fix it and admit the data was less than 100%. They hide it. The perception of data integrity is more important than the data integrity itself.
Hey theres a product where the ad definitely influenced my 7 year old. He wanted one right away. Which was a great learning experience, because as it turns out the doritos taco shells suck. They crack very easily. So my little man learned that ads lie and something that looks great on tv in an ad might just stink.
Eh, I'm aware of peripheral influence, but when I buy 99% of my stuff from going to amazon, clicking on the category, clicking on 5 star reviewed only, then choosing the cheapest one unless one is 'used like new' from the Warehouse, and then buying it...I'm not sure where I've become susceptible to an ad.
When I buy a car its whatever is the size I need at the lowest price. I buy the cheapest cell phone plan I can find.
For almost everything else I buy, its the one that Costco sells and since they tend to not sell 5 different kinds of anything...again not much room for influence.
"Yes, we're going to do the same thing, only moreso"
"Insanity is defined as doing the same thing and expecting a different result"
"We lose money on every sale, but we make it up on volume"
Any others?
So far, for all of my life, at least as well as I can remember...I've never been made aware of a product due to an ad, never decided to buy something due to an ad, and never decided to buy or get behind some other product/service/person as a result of an ad. Of course, this may be because I used to make ads and I know that most of them are full of semi truths and information not meant to be combined cobbled together with the intent of making me think something other than what I currently think, to someone elses benefit.
Studies cost money. When someone pays for a study, they usually have a desired outcome in mind.
I do studies for a living. This statement is pure bullshit and factually not true.
As head of strategic marketing for a fortune 50 company for many years, I paid a considerable sum of money for studies to be performed, and 97% of them produced exactly the results I wanted. If I were loose lipped I'd rattle off a bunch of very familiar sounding names. To be fair, I usually had three or four of them figuring out tiny little slices of what I wanted, then I'd use a relatively anonymous aggregator to put the pieces together and feed the end result to press and media folks who would run with it, and with so many credible sources for the data, it wasn't long before anything I put out was fully accepted as fact and a pie chart or graph was all that was needed to represent all of that work.
Don't get me wrong, I believed in the message I was sending and I feel it was beneficial to many, but it was difficult at best to quantify why people should do what I thought they should do...so I made up some reasonable stuff and made it stick.
So while you're as huffy as many of the people who are probably a level or two below where these sorts of decisions get made (or you aren't making any real money), this is how the world works.
The only way to make an terrorists lay down their arms is either with dialogue or to commit war crimes on a grand scale. Even then peace is not guaranteed.
Lets simplify it...either you stop doing whatever is pissing them off enough that they'll blow themselves up to prove a point, or you have to kill all of them and everyone they know, else the next recruiting party starts with the friends and family of the guys you've killed, and they don't even give a %$@# about what pissed off the dead guys, they just want revenge.
What the article is trying to analyse is whether or not targeted assassinations can actually be effective at tearing apart terror networks.
Oh dear, let me help with this. Studies cost money. When someone pays for a study, they usually have a desired outcome in mind. If the outcome is achieved by the study, then we publish and take great leeway with the results. In this case someone wanted a study run that shows that drones are good. They got that.
Effectiveness? Haven't we killed the #2 al queda guy about 47 times now? How has that been working out for us in terror organization reduction? Oh thats right, they go to some random country that supports terrorism and they follow some other nutball for a while.
Truth is, this pretty frosting is just the start of what you're concerned about...using drones domestically. Its already happening and there'll be a lot more of it. But we all have to have a good opinion of them first, which is what studies and their derivative press releases and press pickups are intended to do.
Not only the weakest whine in the world, but I actually get pissed when I see a company spent an extra $5 to $10 (or more) on packaging I'm going to throw away.
Fitbit and Ooma join Apple in this. I think I paid as much for their boxes and packaging as the product assembly cost.
All of the grocery stores in my area are putting the full court press on delivery for free. I have four of them within a 5 mile radius that will pick and order and bring it to me.
I already get most of my vegetables from an organic delivery service. Most of my meat comes from a local farm that grass feeds them and also delivers.
Whats interesting is that these guys all deliver at night, when there is no traffic, no heat, and the food can sit in a box or thin cooler on my doorstep for a few hours until I wake up and get it. The grocery guys deliver in under an hour.
So while I don't see Amazon selling a lot of fresh food, I think turning groceries into a delivery service just might happen.
They definitely don't have to be local for same-day. Same day might be at 9:00 at night with a daily cut-off time for same-day being 2 or 3 in the afternoon.
Amazon has been tinkering with a delivery company here in the southwest called ontrac. They seem to be operating a 'small van' type quick delivery setup.
But anyhow, here's the fun part for me considering I'm a heavy amazon shopper. I buy almost everything there since I might have to go to 5 local stores and burn $5 worth of gas to find an item that none of those stores even has. What a waste of time and money. Then of course the item is cheaper than if I'd found it, and I don't have to pay sales tax.
So here's the new setup. Amazon has worked out deals with two small towns in interior CA. Those towns will get the lions share of the sales tax that amazon collects. They're then giving it to amazon to incent them towards building in their town. I'm not sure if amazon will take that circular cash and use it to lower their prices so they're still cheaper than local stores, or if they're going to keep it. One thing is clear: the state of california won't be getting much of it, and they spent millions of my tax dollars forcing the issue. It just became a money shell game. But thats good news, because I've already watched my tax money spent by california legislators and I think a drunken sailor would do better.
Right now with Prime, I get half my stuff overnight since I live a few hundred miles from one of amazons major distribution centers in Reno NV. It wouldn't really take much to do same day. Not to mention I don't care about same day and I doubt most other people do. Next day would be good enough.
Simple sample situation. I bought a small boat and need a small anchor. Some local boat stores sell a simple anchor for $50-75. Walmart sells it for $17 but won't ship it and my local stores don't carry it, even though I live in an area that a national wildlife writer called "the most impressive place for boating and fishing in america". Amazon sells it for $23 and will ship it to me within 2 days. Same thing with decaf iced tea. We like to drink that on hot nights. Our local stores sell 37 different versions of regular caffeinated iced tea, but no decaf. Amazon has 5 kinds and I'll have it tomorrow.
With this example in mind, its clear that local specialty shops would like to rape my wallet, the local retailers aren't smart enough or care enough to stock useful products that local shoppers would like to buy, their prices suck and I don't really have time to run around or make phone calls to look for stuff. I imagine we'll see amazon cell phones and tablets being doled out at bargain basement prices and people buying pretty much everything from amazon.
Makes sense. Brick and Mortar stores are stupid. They cost too much and don't have enough selection, and their employees don't know anything. Instead of rolling into bestbuy and having a no-nothing employee try to sell me Monster cables and geek squad installation packages, I can read reviews in my living room, make a good choice, get a great price and just click a button.
The only downside is that I produce more cardboard recycling than the local Costco. I ask them every time I shop there "Would YOU like a box?"
Sweet huh? We make record breaking worldwide profits, but eh...we don't feel like spending a few hundred grand on revamping some video drivers so the computer you paid twice as much as you needed to 3 years ago can run the current OS?
Hmm, windows 7 runs on some ten+ year old platforms without anything special.
Great to see how much Apple likes to take care of their customers by essentially forcing them to upgrade their hardware if they want the new OS and all of the services that will soon be linked to that OS version. Just like they've been doing all along.
I have a short stack of Apple products that won't take a new OS for similar "We just didn't feel like making those old bits work, even though they will". My favorite was having to replace my wifes ipod because her old one wouldn't update to the new version of ios, which was required for some recipe program she used the ipod for in the kitchen. I'm sure a recipe program truly requires the newest OS and the latest hardware. Except for the fact that I ran a similar app on an IBM PC AT about 25 years ago. Five bucks says I could get windows 7 running on that box.
Here's the short version...corporations used to do their own employee cell phone packaging and distribution. RIM had good tools for that. Then corporations told their employees to go buy their own phones, and employees with the money for a blackberry bought an iphone. People without the cash for a blackberry or iphone bought a cheap android phone. RIM kept making expensive phones that were excellent for an enterprise setup, which nobody needed anymore. RIM management then kept doing the same thing, rinse and repeat. Now it appears the shareholders have paid the management team to find a lot of reasons other than "We suddenly became irrelevant and didn't see it coming or do something about it once it had".
Slashdot Mirror
Poor facebook employees losing their morale over having gone from ten-millionaires to mere millionaires, just for showing up and driving a desk for 8 hours a day for a couple of years. How awful.
This is almost as bad as the wrap-rage resulting from people having to take a FULL TWO MINUTES to open up their galaxy tabs.
Dear god, I hope that no facebook employees also bought galaxy tabs. The pain, the suffering...the horror they would have to sustain.
They would fit in any larger car too. And more comfortably. And more friends and extended family would fit. Where you draw the line could well be affected by ads without your knowledge.
While thats an accurate statement, it has no bearing on advertising. And I'm quite sure I'm not going to buy something I don't need due to an ad I never saw.
Your language suggests you think one gets influenced deliberately. That could be the reason for your misconceptions.
I'm afraid this is getting a little tedious. As the retired head of strategic marketing for a fortune 50 company, I think I'm well aware of how advertising works, and I'm also quite familiar with how little it affects me, and how little it affects most people. 80% of it sucks and does a poor job at selling and fixing interest or its inapplicable to the audience, another 10% is well done at fixing interest, but the target often can't say what the ad was trying to sell. Some portion of the remaining 10% is well done, well targeted, fixes interest and is applicable to the audience.
I'm not sure craigslist ads quite conform to the type of advertising we're discussing here, nor are you correct about being smart about spending my money. I've actually been turned down for credit card signups with bonus offers because "We determined that we would lose money on you as a customer".
The child corruption is fun for me. When a company poisons my kid to want something that isn't very good, I only purchase items and services from that company when I can get them for free or nearly free as a loss leader. For example, for making my kid want happy meals just to get the stupid prize, we buy almost everything from mcdonalds dollar menu without the high profit sides and drinks, often with a coupon or a freebie.
How do you know what size car you need?
The one all of my family members and their stuff fits in.
Are you sure you are not influenced by celebrities driving particular sized cars?
No. Why should I be, unless they have the same needs I do? And I think that your typical actor or sports star probably has a different budget and demands than I do.
Costco has directly influenced your decision by your own admission. And why costco, and why amazon? Is this not in some way influenced by advertisements? Ads directly working on you, or working on others and others "working" on you.
Both of them because they've provided me with exemplary customer service, product selection, great return policies and no hassles as a customer. Another place besides good branding that companies don't spend their money on.
I do find some ads marginally helpful. For example, my 7 year old likes the directv commercials such as the one where the guy gets mad at his tv provider, gets an eyepatch and ends up in a roadside ditch. Its a great succinct explanation for how bad decisions can quickly lead to poor results. So when my son is about to get himself into some trouble over a bad decision I just tell him "Don't end up in a roadside ditch now...". Pretty effective.
Or they simply looked at the products available, the features and prices, and bought without ever seeing an ad. Of course, I have a DVR and don't read paper publications, so there isn't a lot of opportunity to influence me with an ad.
Basically I totally disagree with a significant causation for advertising and purchasing. Now if you want to talk about branding, there's a great place to spend your money.
...what bothers me more is that they're mixing in incorrect information to make decisions.
Case in point, I upgraded my insurance for my home and cars to a higher tier, higher coverage, less expensive plan that had a high application hurdle to jump..you had to be pretty squeaky clean.
I got rejected at first, because they had me linked to an ex girlfriend I'd bought a house with almost ten years earlier, because it turns out that her ex husband from ten years prior to that got into some insurance fraud.
So the connection was her ex that I never met from 20 years ago to her who I dated and lived with for 2 years and hadn't seen for 8, to me in current time. Enough incorrect influence to potentially cost me money. But after we went over the 'six degrees of cute fuzzy bunny', they let me in.
Yet I wonder how often someone elses data or influence or the connections made cost me money or exclude me from opportunities.
The other fun portion of this is when you point out to the aggregators and gatherers that they're doing it wrong and have some bad data. They don't want to fix it and admit the data was less than 100%. They hide it. The perception of data integrity is more important than the data integrity itself.
Hey theres a product where the ad definitely influenced my 7 year old. He wanted one right away. Which was a great learning experience, because as it turns out the doritos taco shells suck. They crack very easily. So my little man learned that ads lie and something that looks great on tv in an ad might just stink.
Good stuff.
Eh, I'm aware of peripheral influence, but when I buy 99% of my stuff from going to amazon, clicking on the category, clicking on 5 star reviewed only, then choosing the cheapest one unless one is 'used like new' from the Warehouse, and then buying it...I'm not sure where I've become susceptible to an ad.
When I buy a car its whatever is the size I need at the lowest price. I buy the cheapest cell phone plan I can find.
For almost everything else I buy, its the one that Costco sells and since they tend to not sell 5 different kinds of anything...again not much room for influence.
"Yes, we're going to do the same thing, only moreso"
"Insanity is defined as doing the same thing and expecting a different result"
"We lose money on every sale, but we make it up on volume"
Any others?
So far, for all of my life, at least as well as I can remember...I've never been made aware of a product due to an ad, never decided to buy something due to an ad, and never decided to buy or get behind some other product/service/person as a result of an ad. Of course, this may be because I used to make ads and I know that most of them are full of semi truths and information not meant to be combined cobbled together with the intent of making me think something other than what I currently think, to someone elses benefit.
Meh, no thanks.
So, when did you become a Muslim?
The same day you stopped beating your wife.
Studies cost money. When someone pays for a study, they usually have a desired outcome in mind.
I do studies for a living. This statement is pure bullshit and factually not true.
As head of strategic marketing for a fortune 50 company for many years, I paid a considerable sum of money for studies to be performed, and 97% of them produced exactly the results I wanted. If I were loose lipped I'd rattle off a bunch of very familiar sounding names. To be fair, I usually had three or four of them figuring out tiny little slices of what I wanted, then I'd use a relatively anonymous aggregator to put the pieces together and feed the end result to press and media folks who would run with it, and with so many credible sources for the data, it wasn't long before anything I put out was fully accepted as fact and a pie chart or graph was all that was needed to represent all of that work.
Don't get me wrong, I believed in the message I was sending and I feel it was beneficial to many, but it was difficult at best to quantify why people should do what I thought they should do...so I made up some reasonable stuff and made it stick.
So while you're as huffy as many of the people who are probably a level or two below where these sorts of decisions get made (or you aren't making any real money), this is how the world works.
Or Luddites blowing up factories.
What? Use a manufactured device to blow up a factory and have my Luddite card revoked? I think not.
The only way to make an terrorists lay down their arms is either with dialogue or to commit war crimes on a grand scale. Even then peace is not guaranteed.
Lets simplify it...either you stop doing whatever is pissing them off enough that they'll blow themselves up to prove a point, or you have to kill all of them and everyone they know, else the next recruiting party starts with the friends and family of the guys you've killed, and they don't even give a %$@# about what pissed off the dead guys, they just want revenge.
What the article is trying to analyse is whether or not targeted assassinations can actually be effective at tearing apart terror networks.
Oh dear, let me help with this. Studies cost money. When someone pays for a study, they usually have a desired outcome in mind. If the outcome is achieved by the study, then we publish and take great leeway with the results. In this case someone wanted a study run that shows that drones are good. They got that.
Effectiveness? Haven't we killed the #2 al queda guy about 47 times now? How has that been working out for us in terror organization reduction? Oh thats right, they go to some random country that supports terrorism and they follow some other nutball for a while.
Truth is, this pretty frosting is just the start of what you're concerned about...using drones domestically. Its already happening and there'll be a lot more of it. But we all have to have a good opinion of them first, which is what studies and their derivative press releases and press pickups are intended to do.
I actually get pissed when I see a company spent an extra $5 to $10 (or more) on packaging I'm going to throw away.
I'll bet you drink that generic beer that comes in cans that only say BEER.
Fark no! I get the ones that say "GOOD BEER",
I think they should just be kept in their boxes on the shelf, original shrink wrap intact. Forever.
Not only the weakest whine in the world, but I actually get pissed when I see a company spent an extra $5 to $10 (or more) on packaging I'm going to throw away.
Fitbit and Ooma join Apple in this. I think I paid as much for their boxes and packaging as the product assembly cost.
The 1.5B screaming Chinese charging at the lines will be a bit effective as well.
Tivo only makes money from patent income. Looks like RIM will be paying everyone else. You're doing it wrong!
Be nice to run this on my sony google tv box. See if someone ever compiles it for the intel chip and gets it on the google tv's version of Play.
The most powerful desktop today is essentially the same thing as a Commodore 64.
I just bought a new i7 system to replace my c64. Am I doing it wrong again? Should I retire my AOL email account?
All of the grocery stores in my area are putting the full court press on delivery for free. I have four of them within a 5 mile radius that will pick and order and bring it to me.
I already get most of my vegetables from an organic delivery service. Most of my meat comes from a local farm that grass feeds them and also delivers.
Whats interesting is that these guys all deliver at night, when there is no traffic, no heat, and the food can sit in a box or thin cooler on my doorstep for a few hours until I wake up and get it. The grocery guys deliver in under an hour.
So while I don't see Amazon selling a lot of fresh food, I think turning groceries into a delivery service just might happen.
They definitely don't have to be local for same-day. Same day might be at 9:00 at night with a daily cut-off time for same-day being 2 or 3 in the afternoon.
Amazon has been tinkering with a delivery company here in the southwest called ontrac. They seem to be operating a 'small van' type quick delivery setup.
But anyhow, here's the fun part for me considering I'm a heavy amazon shopper. I buy almost everything there since I might have to go to 5 local stores and burn $5 worth of gas to find an item that none of those stores even has. What a waste of time and money. Then of course the item is cheaper than if I'd found it, and I don't have to pay sales tax.
So here's the new setup. Amazon has worked out deals with two small towns in interior CA. Those towns will get the lions share of the sales tax that amazon collects. They're then giving it to amazon to incent them towards building in their town. I'm not sure if amazon will take that circular cash and use it to lower their prices so they're still cheaper than local stores, or if they're going to keep it. One thing is clear: the state of california won't be getting much of it, and they spent millions of my tax dollars forcing the issue. It just became a money shell game. But thats good news, because I've already watched my tax money spent by california legislators and I think a drunken sailor would do better.
Right now with Prime, I get half my stuff overnight since I live a few hundred miles from one of amazons major distribution centers in Reno NV. It wouldn't really take much to do same day. Not to mention I don't care about same day and I doubt most other people do. Next day would be good enough.
Simple sample situation. I bought a small boat and need a small anchor. Some local boat stores sell a simple anchor for $50-75. Walmart sells it for $17 but won't ship it and my local stores don't carry it, even though I live in an area that a national wildlife writer called "the most impressive place for boating and fishing in america". Amazon sells it for $23 and will ship it to me within 2 days. Same thing with decaf iced tea. We like to drink that on hot nights. Our local stores sell 37 different versions of regular caffeinated iced tea, but no decaf. Amazon has 5 kinds and I'll have it tomorrow.
With this example in mind, its clear that local specialty shops would like to rape my wallet, the local retailers aren't smart enough or care enough to stock useful products that local shoppers would like to buy, their prices suck and I don't really have time to run around or make phone calls to look for stuff. I imagine we'll see amazon cell phones and tablets being doled out at bargain basement prices and people buying pretty much everything from amazon.
Makes sense. Brick and Mortar stores are stupid. They cost too much and don't have enough selection, and their employees don't know anything. Instead of rolling into bestbuy and having a no-nothing employee try to sell me Monster cables and geek squad installation packages, I can read reviews in my living room, make a good choice, get a great price and just click a button.
The only downside is that I produce more cardboard recycling than the local Costco. I ask them every time I shop there "Would YOU like a box?"
Sweet huh? We make record breaking worldwide profits, but eh...we don't feel like spending a few hundred grand on revamping some video drivers so the computer you paid twice as much as you needed to 3 years ago can run the current OS?
Hmm, windows 7 runs on some ten+ year old platforms without anything special.
Great to see how much Apple likes to take care of their customers by essentially forcing them to upgrade their hardware if they want the new OS and all of the services that will soon be linked to that OS version. Just like they've been doing all along.
I have a short stack of Apple products that won't take a new OS for similar "We just didn't feel like making those old bits work, even though they will". My favorite was having to replace my wifes ipod because her old one wouldn't update to the new version of ios, which was required for some recipe program she used the ipod for in the kitchen. I'm sure a recipe program truly requires the newest OS and the latest hardware. Except for the fact that I ran a similar app on an IBM PC AT about 25 years ago. Five bucks says I could get windows 7 running on that box.
Here's the short version...corporations used to do their own employee cell phone packaging and distribution. RIM had good tools for that. Then corporations told their employees to go buy their own phones, and employees with the money for a blackberry bought an iphone. People without the cash for a blackberry or iphone bought a cheap android phone. RIM kept making expensive phones that were excellent for an enterprise setup, which nobody needed anymore. RIM management then kept doing the same thing, rinse and repeat. Now it appears the shareholders have paid the management team to find a lot of reasons other than "We suddenly became irrelevant and didn't see it coming or do something about it once it had".