OT: The creepy side of this business

farss wrote on 11/12/2007, 5:26 AM
Shot a video today of a media conference, all the local heavyweights were there. I guess I shouldn't be surprised at what happens when you have $Ms to spend on marketing but some things came as a bit of a shock. Some snippets:

You're thinking about a holiday to Italy and find a website for the place. Nice aerial shot of the coastline greets you. It's no coincidence there's a BMW driving along the winding road.

One long term study reveals that ad effectiveness can be influenced by the program that the ad is run in. Frazier rates at 100%, House at 125%. Place your ad in House's timeslot and it'll be 25% more effective.

You create an emotive image but will it stick, can you use it to carry more information that will be remembered. To answer that you need to analyse the kind of emotive response. This can be done by looking for markers in EEG plots of a study group. Taking this further the way in which images are intercut produces different responses in our brains and they're largely ones we don't consciously recall or are even aware of at the time. It was kind of interesting to watch real time plots of brain activity as the audience watches something. It's not just that we react but the sequence of reactions that determine our memory of them.

And one other gem.
A study in several countries asked how much would you pay to download a movie in reasonable quality. The answer was USD 7, same answer in each country surveyed. Participants were then asked how much more would you pay to download the movie at release data. Again same answer from all surveyed countries, USD 3. And finally, how much more would you pay if you could view that movie indefinately, USD 3.
So for a current release movie with no DRM we'd pay USD 13 to download it. I can't repeat verbatim the speakers comments about the level of disconnect between Hollywood and it's customers, way too many expletives and this wasn't some young jock talking, suffice to say he asked what other business goes to such lengths to NOT give it's customers what they want. Everyone else at the conference is spending millions to find out what their customers want, then they spend more millions trying educate their customers about the product and here we have a business that knows what their customers want and spends money to stop them having it, go figure.

And something for Grazie. Expect to see roadside digital signage in the UK. Those boxes that house the telcos local equipment could be fitted with screens to run interactive ads.

Bob.

Comments

Grazie wrote on 11/12/2007, 7:30 AM
Why me Bob?

. . .and be a bit more explicit.

Grazie
TheHappyFriar wrote on 11/12/2007, 7:55 AM
did you ever check out broadcasting mag's? People not in the business are just cattle & they're trying to find the feed that produces the most meat/milk for as little effort/$$ as possible. :)
jazzmaster wrote on 11/12/2007, 10:37 AM
I'm 74 and have been in the advertising business since 1959, to Creative Director and Needham, Worldwide in 1970. It is indeed creepy. You might ask yourself why people continue to eat fast food when they know it has no nutrition and is bad for you. It is because they are creatures of lower desires. Now, before you hop all over that, listen:

The juicy hamburgher shown with cheeze, fries, etc., or the cheeze and pepperoni pizza---those images linger in a person's mind because they are instinctual, gut-level pictures designed to emit a response. Sex sells, and this is sexy food. Now here's the thing:

Sexy images linger in the mind at the low-end of consciousness for a long time and even when they enter the sub-conscious theycontinue to work their pull on one's desires--because people are not trained to get rid of it! They don't teach this in schools or universities which are anyway preoccupied with turning out corporate suits. They have no self-control! That is the problem. They were not taught it by their parents and didn't learn it in school or in their workaday environment. So they are automatons, ready to be whipped this way or that by messages which appear to their lower consciousness.

It's the same with religion, government, food, cars, what have you.

As H. L. Menkin said, "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the Great American Mind"--or something to that effect. He referred to the mass market as the "Boobousie."

Read "The Hidden Persuaders" by Vance Pakard--from the 60's I believe. Nothing much has changed since then

The problem is purely psychological. As we live life (with no instruction on how to avoid it) our minds develop comfortable ruts which repeat themselves. This become our mind-set. We then see the world in terms of these ruts. Psychologists call them "Availability-mediated influences." It's like filling the mind with cement. We are loath to change anything becuase it disturbs the mind's status quo and, horrors! we might have to learn something new.

There is a learning curve to life, just as there is to Vegas Pro 8 or any other program. Most people don't understand that things of a higher nature, thus higher influence on our lives, have to be learned. I'm a musician and I had to re-tune my ear in 1968 so I could get the New Orleans jazz out and the Beatles in. That's what I mean. We do not know the word "connoisseur." (except with wine) Instead, they say, Well, I don't know anything about art, but I know what I Iike!" as if that were a valid statement of taste.

In the end, it comes down to leadership at the highest levels. Such leadership we have not had in a long time, thus television has taken over as the arbitor of taste. It reigns supreme. People learn about life through TV and most of us have been part of the problem, good or bad.

Burt Wilson