I generally agree with what is said here, except for this point: For me, those chat buttons have been so overused by random shitty Shopify sites, that I associate them with the opposite - whenever...
I generally agree with what is said here, except for this point:
Instead of saying you have eager, responsive, intelligent tech support, put a “chat now” bar on every page of your website.
For me, those chat buttons have been so overused by random shitty Shopify sites, that I associate them with the opposite - whenever I see a chat button on the website, I automatically assume that I'll have to spend 5 minutes fighting with the dumbest chat bot ever, and then wait almost a week for the support to say something unhelpful and close the chat.
I suppose something like this is a useful reminder for non-marketing writers to avoid the tropes of marketing so they don't accidentally code their output as trash, but I actually prefer marketing...
I suppose something like this is a useful reminder for non-marketing writers to avoid the tropes of marketing so they don't accidentally code their output as trash, but I actually prefer marketing material to stay obvious so that it's easier to avoid and I don't accidentally waste my time reading vapid, self-promoting corporate propaganda.
A short, somewhat exaggerated post about words that are over-used in marketing because they're powerful. Other powerful words like that include "universal," "always," "never," "forever," and "for...
A short, somewhat exaggerated post about words that are over-used in marketing because they're powerful. Other powerful words like that include "universal," "always," "never," "forever," and "for everyone."
I wouldn't go so far as to say we should stop using them altogether, but they raise my suspicions. What claim is being made? What's the evidence? Do I believe that claim?
You could make another list of such words for social media and newspaper headlines.
I have so many blacklisted words / sentence patterns for article titles that I have a very hard time convincing myself to read anything. In computer science it's more common to see "considered...
You could make another list of such words for social media and newspaper headlines.
I have so many blacklisted words / sentence patterns for article titles that I have a very hard time convincing myself to read anything.
This reminds me of two (video, but still advertising) tropes that make me want to jump out of a window, and I'm usually incredulously looking around and feeling shocked that no one feels the same...
This reminds me of two (video, but still advertising) tropes that make me want to jump out of a window, and I'm usually incredulously looking around and feeling shocked that no one feels the same way.
When the theme and opening line of a commercial is "Here's to X", as in "Here's to moms", "here's to baseball", "here's to teachers", "here's to the dreamers". It's such an annoying, overplayed phrase that makes me think whoever wrote the script for he commercial has absolutely zero iota of talent. It sounds like something AI wrote at this point.
Where multiple people in multiple different places and disconnected situations are all saying a single line of dialog. White woman walking her dog "I'm voting for Glup Shitto because he understands what's important. Black man working as a line cook "what it's like to put in a hard days work" latina girl with a stack of books at a college campus "how important education is*, and all of them together "what serving our country is all about".
It seems like the second one has become "standard advertising template #1", especially in certain sectors (political advertising, alcohol, nebulous IT provider stuff, and especially pharmaceuticals). It's just so lazy and overdone. Stuff like this makes me nostalgic for advertising in the 50s where it's just some guy holding the product and saying "our is better than the other people's" in a few more words.
Oh boy, it's not specific to marketing, but the concept of authenticity itself is one of my pet peeves. I don't think authenticity exists in the first place. I'll try to describe my reasoning...
Oh boy, it's not specific to marketing, but the concept of authenticity itself is one of my pet peeves. I don't think authenticity exists in the first place. I'll try to describe my reasoning without too much fuss.
My background is that I'm a life scientist who's been interested in philosophy since my teens. From this point of view, behavior can be described as a phenotype. So, the basic logic for any phenotype applies, which is:
Environment in this context includes everything except genetics. The multiplication describes the effect born from interaction of genetics and environment.
This rough formula by itself isn't able to explain complex social interactions and behaviors, because it's a rough formula, and also it wasn't developed to explain such complex social behaviors. But the central tenet, that genetics and environment form our behaviors, thoughts, etc. is what's important here.
My next point is that environment is extremely different. There have been countless societies with extremely diverse cultures. There have been even more people with different thoughts and behaviors. However, none of this manifested on its own. Nobody fell from heavens and decided to build an entirely new thought, behavior, cultural artefact, etc. on their own. Always and always, their ideas were extremely affected by their upbringing, the culture they live in, the people they interact with (socially or parasocially [books are parasocial too]).
As a result of this, what a person would call "authentic to them" was formed by a mix of genetics and environment. The environment part includes every social and psychological thing that affected their personality. So, there is no "authentic self" to begin with. What one'd think as "true to their self" manifested by the effects of others in the first place, which was affected by others, and so on.
Furthermore, while formative years are important, brain continues to change until death. It is very very plastic. This is kind of an important point in psychiatry too, because they often focus on changing negative modes of reacting developed in formative years.
So I do not think there is a point to searching for an authentic self. What one person feels as authentic to them is a result of outside effects too. As an extension of this, I don't think there is any point to using the concept of authenticity. Honestly, it feels very much like essentialism but with modern packaging. It assumes there is a special authentic self that is in an antagonistic war against the outside forces, which simply doesn't make sense, because what is described as authentic was formed by outside forces in the first place. Furthermore, it can also change, and very often it should change (e.g. psychiatric context).
I think instead of using terms like authentic, we would benefit more from employing different analytical frameworks. For example, instead of criticizing capitalism for eroding authenticity, we could just say that capitalism tries to commodify everything, therefore changing the social structures and behaviors into a commodity relationship.
In the context of marketing, though, there is no way to overcome this, because marketing by definition is built on commodifying things. This doesn't mean every marketing campaign is exactly the same, but it means that everything -to some degree- will be impacted by the fundamental act of commodifying.
So, if you agree with me that what is described as a problem of authenticity is actually about the act of commodification, in this context, there is no way of solving it. A non-commodifying marketing is a paradox.
I think that's swapping one abstraction for another? "Commodification" is itself an abstraction that we could unpack. "Commodity trading" is about trading standardized bulk goods that everyone...
I think that's swapping one abstraction for another? "Commodification" is itself an abstraction that we could unpack.
"Commodity trading" is about trading standardized bulk goods that everyone uses - something like corn or wheat. But often, marketing is about appealing to people's hopes and dreams rather than just selling the thing itself for its practical characteristics. Isn't making the product seem special the opposite of commodifying it?
Or does it just mean selling it at all? If you do things for money, is that commodifying your time? Nowadays, not doing things for money is sometimes dismissed as "unpaid labor." If you do work and you're not paid for it, or not paid enough, maybe you're being exploited?
I'm using it in the traditional sense. Below is what I shamelessly stole from its Wikipedia page. Edit: I'm not sure I agreee with the mentioned connotation of losing an inherent quality, but the...
I'm using it in the traditional sense. Below is what I shamelessly stole from its Wikipedia page.
Commodification is the process of transforming inalienable, free, or gifted things (objects, services, ideas, nature, personal information, people or animals) into commodities, or objects for sale.[1][2][3][4][5] It has a connotation of losing an inherent quality or social relationship when something is integrated by a capitalist marketplace.[5] Concepts that have been argued as being commodified include broad items such as the body,[6] intimacy,[7] public goods,[8] animals[9] and holidays.[10]
Edit: I'm not sure I agreee with the mentioned connotation of losing an inherent quality, but the rest describes my use of the word.
Okay, makes sense! But what are examples of things that people buy and sell now that they used to do themselves? Is this about cooking, childcare, home repair, playing music, something else?
Okay, makes sense! But what are examples of things that people buy and sell now that they used to do themselves? Is this about cooking, childcare, home repair, playing music, something else?
I generally agree with what is said here, except for this point:
For me, those chat buttons have been so overused by random shitty Shopify sites, that I associate them with the opposite - whenever I see a chat button on the website, I automatically assume that I'll have to spend 5 minutes fighting with the dumbest chat bot ever, and then wait almost a week for the support to say something unhelpful and close the chat.
I suppose something like this is a useful reminder for non-marketing writers to avoid the tropes of marketing so they don't accidentally code their output as trash, but I actually prefer marketing material to stay obvious so that it's easier to avoid and I don't accidentally waste my time reading vapid, self-promoting corporate propaganda.
A short, somewhat exaggerated post about words that are over-used in marketing because they're powerful. Other powerful words like that include "universal," "always," "never," "forever," and "for everyone."
I wouldn't go so far as to say we should stop using them altogether, but they raise my suspicions. What claim is being made? What's the evidence? Do I believe that claim?
You could make another list of such words for social media and newspaper headlines.
I have so many blacklisted words / sentence patterns for article titles that I have a very hard time convincing myself to read anything.
In computer science it's more common to see "considered harmful" than "is dead". Funnily enough there is also a considered harmful is considered harmful
This reminds me of two (video, but still advertising) tropes that make me want to jump out of a window, and I'm usually incredulously looking around and feeling shocked that no one feels the same way.
When the theme and opening line of a commercial is "Here's to X", as in "Here's to moms", "here's to baseball", "here's to teachers", "here's to the dreamers". It's such an annoying, overplayed phrase that makes me think whoever wrote the script for he commercial has absolutely zero iota of talent. It sounds like something AI wrote at this point.
Where multiple people in multiple different places and disconnected situations are all saying a single line of dialog.
White woman walking her dog "I'm voting for Glup Shitto because he understands what's important. Black man working as a line cook "what it's like to put in a hard days work" latina girl with a stack of books at a college campus "how important education is*, and all of them together "what serving our country is all about".
It seems like the second one has become "standard advertising template #1", especially in certain sectors (political advertising, alcohol, nebulous IT provider stuff, and especially pharmaceuticals). It's just so lazy and overdone. Stuff like this makes me nostalgic for advertising in the 50s where it's just some guy holding the product and saying "our is better than the other people's" in a few more words.
Oh boy, it's not specific to marketing, but the concept of authenticity itself is one of my pet peeves. I don't think authenticity exists in the first place. I'll try to describe my reasoning without too much fuss.
My background is that I'm a life scientist who's been interested in philosophy since my teens. From this point of view, behavior can be described as a phenotype. So, the basic logic for any phenotype applies, which is:
Phenotype = Genetics + Environment + (Genetics * Environment)
Environment in this context includes everything except genetics. The multiplication describes the effect born from interaction of genetics and environment.
This rough formula by itself isn't able to explain complex social interactions and behaviors, because it's a rough formula, and also it wasn't developed to explain such complex social behaviors. But the central tenet, that genetics and environment form our behaviors, thoughts, etc. is what's important here.
My next point is that environment is extremely different. There have been countless societies with extremely diverse cultures. There have been even more people with different thoughts and behaviors. However, none of this manifested on its own. Nobody fell from heavens and decided to build an entirely new thought, behavior, cultural artefact, etc. on their own. Always and always, their ideas were extremely affected by their upbringing, the culture they live in, the people they interact with (socially or parasocially [books are parasocial too]).
As a result of this, what a person would call "authentic to them" was formed by a mix of genetics and environment. The environment part includes every social and psychological thing that affected their personality. So, there is no "authentic self" to begin with. What one'd think as "true to their self" manifested by the effects of others in the first place, which was affected by others, and so on.
Furthermore, while formative years are important, brain continues to change until death. It is very very plastic. This is kind of an important point in psychiatry too, because they often focus on changing negative modes of reacting developed in formative years.
So I do not think there is a point to searching for an authentic self. What one person feels as authentic to them is a result of outside effects too. As an extension of this, I don't think there is any point to using the concept of authenticity. Honestly, it feels very much like essentialism but with modern packaging. It assumes there is a special authentic self that is in an antagonistic war against the outside forces, which simply doesn't make sense, because what is described as authentic was formed by outside forces in the first place. Furthermore, it can also change, and very often it should change (e.g. psychiatric context).
I think instead of using terms like authentic, we would benefit more from employing different analytical frameworks. For example, instead of criticizing capitalism for eroding authenticity, we could just say that capitalism tries to commodify everything, therefore changing the social structures and behaviors into a commodity relationship.
In the context of marketing, though, there is no way to overcome this, because marketing by definition is built on commodifying things. This doesn't mean every marketing campaign is exactly the same, but it means that everything -to some degree- will be impacted by the fundamental act of commodifying.
So, if you agree with me that what is described as a problem of authenticity is actually about the act of commodification, in this context, there is no way of solving it. A non-commodifying marketing is a paradox.
I think that's swapping one abstraction for another? "Commodification" is itself an abstraction that we could unpack.
"Commodity trading" is about trading standardized bulk goods that everyone uses - something like corn or wheat. But often, marketing is about appealing to people's hopes and dreams rather than just selling the thing itself for its practical characteristics. Isn't making the product seem special the opposite of commodifying it?
Or does it just mean selling it at all? If you do things for money, is that commodifying your time? Nowadays, not doing things for money is sometimes dismissed as "unpaid labor." If you do work and you're not paid for it, or not paid enough, maybe you're being exploited?
I'm using it in the traditional sense. Below is what I shamelessly stole from its Wikipedia page.
Edit: I'm not sure I agreee with the mentioned connotation of losing an inherent quality, but the rest describes my use of the word.
Okay, makes sense! But what are examples of things that people buy and sell now that they used to do themselves? Is this about cooking, childcare, home repair, playing music, something else?