Irreverent ads make me want to buy things even less
Lately on YouTube I’ve been getting a few really weird ads.
The first was a 5 second spot video for Fatty brand meat sticks. They say “vegans look away” as they spin on the screen.
I’m plant-based: I don’t eat animal products 99.9% of the time. And well before I was like this I wouldn’t have eaten their product because meat sticks were just simply gross. But literally every time I see an advertisement for a food product I see something that looks more like actual meat on the screen so when I see the ad in question, it is basically the single most flaccid insult I have ever seen.
I wouldn’t even be bringing it up except for today I had a different ad show up from dbrand, this time as an image as I was looking through the recommended videos. It was a screenshot of a conversation between them and peta over some leather something or other.
I just think about what this kind of advertising is supposed to do. It’s supposed to position the product in a persons mind. It says to them “buy this to stick it to those leftist vegan cucks” while still being soft enough that a leftist vegan cuck might not be bothered by it and might still consider buying it.
But I think there is a different message we should take from these ads: these companies are run by assholes. The fact that leather and meat require animals to die is a morbid fact that our society has accepted, and rubbing that into the faces of those who disagree with it is not a good look; it just reveals them as the children that they are.
While my dietary restrictions may have prevented me from buying anything from Fatty, the only thing stopping me from buying from dbrand is their own idiotic marketing. Why on earth did they think that they think that their trolling would be effective advertising outside of the trolling website?
Ironically reading this made me look up dbrand’s leather offerings. Ever since Apple swapped to pleather their cases have been pretty bad, so I’ve been looking for non-pleather leather cases. Just threw in an order.
Why did you feel the need to announce this?
I think it makes a fair point about how even though the ad may have discouraged OP from buying at the moment, it can still be effective. This post has made me aware of both dbrand and fatty, two brands I was unfamiliar with. That doesn't mean I'm gonna go out and buy something from them, but I am thinking about a meatstick now when I wouldn't have before!
For those unfamiliar with dbrand, their whole shtick is to be edgy and controversial in their marketing and customer interactions. I understand the appeal for some, it's a fresh change of pace compared to so much other corporate marketing which tends to be sanitized to hell and feel very disingenuous, being edgy like that can be seen as more human in a way.
I have no idea the politics of the dbrand, and not necessarily trying to defend that ad, but if for some reason they had a product that would be marketed towards vegans instead, I could easily see them trying to poke jabs at meat eaters as well, it's just their shtick to be kinda dickish and controversial in their marketing.
I like their ads on reddit. its along the lines of 'don't click this since it costs us money -- just go to the site and look around'
I used to work for Carl's Jr (fast food, originally western US) where the slogan in the late 90s was "if it doesn't get all over the place it doesn't belong in your face". Then they cashed in on Paris Hilton (or she cashed in on them? She's done a few more and apparently directed some a decade+ later, but is keeping up the ads).
And it was a huge seller back in the day, and probably still is.
Granted, their burgers are still some of the best around, which is why I could tolerate working at fast food for five years and still eat there after the fact...
The anecdote hammered it home for me. I can see how it came off jerk-ish, but there's hardly anything more on-topic than an ad missing its target audience but securing a sale anyway. These things are scary effective.
Unfortunately that type of content/ad campaigns are simply more effective. No one talks about nice, benal, boring ads. In a world flooded with ads, nice/forgettable ads are just that, forgotten. We talk about bad, outrageous ads, which only serves to extend their reach and brand recognition - and that's the whole point of advertising.
Funny thing is, I'm entirely familiar with dbrand, but live under
a rockan ad blocker. I've never known, or seen, their advertising. My exposure is 100% through discussions involving dbrand (like botching their attempt at companion/poverty cube steam machine skins by not asking Valve for permission up front).Why not? Are anecdotes banned from the site or something?
Obviously not - it just read to me as partaking in the same antisocial behavior described by OP (belittling others for caring about something). Or, at best, callously invalidating the concern OP shared. But I guess I can see how it may have been neither.
I don't myself participate in BDS, but if someone posted a concern about some west bank company's complicity in (and endorsement of) the situation in their advertising, I wouldn't announce that I purchased a product from said business in response, even if it were true.
Not a perfect analogy, but it captures how the comment made myself and likely others feel.
Vegetarians and Vegans are the one group it's acceptable to mock and belittle. Even on Tildes which is generally a much more accepting place.
The top level comment here is an example of "hurr durr, you don't eat animals so I'm going to eat TWICE AS MANY" that we have to deal with on a regular basis online. There are a lot of examples of anti vegetarian and anti vegan posts and comments on Tildes, which is why I mostly don't engage with the site.
And despite all that, veganism is still gaining steam. More and more people adopt a compassionate diet. Restaurants have at least one item on the menu that doesn’t contain animal cadavers. The global climate will force people to choose between insects or plants instead of meat.
It’s hard to withstand these idiotic remarks but that’s how the “most intelligent” species on the planet works…
I have it. Very excellent product. Their marketing is cringey but their quality is high.
The leather one is pretty decent, had one on one of their phone cases for close to... 7 years now? sheesh.
Ads are very rarely about "oh I should go buy this right now" and more about awareness. For example, you might hate the dbrand ad and have zero interest in their product or company, but maybe in 6 months you'll need a new phone case, be scrolling through offerings, see dbrand and subconsciously think "oh there's a brand I've heard of before, I'll pick them over Qeesmox or Zhengzhou Dinglong Electronic Commerce Co., Ltd.".
I grew up on Adbusters, and watched no television at all for over a decade because I found commercials so repellent. I consumed only recorded video and music or public radio.
I've jumped through so many hoops to block or circumvent ads (and data harvesting) online that it's still a shock when the work Windows computer pukes up an ad that gets through the browser add-ons I can install.
There's an old Bill Hicks routine [text, I'm not linking YouTube] that has all my feels about the present state of enshittification. It also gets at the rage /u/Akir describes about the "anti-marketing" schtick that Fatty is trying.
I am the owner of my attention, and if you want a piece of it uninvited you should be paying me, not vice versa.
I empathize, and I'm sorry.
I think this just highlights the reality that advertisers aren't our friends. They're strangers who want our money. They'll project whatever persona they think might achieve that. If that's low brow, ambulance chasing, morally bankrupt "look at me!" messaging, so be it.
I think this example just tries to trigger people's baser instincts, recognizing that putting down others in the name of some shared value fosters connection. And lazy attempts at connection are par for the course for advertising campaigns.
On PC, where like 99% of my YouTube viewing is done, I use ad blockers so I don't see ads (other then in-video sponsorships, of course).
But on my iPhone, I use the YouTube app, so of course I see ads. And YouTube just serves up bizarre ads. That have nothing to do with my interests. Like at least on Instagram/Facebook, the ads I get are relevant. Fashion, tech, and music are usually what I get. And that's all stuff I'm interested in. I've never purchased anything from an Instagram ad. But I've definitely been like, "Ooh that's nice." Or, "Ohh, I didn't know that existed but that's cool."
Which is weird, because as much information that Google has about me, through YouTube and Gmail and whatever other services I've used over the years, you'd think they'd be better at ad targeting.
I use sponsorblock too, which catches most of the sponsorship segments. Or, it does if the creator is at least somewhat popular
Sponsorship requires viewership and since Sponsorblock is crowdsourced it's almost immediately covered. I don't think I've ever had to manually select a sponsor section even if I'm early to a video.
YouTube will sometimes serve me ads in languages I don't speak. They are not as good at data collection as we think.
It's weird because I feel like the video algorithm is pretty decent. I regularly get served content I'm actually interested in. In fact, it's rare that I'll get served something that's completely out of left field.
But I could also see a situation where the content algorithm is great in order to keep people watching -- and it works because sometimes after work, I'll just watch YouTube for a couple of hours -- so Google can just serve up whatever ads they need to. Quantity over quality on the advertisements side of the house. Luckily, I never or rarely see the ads!
I think that the fundamental flaw in trying to serve someone the Perfect Ad is that they're very constrained by the inventory that advertisers have purchased. Maybe the perfect ad for me is out there but Google had 12 more units of 'AI slop aimed at women with public speaking insecurity' that had to be shown to someone in my age demo because that's what they bought, so that's what I'm seeing.
On the iPhone, NextDNS blocks ads in all apps (except IMDb that I open 30 seconds once a month, Amazon seems to be really eager to show ads in this app), and an Albanian VPN that I toggle on when I watch YT takes care of ads in the app. Proton and Mullvad both have Albanian servers with wireguard.
I watch Youtube on my TV, so no adblocker available. It tends to be at least a bit relevant to me. I saw Bullet Train in theaters because of the trailer, discovered one of my now-favorite music artists because a cover he did was an ad, found a few TV shows and movies to watch... Also lots of game ads. There's a bunch of irrelevant stuff too (I really hate that one shoe commercial that goes "left foot, right foot"), but I guess my viewing history makes targeting ads easy enough.
At one point though, there was a time when my ads included:
These were all in the same time frame, so I'd see a mix of those throughout the day. I got a good laugh out of trying to figure out what Youtube thought my age was. Particularly because the toy commercials were clearly the same ones they'd play on a kids' TV channel. One of my friends was jealous since they kept getting political ads around that time.
Depending on TV OS there are options out there if you're not against blocking ads, I use SmartTube on the TV personally, worth checking some of the options out, must have with little ones.
I think we're just going through a very divisive period in history where tribalism and trolling "the other guys" is seeing a huge surge in effectiveness, so companies are hopping on that bandwagon. Back before the global rush toward fascism I think you saw a lot more ads focusing on how accepting, diverse, and progressive the companies were, but now of course even hinting at diversity is taboo, companies that once touted what a caring ally they were are pretending like pride month doesn't even exist... I think ads are just a cynical reflection of the current cultural zeitgeist, and since the cultural zeitgeist is basically awful right now the ads we see are going to be awful too.
Hey man, at least YouTube plays ads other than liberty, liberty, liiiiiberty. I swear, if liberty didn't spend all that money on advertising, they could give all their customers a solid 40-60% discount.
Tangential to your point, I think all advertising is manipulative and unethical. If your product is any good, it’ll sell itself. If it sucks you need to spend considerable amounts of money to beat people into buying it. Advertising is planting ideas in your mind and weaponizing you against yourself. It makes you feel like you’re less than you are and that the only way to fix it is throwing your money at the people who planted this feeling that you’re not enough into you. No thank you.
I will not use the web without uBlock origin, and I refuse to pay google any money. For blocking ads everywhere on iOS, NextDNS works extremely well, and for the YouTube app Mullvad or proton using their Albanian servers avoid all ads on YT.
Any time the debate comes up about whether to ban ads in public places, I encourage it. I wish there was a real world ad blocker where it would replace billboards and other advertising eyesores with classical paintings.
Hard agree. Not a banksy fan, but he's right about advertising in public spaces. I feel no compunction about ripping down posters/stickers that I can that exist in my space. I don't quite go as far as you in how I perceive advertising, I think. In my opinion, advertising can be done thoughtfully, not excessively, and can serve a purpose to let people know about a product. I have a problem though when I perceive that benefit to be massively outweighed by the externalised downside(s). I'm talking about leafleting campaigns resulting in my street just being littered with junk because people are lazy sods and apparently empty their mailbox into the street, or brightly lit billboards disorienting all the local wildlife and obscuring the night sky, etc. At that point, sod it, do whatever takes your fancy with that.
That uncomfortable chat when the engagement team meet up with the sales reporting team.
... Why doesn't one equal the other, Brad?
... Gee Tom, I just don't know!
I feel the same way about dbrand. Their "edgy" humor drives me away. Not to mention they're way too expensive for what they provide.
If you're in the market for skins for electronics (as an an example) look at Decal Girl and FishSkynz. Both are more affordable and often give 10-15% for first time users.
RE: ads in general - I tell my family that people arent' hostile enough towards them. Especially on the internet. At home I run and Adguard Home server and every client has some form of adblocking as a browser extension (Ublock origin). So when I use the internet at a family members house I get irritated and the bombardment. It's infuriating. And getting worse! OS Level ads with Windows. McDonald's is talking about adding them to their drive thru menu screens.