INSMNCS: will the real insomniacs please stand up?

[VFR800]

18 minutes ago, paradime said:

With the right marketing, you can get the public to perceive value where it doesn't exist.

 

 

De Beers and Diamonds also for instance. 

[john510]

17 hours ago, paradime said:

So I can't present a different view point on a subject without giving you cuz flashbacks? Nah, not accommodating that weak sauce.

 

Despite Outrage, Nike Sales Increased 31% After Kaepernick Ad

http://time.com/5390884/nike-sales-go-up-kaepernick-ad/

 

 

That 31 % is not accurate.Sales may have increased 31 % over a day or two but not overall.Let's see what happens over six months or a year.I would guess it sure won't be a 31 % increase over a longer time period.

[datzenmike]

3 hours ago, paradime said:

With the right marketing, you can get the public to perceive value where it doesn't exist. Pet Rocks for instance. 

 

A retail company the size of Nike spends upwards of 9.7% of it's revenue on advertising and marketing. That's how companies like Apple and Nike convince the world their products are worth 50 X what it cost them to make, and that if they don't have the newest one, well you won't fit in and will be incapable of "truly" reaching happiness. Insert carrot and treadmill and you have the engine of the global economy.

 

in 2018 Nike will spend $3,570,000,000.00 crafting their image, and manipulating humanities perceptions. And trust, they spend plenty of that on ad marketing research; everything from focus groups to psychological research on how their demographic views the world and their place in it.

 

As fucked up and manipulative as it was, buying Kaepernicks story (what the industry calls an "endorsement deal") Nike convinced many that the corporation is on their side. It plays into their deep seated fears and feelings of defiance on many levels. Now, multiply that a thousand fold with other multinational corporations playing the same fishing game. Clorox corp portrays the wife as the domestic queen and the husband as the doddering fool. Anything male related, the man is king, and the woman plays the fool. We are trained not to pay attention to these messages, it's just part of the background of modern existence.

 

Is that evil, or is it just the way capitalism works? 

 

 

[Draker]

The stock tanked $3.. but it recovered. It's a bunch of nothing either way.

[240zness]

 

[paradime]

3 hours ago, john510 said:

That 31 % is not accurate.Sales may have increased 31 % over a day or two but not overall.Let's see what happens over six months or a year.I would guess it sure won't be a 31 % increase over a longer time period.

 

Yeah, that's kind of what the article was saying. That increase was over the Laborday week which Nike generally sees an up tick in sales, so 31% is really a relative measurement. Last year it was 17% though so still significant. 

 

Most of the time, 80% of an ad campaign is subliminal messaging intentionally designed to pass under the conscious mind's filter. Sex sells, not because we consciously think "If I buy this product I'm going to get laid", but because we have an unconscious drive to reproduce and associating a product with a flash of T n A taps into that drive. 

 

Nike's Kaeper ad was overt on the surface, but it also taps into strong unconscious conflicts between fears and drives for self actualization. Honestly, I haven't decided if this is simply the work of greed using the dark arts of psychology, or a brilliant means of pushing back against dogmatic thinking.

Edited September 11, 2018 by paradime

[240zness]

The former

[VFR800]

[tr8er]

8 hours ago, paradime said:

 

Honestly, I haven't decided if this is simply the work of greed using the dark arts of psychology, or a brilliant means of pushing back against dogmatic thinking.

Perhaps they just compliment each other this time.  

[VFR800]

[paradime]

6 hours ago, tr8er said:

Perhaps they just compliment each other this time.  

 

I'm viewing this through a pure marketing perspective, so those ideas run counter to each other from that viewpoint.

 

When I was in art school it was understood that many of us would be working in advertising or corporate art of some kind. I took a Psych class as part of the BA requirements that was taught by a PhD psychologist who had done work in PR marketing research. I thought it would just be a BS liberal arts class, but I had no idea how influential it would be for me. We used advertising messaging as an avenue to explore human psychology. Starting with an ad, we'd break down the message and identify what human trait it was appealing to and the psychological tools being used to strengthen the pitch. Finally the teacher produced psych research studies that showed how these tools were developed and how they tap into specific instinctual drives and fears to unconsciously manipulate people's thinking. Fascinating, and at the same time horrifyingly grotesque when you consider the power corporations have in forming and reenforcing our consumer society.

 

Good or bad, since the invention of the printing press, individual sociological belief systems that formed over centuries as a collective construct have been replaced by disconnected external interests. He who controls the media holds the power, be it story telling around the fire, or the Kaepernick ad. Is it benign to leave that power in the interest of profit if our core beliefs and identity are being supplanted with consumption programing? When you think of it, even our moral systems play a distant second to the gratification of consumption.

 

Regulation isn't the answer, but I think the public should be educated to pull back the curtain and expose the wizardry behind the screen. That would at least even the playing field to some extent. 

 

I refer to "dogmatic thinking" as kind of like pushing back against the MATRIX, or our media manufactured reality.

 

 

[KoHeartsGPA]

Never forget!

 

 

[paradime]

Here's to the fallen ? 

May we see you again on distant shores some day.

 

Today was Cervantes's Birthday. He would have been 38...

 

 

 

[KoHeartsGPA]

Cheers bro!

[VFR800]

Fist pumps is the new way to mourn respectfully apparently.

[a.d._510_n_ok]

[paradime]

 

 

[bananahamuck]

[paradime]

[paradime]

[john510]

5 hours ago, bananahamuck said:

Rude

[heywier427]

[VFR800]

[Jesse C.]

On 9/12/2018 at 12:38 AM, VFR800 said:

Fist pumps is the new way to mourn respectfully apparently.

 

He was greeting troops

[paradime]