Dumb Marketing Moves: Tell me about Zoos

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zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Zaphod42 posted:

I've always thought a genius business venture would be to buy up cheap four-banger Honda engines and put them into Stingray or Ferrari bodies. (or produce a like sports car style)

Like yeah, it'd drive like poo poo but how many people really care? I bet you could undercut the real sports cars by half and still make a great profit, gotta be a ton of people who only want a fast looking car.

Ford was ready to discontinue the Mustang in favor of the Probe but market research bore out that the Mustang demographic was laughing at the idea of trading in for a Probe.

For sports cars, even if (especially if) the driver is never going to use the full performance, they are primarily buying the spec sheet. The 90s saw an influx of sporty coupes, and they all languished, leading to the today of sport package dad-mobile sedans with sick specs, affordable entry level sports cars with sick specs, and the rich people supercars which are bought for the spec sheet as much as how cool they look.

Anyone who wants to look cool but doesn't care about performance can just buy a used Porsche for pennies and spend the rest of their lives trying to fix it when it breaks down every other day.

zedprime has a new favorite as of 17:30 on Oct 28, 2015

# ¿ Oct 28, 2015 17:23

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# ¿ May 5, 2024 13:27

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Reminder there's a huge swathe of Model Es sold on the idea that it has the perfect acceleration and braking profile to drive like an rear end in a top hat.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2016 17:43

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Karma Monkey posted:

Am I the only person who just buys whatever's cheapest/on sale?

And before you can say it: LOL if you don't have Enrique clip the coupons for you.

I thought the entire point of the Enrique-haver social status is that they arbitrarily buy the most expensive thing because it is obviously better.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2016 23:41

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

I am torn between being glad something like Colonial Williamsburg has made it as a thing that can buy a Superbowl ad, but the last time I visited it was also kind of the Rich White People of Virginia museum so trying to say the ideals of America started here is kind of disingenuous. Or maybe just more accurate than I'd like to admit.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2016 03:59

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

PUGGERNAUT posted:

Honestly the only time I remember a company's ad is when I thought it was stupid or offensive. If anything that makes me less likely to purchase it. Just because it's memorable or gets a lot of attention doesn't mean it works.

Memorable isn't always a goal. This has been the weekly thread reminder that modern brand strategy doesn't rely on conscious recall.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2016 18:42

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Somfin posted:

Because I'm aware of the influence that ads have on decision making and consciously attempt to counteract it? You're the one who posted a discredited 20 year old study about subliminal ads, dude.

That sounds loving tiring, second guessing every little purchase you don't have quantitative data on. Sometimes it's OK to buy the TP for the sole reason that you sub consciously associate it with teddy bears from children's books.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2016 14:02

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

RBA Starblade posted:

That's a pretty weird reason to buy something use to wipe your butt with.

Its kind of a personal example because I interned at a toilet paper factory for a competitor to Charmin where I learned to be OK with never understanding how marketing and branding works. Not being privy to the inner workings of the business development, this is from scuttlebutt so feel free to file as one of those apocryphal marketing stories. But apparently most of the quantitative industrial measures of quality were in favor of the competitor's product and in double blind marketing studies they usually preferred the competitor's, but they just couldn't assault the brand juggernaut of those dumb loving bears to make a dent in market share.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2016 17:09

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Its me, they're targeting me.

I was buying "whole grain" hard taco shells for the longest time until the competitor put "as always, whole grain." At which point I realized a taco shell box was calling me an idiot because there isn't such a thing as cornmeal that isn't whole grain.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2016 17:00

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

If you can get it out of the fresh pot, McDonald's coffee is better than anything you could get from the grocery store just cause it has a tight supply chain that means the grounds are likely to be a little less stale.

McDonald's has always been the aspiring fast food chain, like the joke is always about teenagers taking dates there. As an adolescent and teen there were plenty of times, pre and post value menu, where we'd decide something like McDonald's is way too high end so let's go to Taco Bell. There's less poo poo given about Wendy's attempts to appear gourmet even though they've been the challenger in that aspiring market class for as long as I can remember.

# ¿ Mar 11, 2016 12:44

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Mu Zeta posted:

But why place it at the drywall section instead of the seasonal decorations?

They figure tampons keep you dry?

I assume they're stocked for folks who keep a box in their tool box for first aid and spill cleanup.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2016 16:20

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Mu Zeta posted:

One I saw was "No sleeveless shirts for males"

Is that targeting any ethnicity?

No tank tops is maybe closest you can get to an equal opportunity "no poors" depending on where you are at, but I've seen it used most often where it would function as a dog whistle for "no hispanics"

# ¿ Apr 12, 2016 00:59

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Phanatic posted:

That's not the multiplier. The multiplier is the amount of funds they could conceivably extract from the NFL by a lawsuit. If the pool of potential claimants is only 100 guys but the lawsuit could result in a staggering payout, you run ads to reach those 100 guys.

If its that small I think the question is whether daytime TV ad time or a small collection of PIs is a more cost effective way of reaching them.

# ¿ Jun 2, 2016 00:25

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

The freeform license affiliated podcasts and liveshows get is the sort of advertising where everybody wins. They normally get views or sales for the merchant (though maybe not for the "they totally trust the speakers as brand ambassadors" that the advertisers try to convince the merchant is happening), and generally include a laugh for anybody not in the target demographic.

# ¿ Jul 6, 2016 17:41

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

How Rude posted:

It's like you get a grab bag of lovely thrift store toys for 3000% markup.

BRB, starting a garbage box business.

# ¿ Jul 12, 2016 21:20

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Tatum Girlparts posted:

I just enjoyed the weird whiplash in going from "STUFFED CRUST, YOU loving ANIMALS! WE GOT STUFFED CRUST!!!!" morphing to "We're a bit better than the rest, we're fancy because we drizzle sauces on our pizza (that was the gimmick right?)", but then near instantly returning to "STUFFED CRUST, BUT GARLIC KNOTS TOO! WE MADE STUFFED CRUST AND GARLIC KNOTS gently caress AND MADE A PIZZA WITH THEM!" and now apparently a giant rectangle for the Olympics.

Pizza Hut is a complicated brand, perhaps they themselves don't even know what they are.

The drizzle stuff was a fairly high profile marketing fuckup, sales went down presumably to analysis paralysis leading people to just get their pizza from Dominos or Papa Johns instead of trying to poll the family or workplace about what kind of drizzle everybody is going to agree on. I think they also had an uptick in quality complaints and poor store morale because of getting minimum wage pizza prep employees to try and manage a dozen different sauces and drizzles without cross contamination, which being liquids means its a lot more work to deal with than all the dry toppings.

# ¿ Aug 13, 2016 22:29

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

I think a lot of agencies used to frown on radio ads with noises like that, but most recently I think the industry wide stance has become "oh please god, won't someone advertise on the radio we are practically giving spots away."

# ¿ Aug 16, 2016 18:47

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

What the hell do you need an $80,000 baby robot to do that, my elementary school was doing the same thing with a sack of flour, a shock sticker, and an alarm circuit that "cried" at random intervals and needed to be acknowledged or else it'd count a foul.

Anecdotally and rumor based but by the time my class was supposed to do it they'd discontinued the assignment for similar reasons to the study conclusions, which is the kids sticking their baby in the closet for a weekend and taking the C for not acknowledging the alarm enough were freaking everybody out and more than a few girls went baby crazy for a few months afterwords.

# ¿ Aug 27, 2016 01:47

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Platystemon posted:

They�re really not the same thing. Beginning with �emo�� is a coincidence.

What emotion does 🗿 convey?

Stoney-faced.

# ¿ Sep 1, 2016 13:24

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Buy mice? A mouse came with a work laptop 4 years ago and after I brought it home I just sort of kept it. They're basically pens.

# ¿ Sep 3, 2016 04:55

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

stringball posted:

Reminds me of some Boeing ads I saw on TV a few times, the only thing that I got out of them were montage of how great and cool Boeing is and all the great stuff they do over the years

That was literally the entire ad, nothing for recruitment or jobs or anything, just how great Boeing is.

It's not like people who are going that are going to buy a loving aircraft will be swayed to get a Boeing plane because of the ad, I seriously don't see the point of it at all

I don't have case studies or specific cases to back it up, but I think there's been more than a few companies in a big ticket item or bid based purchasing industry who thought "man do we really need a brand?" and cut their advertising budget to their detriment. The people making multimillion dollar purchasing decisions watch TV like any other schmuck, and if you make a purchase of something with a prestigious brand, you might see a nice little moral boost from the line employees seeing "oh, we bought a Boeing? cool beans."

# ¿ Sep 16, 2016 14:40

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

DACK FAYDEN posted:

I think this article is really poorly written.

The statistic they bungled is "average length of time a viewer spent watching a video".
Rather than tracking everyone who clicked on the video at all, they only reported the data from people who watched for at least three seconds.
It's described as "artificially inflating" the length, so they we know they flat-out didn't count people who watched for less than three seconds and averaged everyone who wathed for 3+, rather than just treating 0-2 as 0 (which would be deflating.)

Technically, yes they did lie - the average amount of time a pair of eyeballs spent staring at the ad is shorter than what they reported - but the statistic they reported is absolutely accurate if you just rename it to something like "average length of time a viewer spent actually loving watching a video". Why the gently caress do advertisers care that they're not getting accurate data on how much they're paying to have some unknown number of schlubs watch their poo poo for two point nine seconds?

I guess I just don't see why it matters, and it must matter because it was written up like it was A Big Deal. What am I missing other than the fact that they did misreport?

Its probably a bunch of people patting each other on the back or not over *~our metrics~* in the end but playing games with population definition is exactly the sort of thing that gives statistics a bad name. If you're trying to make decisions based on engagement length it better have a known definition. If the population reported on is ?????? you can't even decide engagement is a bad metric or we should not treat engagement below n seconds as an impression.

Like if you are doing a statistical analysis, you want tails and outliers even if the summary data removes tails and outliers because the tails and outliers usually mean something important.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2016 22:26

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

rear end, or even rear end't, seems a little suspect but I am endlessly entertained that rear end'y is just about the official shorthand for assembly.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2016 23:49

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

DACK FAYDEN posted:

They literally put it next to total views? That's a valid complaint, then.

(I guess I just assume everyone who works at ad companies "knows" their ads are mostly ignored. Is that not the case?)

"Knowing" isn't enough, they want to know the hard numbers of just how exactly its getting ignored to compare across campaigns and media.

# ¿ Sep 27, 2016 18:04

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Phlegmish posted:

Windows 10 isn't that bad, though it's true the interface is worse than 7 for unfathomable reasons only known to Microsoft

Since 7 there has been a trend to just make the interface exist because it has to with the expectation that power users are using search to get deep into the control panel, start menu, or documents without having to deal with the clusterfuck that has become modern GUI hierarchy. 10 then gets an extra bad rap because people instantly recoil from Cortana and mash hide even though the correct answer is to turn off the dumb Cortana features and use it as the new search bar.

# ¿ Sep 30, 2016 17:43

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Choco1980 posted:

Except everything about 8 & 10 is non intuitive and riddled with security and control issues as highlighted on this very page.

A better metaphor would be switching from a desk chair to a hammock. Sure, it has its uses, but sitting at a desk isn't one of them. I have to assume you're young, because of how easily you fail to grasp that up until 8 dropped, Windows had spent the previous 20+ years tweaking a basic template because it worked and was what people liked. Then suddenly out of the blue there's an entire overhaul of literally every single part of the system--in a not too secret move to try to universalize their touch-screen friendly system they designed for their windows phones and surface tablets, NOT PCs--and there was not a single person I ever heard say they liked any of the changes. At all.

I don't know, I'd take a dozen Vistas or 10s or half a dozen 8s before I would take 1 ME. They've been having a user experience crisis for about the entire past couple decades but at least the internals aren't at the quality of ME.

Search indexing and fuzzy interpretation combined with CPU speed is at a point you don't even need to interact with the rest of the GUI so they could replace the start menu with a picture of a clown and I wouldn't mind if it came with some incremental kernal and security upgrades.

# ¿ Sep 30, 2016 22:46

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Everybody knows the proper advertising synergy is between grapefruits and getting your dick sucked.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2016 18:41

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

The Door Frame posted:

The content of the ad notwithstanding, most people just don't give a poo poo about what brand their produce is, just country of origin and Organic/GMO status. Ask anyone what brand of apples they buy and they'll probably give you the name of the grocery store, not the company that grew them because most of the produce sold in grocery stores is genetically identical, regardless of brand.
The only thing that makes a Chiquita Banana different from any other brand of banana is the color of the sticker

Apples are in a weird place where trademark and patent are huge deals that define whole apple brands that corporations are trying to get their moneys worth off of because those patents or trademark enforcement isn't cheap.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2016 23:11

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

ToxicSlurpee posted:

Marketing would work better on me if I had more money to spend.

That's the key flaw of marketing; they act under the assumption that everybody has infinite money.

Marketing is the opposite. It assumes there is limited money and limited memory space for things which means marketing is an arms race against itself. There is a slight leap of faith from there that your spend is going to be proportional to how much memory space is taken up by a certain thing.

# ¿ Feb 20, 2017 15:58

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

I feel like we're all stuck on the literal idiocy in a bag squeezer to miss out on the big plan of the Juicero. Their entire value add pitch is that its connected to the internet to tell you your juice is going to expire. When they are talking about 400 custom parts they mean cheap integrated circuits so it can read a bar code and connect to your wifi and send you a notification you should spend more money on juice. Its a literal digital juice Enrique.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2017 00:03

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

I can see the tortilla pod surviving on the same basis bread machines do, its basically an air freshener for middle class middle aged people who like the smell of baked goods but feel way too busy to do anything complicated like mix three things together.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2017 00:37

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

I think people are underestimating the amount of people who will drive around for a month on a donut or top off a tire with air every other day for a puncture that's most sealed around the foreign object. Zooming directly to the shop in case of flat is just not a thing in my family or social circle.

And they generally get around limited weekend hours by having a workday shuttle, which is one employee at minimum wage instead of the better paid techs either pulling overtime or schedule differential for working a weekend.

# ¿ May 21, 2017 20:01

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

No telling without access to the airlines incident logs but a common thought is that short of dragging guys off planes for not giving up a seat, most of the stuff hitting the news is normal rear end incidents that are getting a second look by journalists because airline incidents are suddenly big news.

# ¿ May 29, 2017 17:09

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

F_Shit_Fitzgerald posted:

I forget what product is actually being sold (it's some kind of beverage, I think), but those "[name of product] isn't dull, so neither should its advertising" commercials. They say next to nothing about the product except for vague claims of not being "dull". The commercial is not much more than "Hey - look at how clever we are!".

A lot of modern advertising does this, and I'm sick of it. Tell me why I should buy your product or stop wasting my time.

If you're trying to be the perfectly logical consumer you should be getting your why from consumer advocacy sources anyway. The only useful value add for ads for both consumers and producers is letting the consumers know something exists at which point ads just need to be entertaining, eye catching, or otherwise hooked into your subconscious for later recall that when you need a box of crackers, you remember brands X Y and Z exist.

e. Well I guess I should say the common value add between the consumer and producer. There's plenty of manipulative value adds a producer will target, including selective reporting of product performance, testing, etc. that you would think 'hey the ad is being useful' but is usually scummy because its exactly what they want you to know about something and nothing more.

zedprime has a new favorite as of 18:32 on Jun 18, 2017

# ¿ Jun 18, 2017 18:23

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

The profits of Google and Amazon's services could evaporate instantly if they suddenly need to negotiate internet bandwidth on behalf of clients and customers wanting anything to do with distributed services etc. A lot of their developing business portfolio is built on assuming internet traffic is a neutral platform so they aren't exactly in it as humanitarians.

# ¿ Nov 28, 2017 01:32

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Dumb but that nice sort of dumb.

# ¿ Jan 5, 2018 15:12

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

turnways posted:

This is some beautifully stupid corporate streamlining. I know there's probably some legal reason the customer has to be the one to check that box, but drat.

dirksteadfast posted:

I’m almost certain it’s a “cover your rear end” maneuver, because they don’t want some litigious customer to come back at them with “How dare you click the ‘I’m not a robot’ box without me approving it!”

That's what I was thinking at first but the quote from the article makes it sound like it's litterally just a captcha to make sure a human clerk is accessing the system since they say it's "required to print the next one". Gonna go with the dealership accountant or counsel is the sort of person who still owns an iPod and thinks this is a required documentation best practice even though it's equivalent to asking the person to log in for the clerk.

# ¿ May 27, 2018 13:12

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Helith posted:

Generally yeasted bread recipes call for about a teaspoon of sugar to feed and activate the yeast. You don't need more than that unless you are making a sweet bread specifically.
Commercial bread probably uses a lot more sugar because it also acts as a preservative so makes your bread last longer and it also makes your bread softer.

Last but not least it makes it brown much easier in cheap rear end toasters.

# ¿ Sep 6, 2018 14:07

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

I like my steak well done with a nice sugar crust so it browns easier.

# ¿ Sep 8, 2018 22:02

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

SUPERMAN'S GAL PAL posted:

Meatcerio

I want to say I have a couple NatGeos sitting around from the very early 70s that have similar ads for sugar aimed at younger adult women. So why in the world did sugar need advertising? And why are we more willing to dunk on the stereotype of the fat, uncultured American 50 years later than question the impact of this marketing?

In the 50s-70s young women were using the other white powder full of energy.

Ok the white powder part is mostly a joke cause coke was still fairly pricey and for those who made it but the women were all on diet aids full of speed so it really did sometimes work to be mentioning you know maybe you should still eat something while you are flying around the house vacuuming while grinding your teeth.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2018 13:52

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# ¿ May 5, 2024 13:27

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

At a certain level of crunchiness you need to make your own. Either add pockets or even just tailor your own pants. It's worth it especially if you can repair them and keep them going indefinitely.

Best marketing move: convincing people that durable goods aren't actually durable. People point at appliances like it's crazy that planned obsolescence has trimmed their life down to 5 years, meanwhile people think clothes need replaced once a year when you'd stretch the same articles for the better part of your life.

# ¿ Mar 5, 2019 17:01

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