It's a matter of push versus pull though. If I know I want a product, I can search for reviews and recommendations, (half of which I assume are astroturfed, but I'm counting those as "ads" which would disappear in this hypothetical.)

How will I promote my new movie? Or book? How would I know to search for a Netflix or Uber or Dollar Shave Club or Game of Thrones?

I wouldn't, until someone else told me about it. And they wouldn't tell me about it unless they found out somehow. And how could you possibly differentiate between grassroots interest and astroturfing, particularly online?

Besides, how many months go by with you happily using your razor before you sit down to research whether there are better options? The vast majority of people choose to spend their time on more important things, thus further entrenching the status quo.

It'd only make all the things people hate about megacorps worse. We've already got this dearth of creativity and risk-taking in Hollywood. Imagine how much worse it'd be if they couldn't advertise something new!

It seems to me like reviews and word-of-mouth can and already do a good job of all this. When I find out about new things, it's generally through social networks. And when I'm looking to buy something new I usually look for reviews.

> How will I promote my new movie? Or book?

The same way that people do today. Talk shows, trailers (which you let people organically share, rather than paying to put it in front of people), movie/book reviewers.

> Besides, how many months go by with you happily using your razor before you sit down to research whether there are better options?

I feel like you're countering your own point here. Buying a new razor when you're already happy with the one you're using is exactly the kind of consumerism that advertising encourages.

> We've already got this dearth of creativity and risk-taking in Hollywood. Imagine how much worse it'd be if they couldn't advertise something new!

I disagree. Imagine if advertising didn't exist, and the only way to get the word out about new movies was through movie reviews, and so studios were actually encouraged to make good movies. I think we would have a lot less riding on established IP.

> It seems to me like reviews and word-of-mouth can and already do a good job of all this.

They do now, as part of a society that includes advertising. That word of mouth comes as a result of people being aware of things. Reviewers focus on reviewing things people are interested in reading about. All of these benefit from advertising.

> Talk shows, trailers (which you let people organically share, rather than paying to put it in front of people), movie/book reviewers.

We're going to get in pretty deep if people appearing on talk shows to promote something doesn't count as an advertisement.

Even trailers have to be promoted somehow. They run the trailers in ads because they're effective! They're effective because a significant chunk of people wouldn't have seen the movie, who otherwise would have if they had known about it. They would have known about it if the general word of mouth and close friends on social networks were enough. But it isn't. Clearly reviews and word of mouth are not sufficient.

> I feel like you're countering your own point here. Buying a new razor when you're already happy with the one you're using is exactly the kind of consumerism that advertising encourages.

Me continuing to drive to a Target to pay $7 for a four-blade razor with special proprietary blade cartridges because I assume better options don't exist due to not spending time researching the purchase is not reduced materialism or consumerism. It's just protecting the status quo.

> I disagree. Imagine if advertising didn't exist, and the only way to get the word out about new movies was through movie reviews, and so studios were actually encouraged to make good movies. I think we would have a lot less riding on established IP.

Putting aside that movie reviews are not as inherently separate from advertising as you're suggesting, I totally disagree. Only a small subset of moviegoers actually read reviews ahead of time and use that to influence a decision. We'd only see more people showing up to see brands they already know well (e.g. Star Wars, Transformers) and less likely to attend movies they've heard / seen nothing about. The people who don't value reviews won't suddenly start valuing them, and the gap between "things movie critics like" and "thing general moviegoers like" won't close.

Same with buying a soda from a company other than Coke/Pepsi. Same with buying an unknown shampoo brand, or an unknown car brand, etc. Except it's really even worse in other industries because people aren't looking for or expecting a new shampoo. And so we just stick to whatever we've been buying, even if it's some huge megacorp milking their brand because competitors have no platform to make the case that they're better.

>They do now, as part of a society that includes advertising. That word of mouth comes as a result of people being aware of things.

Word of mouth has worked fine long before mass media advertising became a thing.

Is our society and economy dependant on advertising? Absolutely. Has it always been this way, and must it always be this way? Not so much.

I agree with you. Obviously I'm against manipulative, deceptive and obnoxious advertising but it's beneficial to consumers and companies for consumers to find out about new products through ads that will save them time, save them money, be enjoyable etc.

It doesn't seem realistic at all to me that someone would invest piles of money into a product that solved a problem people didn't know they have or significantly improves on an existing product where you're only route to communicate this with customers would be to ask for reviews, hope that your target market actively looks for reviews and hope word of mouth spreads.

Don't we hear all the time on hackernews about how building a great product isn't enough if you don't have a marketing strategy?

I find it hard how you can disagree with ads for entertainment especially. Why would you be against knowing a sequel to a movie or game you like but don't actively follow just came out?

There must be some happy middle ground between obnoxious privacy invading ads and no ads at all.

advertising works in favor of the system/status quo/megacorps. not the little guy.

Ads on tv do not show new things. They push brand. brand is mother, brand is father.

I remember ads 25 years ago would show new things constantly---usually for local companies as well, because TV and Newspaper advertisement was basically the only way to let people know that you opened a new store, or were doing a sale for XYZ products.

Those kind of advertisements are actionable, and the supplier wants to see metrics on how much impact a single advertisement had. In today's era, metrics are much easily found from online advertisement, and so businesses have gravitated to those, and most notably Google search ads.

I guess to me that comes off as a meaningless platitude. Ads on TV (and other mediums) absolutely do show new things, including each of the things I noted in the very comment you responded to.

Megacorps benefit from pushing brand, but they'd benefit even more from nobody being able to push brand, because they already have one established.

no platitudes around here. you can't deny (well you can but you shouldn't) that the vast majority of ads are all brand.

Not talking about absolutes or semantics but:

Without the Big Advertising people would drift off-brand. maybe boredom, maybe trying what their friend uses, maybe (surely not) be affected by price and quality.

> Ads on tv do not show new things. They push brand. brand is mother, brand is father.

This is a platitude.

> you can't deny (well you can but you shouldn't) that the vast majority of ads are all brand.

Maybe it is--it's just meaningless to my point. Even if 99% of ads are all entrenched megacorps reminding people they exist, that other 1% could be Netflix disrupting Comcast, or Uber/Lyft disrupting taxis, or whatever else. Those disruptors who were previously unknown benefit much more from their advertising than Coke reminding people to not stop buying Coke.

> Without the Big Advertising people would drift off-brand. maybe boredom, maybe trying what their friend uses, maybe (surely not) be affected by price and quality.

Imagine how much more effective that off-brand would be if it could tell consumers about its lower price or higher quality, rather than having to just hope they found out somehow... versus a known competitor and brand.

>Imagine how much more effective that off-brand would be if it could tell consumers about its lower price or higher quality, rather than having to just hope they found out somehow... versus a known competitor and brand.

imagine you have an army of 100 and you are against an army of 1000.

now imagine how much more effective you would be if everyone had machine guns instead of swords.

I'm not so sure that's the analogy you're after. You'd have a much, much better chance of winning with the guns, unless you're fighting on a perfectly flat field (in which case you're toast either way). I don't think I've ever seen a realistic example of somebody managing to take out two people at once in a sword fight, let alone 10.

> Without it, there's no way to inform potential customers of a new brand or product.

What about word of mouth, observing other people, searching for a product online?

Word of mouth is not enough for a 300-million market. Yet less observing other people, especially as many things aren't very observable. And to search for a product online, you need to know it exists and you want it. Nobody searched for iPhones before Apple started advertising them.

It seems to me that the solution is not to ban advertisement but only certain kinds of them such as ones containing strong emotional (Ads guilting people into buying insurance) or aspirational content (won't you look so cool if you lived 'The Marlboro Life')

That seems like a can of worms to me.