Oh no no no. That is not how that works. Coca cola doesn't put up signs, ads, billboards, coaters and napkin holders with their logo on it to get you to stop and think about coca cola.
No. What they do it place their logo next to something that seems happy. Next to someone smiling or put it up in situations where people are happy. Relaxing on a beach? Coca cola flag. Sitting in a cafe with friends? Coca cola coasters sitting on the table.
Slowly but surely, your mind will associate Coca cola with happiness and relaxing.
And when that moment comes when you feel down. Your mind will think. I don't want to feel down. I want to feel happy.
I want happy. I want cola.
There is no such thing as 'filtering' out ads. They are not hoping you can recall them. They are designed to infiltrate your subconscious.
Not really. My mind associates Coca cola with high blood sugar, diabetes and horrible tasting sugar water that would take decades off my life expectancy. Looks like I'm doing something wrong.
> There is no such thing as 'filtering' out ads.
I'm pretty sure there is, based on my own experience.
> They are designed to infiltrate your subconscious.
It's a vacuous claim - by definition, it is impossible to know what is in my "subconscious", so there's no way to disprove whether something "infiltrated" it.
I don't have time to write a big long thing about how wrong you are right now, but I'll provide this though:
Santa Claus is a Coke Ad. http://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/coke-lore-santa-clau...
Tell it to me when I start drinking that colored sugar water. Since I stopped doing it 15 years ago, the thought of it still disgusts me. Maybe I need to give it more time to work...
> Santa Claus is a Coke Ad
For you, maybe. Most people have no idea about that, admittedly fascinating, bit of trivia. The article is called "Things You Never Knew" - and for a reason. It's hard for an ad to work if nobody has any idea what it is advertising. Ah, but of course - it's "subconscious", so all normal laws of the universe are suspended and magic is real.
And that version of Santa Claus was still based on fictional folk characters from history.
If the fact that a soda company can suborn an ancient figure like Saint Nick so completely that no one remembers it happened doesn't drive the point home then consider this: Diamond engagement rings are a deliberately ad-created "tradition".
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/ho...
I'm just supporting what the other poster said about advertising not always having the intended effect.
There are some brands I actively avoid simply because I didn't like their advertisements, or how often they advertise and others where no amount of advertising will convince me to use their product (like Coke for example, because I think it tastes vile and I know it's basically just unhealthy sugar water).
And I agree with you about advertising and unintended effects. To me modern life seems more and more like a giant open-ended experiment, one with no control group...
>I've lived in another kind of society - where people spend resources on finding way to get decent food, clothes, books, etc.
How would overt modern advertising have fixed that? Do you think we don't spend resources on having the advertising find us instead of us finding the products? Does advertising even help with finding decent food, are lies forbidden when you advertise?
There's a wide gulf between advertising you have the cheapest apples in town on a sign in front of your store and advertising Red Lobster's Lobsterfest. Capitalism works fine under either example though.
Media advertising exists at least since 18th century (in our common modern understanding, commercial and political writings that can be reasonably considered ads were found on the walls of Pompeii, and probably exist since writing was invented). So there pretty much was never a period where modern capitalism existed and advertising didn't.
> How would overt modern advertising have fixed that?
It is not fixing that, it is a direct and inevitable result of abundance of resources. If you have surplus of resources available for consumption, you will need to choose which ones to consume. Thus, advertising - i.e. speech that is intended to make you to choose one particular resource - becomes profitable.
> Does advertising even help with finding decent food
Depends on advertising. Some does, some doesn't.
And that is perfectly correct. One thing I might add is that capitalism looks much like communism in the long run as companies merge, fuse and become bigger and bigger, because centralisation and control are the key for efficiency. Wasn't it in the news recently? One of the biggest companies on this planet on a mission to get a share of every transaction on this planet.
Not sure what you mean here. In the long run, any communist country has ended up either being completely ruined (USSR, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea) or turning back to capitalism (China, Viet Nam, East Europe). Surely capitalism's track record is not that sordid.
> as companies merge, fuse and become bigger and bigger
Companies also break up and whither away.
> because centralisation and control are the key for efficiency
Only for very narrow understanding of efficiency, taken as saving money on very mundane tasks. The same harsh reality of information flows that leads to socialist central planning end up in disaster in the long run applies to the capitalist conglomerates. Unless they are centralized only by name (as it is the case in holding companies, not exercising centralized operational control), they grow rigid, their technologies and business processes grow stale, and eventually they are beaten by young and hungry newcomers to the market.
The only way that they know to resist this process is to enshrine their way of doing business and their position in the market by coopting government regulation and raising entry barriers. That's why they spend so much money on lobbying - it is one of the most profitable investments known to mankind.
> One of the biggest companies on this planet on a mission to get a share of every transaction on this planet.
Not sure what that is about. Which company is that?
I have had such days. I read a lot of stuff online, and I have adblockers. My entertainment is supplied by books and TV, where I watch either channels like Netflix or recorded shows, where I can skip through commercials. It's not exactly not encountering ads - and I surely encounter billboards when I drive around (though I don't think I can recall any of them, the mind filters them out by now), but it's pretty close and I'm sure I've had days where I didn't see ads. The thing is, they didn't feel much different from the days where I saw some.
> society, that overproduces things and where a large part of your survival depends on your skill to sell
That is preferable to the society which underproduces things and where large part of your survival depends on you skill in finding how to satisfy basic needs - food, shelter, etc. I'd rather watch ads than be hungry. My deepest hope is to always live in the former kind of society - where productivity is so high that it's ok to spend resources on convincing people to consume stuff. I've lived in another kind of society - where people spend resources on finding way to get decent food, clothes, books, etc. and where ads convincing people to consume some luxurious goods could not be taken but as a cruel joke. I'd much rather take the overproducing one.