I love the ad and the stunt. I would have been as giddy as a child if I'd seen it in person.
It's also rings true to me that it's rather wasteful and destructive in service of selling TVs.
Shrug, what's done is done so I'm free to enjoy it guilt-free while also thinking we probably shouldn't do stunts like this anymore.
We should encourage and welcome more of this, not less. How it is funded does not diminish this, IMO.
It's just not a very persuasive argument, even when I make it to myself, because I believe so strongly that other things are more important.
He's talking about a couple million roadside billboards, ads on busses, ads in TV services you pay for, drug companies spending more on advertising than R&D, political machines driven by 24 hours news cycles that are funded from ragebait, social media companies that have us literally addicted to our screens due to their advertising-based revenue models. It goes on... ad infinitum indeed.
It's a fucking cancer and it truly is the root of so many of our problems and we are running out of time to start thinking clearly about the damage the industrial advertising complex causes.
I hate to say "go touch grass" because it sounds condescending. But please, go outside and have some fun! The dumb billboard isn't stopping that.
>Advertising might be annoying, but not even on the top 100 list of major world problems.
Hard disagree. Advertising, in some form, is likely the root or primary facilitator of probably 25 or more of those top 100.
>because it sounds condescending.
Your comment is condescending, yes.
I'd be curious to see this Top 100 list.
See, I'd contend that the business models and businesses enabled by advertising, and the combined social impact of ads plus those business models very much are one of the world's top problems.
I truly don't understand the idea of praising a commercial that exists solely to sell you something we could probably, reasonably, be making and selling a lot less of. We only keep going "because growth". When's enough? This is gross.
Edit: And after watching the video, it's extra jarring to me to feel the warm fuzzies it gives you, and then realize, "It's not asking me to be a good person or do something that's gonna match the feeling this commercial is giving me, it just wants me to buy something it's gonna want me to replace eventually". Ick. Get the fuck out of my emotions like that.
Commercials are interesting as they are a way to support artists financially. Many artists make a living in commercials while also getting a chance to exercise a creative profession.
Conceptually it isn't that much different than church commissions during the Renaissance.
It’s a pattern I’ve noticed with Americans, this bundling up art with the capitalism. Commercial/Ad work can be a lot of fun and a good living for any artist, but it’s just not fucking art. It’s such a cringey pattern - that somehow makes commercial work into chivalrous patronage.
That being said - cool ad! Fun to make and probably good money! Would love to work on something like that! But. Not. Art.
My spouse is doing artwork for a beer company right now and she would throw the chair at me like in that Orange Country TV Show meme if I tried to insinuate that this is her “art”. It’s not art it’s artwork, it’s labor, it’s a job, it’s for a boss.
This is where the ick is from - nice artwork can be commissioned, can be labor intensive and require talent. But it’s not truly the distillation of the artists process that art is.
Any arbiter of the arts will find that these handy guidelines readily facilitate the elimination and/or downsizing of unnecessary galleries and other non-art collections.
See, that’s the thing about this POV that the term “art” is placed on some sort of pedestal and then all the other forms are then compared against it. “How dare you say [other thing requiring effort] is not art!”
Art !== artwork
An element of art is that it functions for its own relationship between artist-work and maybe somewhat the viewer or participant. It’s neither better or worse, it’s just something separate from all of those ideologies. It just is, they just make it. They place it in museums so we don’t have to bump into each others’ egos.
I will reiterate my belief: it’s foolish to wrap up art with corporate, religious or institutional patronage.
On the music side, we'd have to dismiss The Beatles, Bach, Mozart, and probably most of the greatest composers and musicians of all time.
They are doing marketing to get me to buy things. You are doing marketing to get me to NOT buy something.
The iPhone enabled everyone to see consumer buying cycles in that most people don't go buy the 11-12-13-14-15-16, they go 11-16 and 13-17 and the like. It's the same with all products. Most people don't buy every single new model, unless they are an enthusiast, in which case who are you to say what someone's hobbies are?
If that were all it is, there wouldn't be much problem.
Marketing is also creating a demand where there wasn't one before and exploiting psychological weaknesses to prompt actions not necessarily in a person's best interest.
"exploiting psychological weaknesses to prompt actions not necessarily in a person's best interest" This is any sort of communication with malintent.
Billboards, on the other hand, are awful as your eyes are drawn to it as you drive down the freeway.
ps i also hate ads and attention economy.
(In general, it's a good rule of thumb to assume that the widespread existence of something suggests there's a reason for it, and to be inquisitive as to what that reason might be.)
When I want to know what kind of neat electronics I can play with my raspberry Pi, I don't sit around and wait for Youtube to show me ads, I browse the fucking store.
When my dad wanted to start a pressure washing business in the early 2000s, he didn't wait for an ad on the radio, or see a billboard, he ordered a catalog from some pressure washing companies and browsed their offerings at his leisure
In the 60s, if you ran a electronics lab, and you needed a new instrument to calibrate your new atomic clock, you would order an HP catalog and flip through their offerings, which included a basic description, a picture sometimes, and some specs.
Notably, the old way primarily required you to start from a point of dissatisfaction, intentionally seek out information, and purchase a solution to an actual problem you have.
The current days, advertising is all about convincing us with evolutionary brain tricks that we actually have so many problems. I'm tired of it.
If adverts were for my benefit I would be able to choose them, rather than have to block them.
> People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. (…)
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/461383-people-are-taking-th...
I'm perfectly fine doing that without 2005 Sony Bravia advertisement tyvm.
Advertising is part of that trade.
I’m happy it exists.
You meant the EXACT opposite, right? :)
Unabated capitalism has more poverty than capitalism with social programs. Social programs save people from poverty.
Also, capitalism can exist without advertising.
Is it that you don't want an interruption? Because for the information to be out there, someone had to pay for it and at some point, it was pushed on someone who didn't care.
I don't think I understand how any sort of commerce or awareness happens without advertising.
What I object to is the practice of tricking people into wanting things they otherwise felt no desire for by putting advertisements for them in places they will be seen while the victim is trying to do something else. Billboards are a blight, radio and TV ads are an intrusion, web banners are a nuisance. I filter them all out of my life as hard as I can, because I don't want people getting into my head and making me desire things I don't need, which I would then have to give them money for. Ye olde hedonic treadmill never stops spinning, you know? Making a living by telling people to feel less satisfied with their lives, so they will want to buy whatever you are selling, does not seem very honorable.
It is visually stunning for sure, but I have to not think too hard about the implications of it.
As for children, I would be strongly opposed to showing a child that commercial. It isn't hard to imagine them trying to haul buckets of bouncy balls to the roof after being ... inspired.
"We want to set City Hall on fire, we want to bump a blimp into the Golden Gate Bridge and we want to jump a hook-and-ladder truck over Lefty O’Doul Bridge with Roger Moore on it’ … and they were seriously like, ‘OK.’”
My main question is, where did this San Francisco go? I'd love for the city to create more memorable moments because the city is special. But today, this ad would've been buried in CEQA lawsuits. Hell, parking in the wrong public spot could get your car keyed by some irate millionaire[1].
[1]: https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/parking-wars-sf-billion...
That is until he, inevitably, would shoot me with impunity.
I'm sure somebody has a similar timeline for NYC.
This happens frequently for a good many things. Collective ignorance gets replaced with the lens of hindsight.
… and there it is. People knew but saw through it all to just maybe enjoy the wonder of the event.
>When Conner was checking in to his hotel later that night, a ball bounced by on the sidewalk. He was 4 or 5 miles away.
I have to assume there was so many they never found just left to the ecosystem.
As much as I loved bouncy balls as an 80s kid, anytime I see them now it just reminds me of the sheer amount of useless plastic/rubber waste we produce. Even if bouncy balls in and of themselves are a tiny portion of that overall waste.
For example I live in the South, Mardi Gras is huge here and after every parade it looks like a god damn war zone of trash and waste left behind for prison labor to clean up as best they can. If it was me I would do a ban on plastic beads entirely as throwable parade objects.
> It's quite sad that something that seems like it could be universally enjoyed at the isn't now.
IMO at some point we all have to look back at the reality of past actions and be cognizant of our waste and abuse of the planet even if it was a fun time.
They're not useless. As you've just pointed out you enjoyed them as a kid. For a few cents in plastic how many hours of enjoyment did you get? What was wasted here?
> after every parade it looks like a god damn war zone
Yea but when you stack up the tax receipts it suddenly looks very worthwhile.
> reality of past actions and be cognizant of our waste and abuse of the planet even if it was a fun time.
Humans are always going to want to have fun. From my point of view have all the plastic beads you want. It's the nuclear weapons and daily war that gives me pause.
Bleak reminder that I will never jive with the general vibes of HN and the VC trash types polluting the world for a tax write-off.
>tax revenue generated by the production and sale of those "pollutants."
The other local problem being from 1985 to 2024 Mardi Gras beads were sale tax exempt, but we've somewhat closed that loophole to more specific circumstances.[1]
[1]https://casetext.com/regulation/louisiana-administrative-cod...
The total economic value of Mardi Gras to the city as a whole is estimated around $800m.
This, by the way, is true for almost any successful event. For every $1 you invest you generate at least $2 in revenue.
The idea that advertising is a “cancer upon society” fundamentally misunderstands how mass media, telecommunications, and modern society works. It’s about passing and sharing information.
I hate most ads and almost all modern advertising sucks. But this ad ain’t it. It relies on nostalgia, a dream like element. The amount of pollution is, globally, negligible, and they largely cleaned them up. We hear stories of people keeping balls as mementi [1].
Call me cynical but if we are not meant to enjoy even the aesthetically pleasing stuff the neoliberal environmental disaster of the last 40 years creates we are in for a bad time. May as well go back to hunter gathering of subsistence farming.
[1] I know it’s non standard but if “octopi” is cromulent then so is “mementi”
I’m too young to remember this ad but I’m disgusted by it now. I hate advertising to begin with but this one floods the street with plastic which destroys private property and will never get cleaned up. What is there to like about it? How was this ever allowed? Imagine today I make an ad about dumping red 40 into the Mississippi River for a Netflix show. It’s evil and everyone knows it.
I've seen this story discussed around the internet over the last few days and found it interesting how younger generations seemed to only view it negatively (pollution, excess, etc). It's quite sad that something that seems like it could be universally enjoyed at the isn't now.