Man, I am such a nerd. But now that we have that out of the way, we can move on. . .
Have you ever felt like a television commercial insulted your intelligence? I felt that way about the ISP ad several months ago that claimed that spyware can slow down your connection speed by 500%. Think about that for a minute. (How can you slow your speed down by more than 100%?) I wonder if there are people who believed it.
Another example is when companies offer "more discounts" instead of a lower price or a better product. ("This washing machine will cost you $1,300, but I gave you 86 discounts.") Sometimes I wonder what kind of customers they want.
I've also seen some movie trailers (e.g. "The Core") that were just downright silly in how unappealing they portrayed the movie.
In conclusion: either these companies are not doing a good job of marketing, or I am weird.
P.S. I will try hard not to rant on this blog. It might be too late for that, but most of you have heard all my rants anyway.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Insulting Intelligence
Posted by JonF at 6:33 AM
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6 comments:
When I do a post, how do I get it to only show part of it so it doesn't take up so much room like all the rest of the posts? Or does it only do that for other people's posts?
When you post, there should automatically appear two bits of code already in the text (if you're in html mode), ,they are span class="full post" and span. Put the snippet you want to appear on the main page IN FRONT of the first piece of code, then put the rest of the post in BETWEEN the two pieces of code.
And JonnyF, how could we not want to listen to your rants?
When I read the title of your post, I thought it was going to be something about, you know, spying-type intelligence. I was trying to figure out how it could be insulting. "Our sources say that Helmut Cole thinks the First Lady is ugly." "Hugo Chavez isn't afraid of our intentions to assassinate him because he says all Americans are cross-eyed." I dunno.
So does the intelligence of the ad self-select its audience? If you saw a product advertised by a really intelligent commercial, would that make you want to buy it just for not having a dumb commercial?
Yes, it would. I would buy a barbie doll of it was advertised with some physics or math references that only I and about 10000 other people in the U.S. would catch.
I think maybe one of the things that is happening is that marketers figure that weird people like me who mentally check ads for accuracy are also the type of people that won't hold it against them. I mean, they know it's just as irrational to not consider buying something because the advertising stinks as to buy something just because the advertising is good.
Little do they know how irrational I can be. Mwoo hah hah hah...
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