Intrusive advertising is THE cornerstone of capitalism...

Basic truism (I came up with) -- "The initial spark that leads to the vast majority of transactions, emanates from the marketER, not the marketEE."

Capitalism cannot exist without intrusive advertising.

Intended audience(s) cannot be ALLOWED to ignore the ads (or capitalism will fail).

The success of capitalism is directly proportional to the intrusiveness of advertising.

The degree to which intrusive advertising is *permitted* on the internet determines the internet's commercial viability.

The growth of FACEBOOK as a 'power' on the internet is directly proportional to the *EROSION* of its privacy policies (thus allowing ads to be MORE intrusive) -- http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/facebook-timeline
(note: in typical consumer-delusion fashion, the final paragraph of this article has the cause + effect relationship between privacy erosion + commercial success, totally BACKWARDS!)

The more the facebook's privacy policies ERODE, the more commercially viable (aka: successful) it will become.

As privacy vanishes, marketERs' ability to be intrusive, increases.

As intrusive advertising increases, more transactions happen.

"Permission marketing" and capitalism do not mix.

Which all ties (circles) back to this...

Basic truism (I came up with) -- "The initial spark that leads to the vast majority of transactions, emanates from the marketER, not the marketEE."
(which is *the opposite* of what most marketEEs (consumers) naturally (+ MISTAKENLY) believe.

(sorry, Ankesh)

-- TW

[Dien Rice]

Originally Posted by -TW

Basic truism (I came up with) -- "The initial spark that leads to the vast majority of transactions, emanates from the marketER, not the marketEE."

Capitalism cannot exist without intrusive advertising.

Intended audience(s) cannot be ALLOWED to ignore the ads (or capitalism will fail).

The success of capitalism is directly proportional to the intrusiveness of advertising.

Hi TW,

The way I like to look at it is in the following way...

There are welcome intrusions, and unwelcome intrusions...

For your advertising to have maximum impact, in my opinion you want to be one of the welcome intrusions...

Many things can be welcome intrusions. If your relationship is falling apart, and your tear-stained eyes see an ad for a book that promises to help fix disintegrating relationships - that could be a very welcome intrusion! That's because it helps to solve a problem that's stabbing you right in the heart at this moment.

An email, letter, or phone call from a long-lost friend can be a welcome intrusion (and some companies have "ridden" on these - like those promotions you used to find at the bottom of emails sent from free email services, like Hotmail, once upon a time, or those notices that pop out from nowhere which you get from friends via those various services on Facebook).

Or information about something you have an interest in could be a welcome intrusion. For example, you may be the president of Hollywood star Scarlett Johansson's fan club, so if you see a promotion for the next movie that she is in, that could be a welcome intrusion.

A free discount coupon could be a welcome intrusion, if the coupon is for a widget that you're interested in.

I know a restaurant that gives out free falafel balls to passers-by, to promote their restaurant. That's a welcome (and yummy) intrusion for me, every time I walk by there...! (And yes, I have eaten there too, so perhaps it worked! They keep doing it, so I suspect their "free sample of yummy food" promotion must work...)

Of course, there are unwelcome intrusions too. It's not that they don't work - they may work to some extent, but I feel they are probably less powerful than welcome intrusions.

However, what is welcome for one person, is unwelcome for another. One person may love Scarlett Johansson with a passion, but another person may feel like screaming in agony whenever they see her - so an ad for her next movie could be welcome for one person, yet not for another.

Anyway, I think it's a good idea to always strive to make your promotions welcome intrusions, rather than unwelcome ones...!

That doesn't mean you have to please every Tom, Dick, and Harriet (which is impossible) - but in my opinion, it's great if your promotions are "welcomed" by your target market...!

Best wishes!

Dien

Hey TW...

Special for you...

Smart Negotiating, your Passion, one of your favorite topics...

Mixed with some intriguing Creativity, High speed Updating, Good story telling, past, 2010 and into the future..

This Intrusive advertising baby could be All yours and ready for some Viral Monetization buzz, Video marketing! etc. etc... T-Shirts to whatever...

All kinds of Opportunities throughout internet land Rejuvenating, buying/selling and renting Aging unattended Web businesses...

Into Nice little Money makers...

As many know, Tons of IM's are doing Extremely well Spinning and Collecting web properties & real estate portfolios...

All yours...
http://www.badads.org/
http://www.badads.org/archives.shtml

Phil

[Ankesh]

Thanks TW.

I recently read this article:

Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It's this: Facts don't necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.

And yet I'm going to try... Sigh!

Google vs Facebook.

Facebook recently overtook Google and became the most popular website on the interwebs.
But it still makes nowhere near as much $$ as Google does.
More traffic. Fewer transactions.

Don't know what it does with your basic truism. But balance sheets like those don't lie.

Originally Posted by -TW

Basic truism (I came up with) -- "The initial spark that leads to the vast majority of transactions, emanates from the marketER, not the marketEE."
(which is *the opposite* of what most marketEEs (consumers) naturally (+ MISTAKENLY) believe.

(sorry, Ankesh)

-- TW

Anyways...

The argument shouldn't be about where the ad or the transaction originates from. Or even whether the ad is intrusive* or not. But just on whether the ad / marketing is effective for You or not.

* You can be intrusive and interrupt folks to win their attention. Or you could be unique and win their attention. Like this footnote shows, you don't necessary have to be loud or in-your-face to make an impact. After all - this is the most closely scrutinized paragraph of this entire thread - and all because of its small different font size and the usage of asterisk.

Your marketing differs a lot on whether you're producing a movie or running a plumbing business.

Before you even create an ad, you need to know things like how do people make decisions to consume what you provide. How often they require your services. Do they ever know when they require your help? Or do you have to educate them? Based on that - you decide if you should take a passive brand building approach and build a reputation. Or if you should actively take a direct marketing approach. Or more likely - if you should use a mix of both.

I make the distinction between (what I call):

"If-you-need-it-you-need-it-if-you-don't-you-don't" types of biz's

vs.

"NON-if-you-need-it-you-need-it-if-you-don't-you-don't" types of biz's

If a biz is in the former category (like a towing company), intrusive advertising probably won't help.

If a biz is in the latter category, intrusive advertising probably WILL help (a lot!).

(hint: if there are many, many full-page ads in the yellow pages for a particular biz type, it's probably in the 1st category)

Problem is, many biz owners THINK they're in the 1st category, when they are really in the second.

Problem is made worse because most biz owners think like marketEEs -- believing the falsehood: The initial spark that leads to the vast majority of transactions emanates from the marketEE (not the marketER) -- This misguided belief is usually exemplified by this declaration...

"BACK OFF marketers! If *I* want to buy something, *I* will go out, and *I* will find it (myself)!! Your attempts to intrusively advertise to/AT me, have NO EFFECT on my buying decision(s)!! I will behave in EXACTLY the same way, with or WITHOUT your intrusive advertising!!"

Those statements are absolute nonsense -- and successful marketERs understand they are nonsense.

-- TW

If I did take over that blog, I'd have to change the viewpoint. Whereas he's saying ads are too intrusive, I see that as a good thing!

Ads MUST get more intrusive. It is a natural (+ necessasry) evolution. As marketEEs struggle to find ways to IGNORE ads, marketERs must find ways to make sure marketEEs CANNOT ignore them!

For capitalism to survive, there's no way around it! For example, look how ads on PBS have evolved -- from 'whispering' almost-invisible suggestions, to (now) blatant, out+out blaring ADS. There's no other choice (assuming PBS wants the advertisers to PAY them!!).

Here's a report on one aspect of the intrusive ad frontier...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0nmztds7B4

Here's a great article on the topic...
http://www.darkgovernment.com/news/m...aises-concerns

Article mentions how surveyed marketEEs say they would not ***WANT*** this type of thing to happen. IMO, consumers' opinions about what ads they ***WANT*** is irrellevant!! If people want to keep their JOBS (which RELY on capitalism's survival!!!), they must NOT ignore the ads. It's all interconnected -- a giant house-of-cards economy.

Another example -- when people use the DVR to "save" their favorite TV show, they are actually KILLING that show (at the same time as "saving" it), because the DVR allows the viewer to IGNORE (skip past) the ads -- which, in turn KILLS the show, because the MUNNY to pay the actors goes away.

The marketEES see the intrusive ads as an UNNECESSARY annoyance, when actually it is the LIFEBLOOD that keeps what they consume (AND THIER OWN JOB, most likely) ALIVE in the first place (capitalism, in general).

There's no way around it.

Cheers.

-- TW

Try to watch a Yahoo News video online, and you're likely to run into this...

"Your video will begin after a word from our sponsors." (aka: an intrusive COMMERCIAL)

This will (by NECESSITY) increase to the point where (I predict) your entire websurfing experience will be *interrupted* (every 1/2 hour or 15-minutes?) by UNavoidable commercials (like on TV). Actually if/WHEN such intrusive commercials are in place on the web, they will be MORE effective than TV ads, because they must be 'experienced' in a straight line (time-wise), and CANNOT be 'skipped past,' as with a DVR!!

Adding intrusive, unavoidable commercials to the websurfing experience is a natural progression (because the money comes from intrusive ads (they produce more transactions) -- and without money, nothing happens).

Again, the intended audience(s) cannot be *permitted* to avoid the ads (if capitalism is to survive).

-- TW

[GordonJ]

Just wondering. About capitalism.

The kind of free market that brought us the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill?

The Wall St. Capitalism of a trillion dollar bailout?

The let's make second rate cars of Detroit capitalism?

I'm just wondering what is there so worth saving about it?
To have to resort to intrusive advertising for capitalism to survive, well, hell then, let it die.

Maybe we can have a NEW Free Market of "intrusive honesty"?

I'm not buying the premise or the products that use it.

Gordon Jay Alexander

By the way, it wasn't free market cap-ism that led to the spill or the housing melt down -- it was gov't rules + oversight, mostly. Fannie/Freddie forcing banks to lower lending requirements + the deepwater horizon rig was given excellent safety rating by the gov't 1 or 2 months before the explosion.

But -- is cap-ism worth saving? Well, if it goes away, all will be reduced to what is "necessary." That is whatever you'd see in an Amish village. Nothing wrong with that -- except -- how will everyone EAT?

Cap-ism is decadent, lavish, materialistic, imperial, etc. -- yes, I agree.

But when one dials everything back to what is "necessary," one ends up with many, many STARVING PEOPLE who unable to supprt themselves, because their LIVELIHOOD was a *superfluous* job.

No, we don't NEED 137 TV channels, or Macy's, or Paul Mitchell, or computers, or $2,300 couches -- and all the middlemen in all the distribution chains, etc., etc. -- we don't even really "NEED" more than one kind of shirt. But, together, all those "superfluous" jobs (products + services) make up a giant "superfluous" HOUSE-of-CARDS that is our ECONOMY!!

And that economy (as superfluous as (I admit) it is), FEEDS a lot of people.

If it goes away (in favor of what is "necessary") how will all those people EAT?

Gordon, you have in your sig an info product about info products. That product allows you to eat (or it creates a certain % of your food). But when all the "unnecessary" things start getting zapped, won't that include your info product? Isn't your product superfluous too? Isn't it (too) part of the interdependent, superfluous house-of-cards called cap-ism? If it gets zapped, and everything gets dialed back to "Amish village" level -- and you go to the grocery store to buy milk -- and you reach into your wallet for $ -- and you see nothing there -- what will you do?

Or are you also a carpenter?

-- TW

[GordonJ]

You are as much of an enigma to me as Glenn Osborn is to you. I just don't 'get' you. That being said.

The gulf oil spill as well as wall street meltdown WERE the result of OUR current free market capitalism which believes the golden rule of whoever has the gold makes the rules. And Gov't at all levels and in all Federal Bureaucracies is in collusion with or paid by "Capitalists".

There was a popular book in the 50's, None Dare Call it Treason. The saying is, "Treason does not prosper, for it prospers, none dare call it treason."

I'm a big believer in free enterprise and capitalism as you well know, but my point is, I'm not buying YOUR premise of the need to advertise in such a way, an INTRUSIVE way to "save capitalism".

What will save "capitalism" is NOT intrusive advertising...but a combination of factors, and advertising being only a part of the mix.

YES, it is necessary to promote products, but even when the ads come on for say, Hulu, we don't have to tune into them. In fact, the 30 seconds can be used for doing other things.

Gordon Jay Alexander