
The death of Don Draper? - okket
https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/internet/2018/07/death-don-draper
======
Animats
Note that he talks about a fake ad exec, not the most famous real one of that
era, David Ogilvy. Ogilvy worked for the Gallup Poll before he went into
advertising. He was into data-driven advertising. "Advertisers who ignore
research are as dangerous as generals who ignore the signs of the enemy." The
author is attacking a straw man. Ogilvy is still relevant. The author of the
article here, not so much.

~~~
tim333
Just last week I was at an unusually good talk by an Ogilvy Vice Chairman Rory
Sutherland mentioned in the article.

>Rory co-heads a team of psychology graduates who look for "butterfly effects"
in consumer behaviour - these are the very small contextual changes which can
have enormous effects on the decisions people make

The talk's on youtube.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWiB5H18aug&t=1187s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWiB5H18aug&t=1187s)
Recommended if you are in to that stuff.

~~~
pixelmonkey
Also thought this podcast with Rory Sutherland by Farnam Street / The
Knowledge Project was particularly good, especially in what the actual value
of brand is:

[https://fs.blog/rory-sutherland/](https://fs.blog/rory-sutherland/)

~~~
tim333
Yeah it was good - similar stuff but more of it.

I thought the bit on economics was interesting - that motivating people by
paying or fining them is limiting because there's a lot of other factors you
can look at if you are creative. (48m)

------
IAmGraydon
Outright advertising in the old school sense is dead and has been for a long
time. Marketing is not. I think this author is deeply confused. Now, more than
ever, the perceived value of cheap products is being inflated by brand. Look
how much people pay for a can of Red Bull, which offers less volume than a
soda and less caffeine than a coffee. Look at how much people pay for
Starbucks coffee and Hermès purses. It’s all smoke and mirrors. In many cases,
you’re paying more for an inferior product because the brand gods took
advantage of your cognitive bias.

The example of Tesla is particularly ridiculous to me and shows how little
understanding of marketing the author has. Tesla isn’t a no-marketing company
that only relies on its good product. What about a Tesla is superior? Not the
interior. Mercedes has them beat there. Not the technology - it’s been proven
unreliable at best. Not the range - many gasoline cars have better range. Not
the price - their current offerings are far higher than an average person can
afford. It’s questionable whether they’re even better for the environment than
other cars. In fact, Tesla is so good at marketing that they’ve bamboozled the
author and he doesn’t even realize it. Elon Musk knows the way to manipulate
perceptions, and he’s very, very good at it.

~~~
skybrian
It seems important to you to prove that certain products are objectively bad,
and the people who like them are somehow wrong to do so. Why? Tastes differ.

~~~
IAmGraydon
Why? Because I’m backing up the opinion that I presented. Or would you rather
everyone makes statements without saying how they came to those conclusions?
That said, I never claimed anyone was wrong - just taken advantage of. Your
comment has me wondering if you own or commonly purchase one of the products I
mentioned. You seem hurt.

~~~
skybrian
Okay, fair enough. But I think it's possible to show that the article isn't
right without trying to also prove something else?

I agree that people don't pick products based on their objective goodness.
However, this doesn't mean they're picking objectively bad products or being
"taken advantage of" either. Or at least not in these examples.

Do you really want to say that one flavor or brand of beverage is objectively
tastier than another, or that people shouldn't care about what it tastes like?
Or maybe they just like the shape of the bottle. Is that wrong?

Or take cars. There are a lot of objective measurements you can make, but no
objective way to decide on how much these features should matter or whether
they are worth the cost. Some people care about having better-than-usual
acceleration or a more luxurious interior, and others don't. Some people care
about fuel efficiency only to save money, others want to do their part to help
save the environment even if it costs more. Some people buy cars based on the
image they want to project. None of these things are objectively wrong.

I'd reserve "being taken advantage of" for cases where people thought they
were buying one thing and got another, not where they're making choices based
on different goals.

(No, I don't drink Red Bull or drive a Tesla.)

------
eksemplar
Is it me or does this article contradict itself throughout the piece? It tries
so hard to sell it’s headline, but every point and interview it does paints a
completely different picture.

You want to sell a da Vinci? Well then you have to make private meetings with
potential clients, and, you have to create ads that sell it as iconic.

You want to make people buy your brand of beer? Well you have to sell the
story of it being generally accepted as a high quality brand.

You want to sell luxury? You have to sell timelessness and trust.

Aren’t those things exactly what Don Draper would have done?

In general the article skimps over how ads are actually made, and talks mainly
in how they are delivered, but that has very little to do with the death of
Don Draper. Because even if you’re not always shooting ads at everyone, you
still have to tell stories that set you a part from everyone else.

It’s only valid point in the subject seem to be that advertisers are no longer
in the front of business magazines. Ironically, neither are car manufacturers,
except for one, Musk. Who coincidentally put one of his cars in space in a
very spectacular PR event that I personally doubt he decided upon because an
algorithm told him it would be popular.

~~~
kristianc
> You want to sell a da Vinci? Well then you have to make private meetings
> with potential clients, and, you have to create ads that sell it as iconic.

That’s sales, not marketing. You wouldn’t bother to create ads for a Da Vinci,
as the pool of people with the means to buy one is so small and the process of
buying one is so convoluted. See also jet engines.

> You want to make people buy your brand of beer? Well you have to sell the
> story of it being generally accepted as a high quality brand.

The article is contesting that what you actually need is to make people aware
of your brand at the moment they are about to consume one. The brand
associations matter in this on some level, but are tangential. Stella Artois
has completely different brand connotations in the US to the UK and EU for
instance.

~~~
yellowcherry
As the article explains, they did make ads for the Da Vinci. Several, in fact.
To make it "iconic", they built up the brand.

The ad that's just looking at people looking at it is brilliant, really a work
of art on its own.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsEAJkTP0-M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsEAJkTP0-M)

The effort that went into selling that painting is one of the more fascinating
stories of the last year.

~~~
mcguire
Specifically,

" _Before Christie’s sold Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi in 2017, it
staged high-profile public exhibitions of the painting around the world, and
made an expensively produced video to showcase it – in effect, an ad. On the
face of it, all this activity was a flagrant waste of money: almost nobody who
consumes the marketing for a da Vinci is in the market for it. Christie’s
salespeople knew all the potential buyers personally. They can, and did, visit
them in the privacy of their penthouses._

" _Yet Christie’s realised that those buyers would pay an extra few million
for the privilege of owning a painting that was “iconic”. This isn’t some
quirk of billionaire art collectors; it’s human nature. We value things more
highly when we know that others value them._ "

------
tramGG
"The brand getting the most buzz in the car industry is Tesla. `What’s
different about them? No advertising. Innovation in the car industry is not
about putting Cindy Crawford in a TV ad. It’s about building a better
battery.`"

Advertising has changed. It's no longer on a billboard in your face, but now a
virus and fabric of influence in your mind that permeates and multiplies
subtly through every medium you consume. Each piece of information
collectively assembles inside your brain to fashion and form an opinion. The
new science of advertising is figuring out how to put these pieces of the
puzzle together so that you organically assemble an opinion on matters
favorable to product sellers.

~~~
chairmanwow
You actually make a really interesting point here. Advertising has permeated
nearly every segment of media consumption. An interesting example is articles
like this, and “reviews” of products that are actually paid adverts where the
“reviewers” get kickbacks for every referral that leads to a sale. [1]

[1]
[https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.fastcompany.com/3065928/sle...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.fastcompany.com/3065928/sleepopolis-
casper-bloggers-lawsuits-underside-of-the-mattress-wars)

~~~
distances
On the other hand, it's now easier than ever to avoid all marketing in media.
In the analog world you couldn't install an adblocker to your newspaper, or
purchase a tv subscription without ads, or choose a radio station without ads
in between. Now it's all available, and at least my world is almost completely
advertisement-free -- except for those paid reviews you mentioned.

~~~
handsomechad
what about product placement, PR in print media, "native" or content ads. to
say nothing of social media "influencers"

~~~
distances
I wouldn't follow an influencer, though I'm not very representative obviously.
I'm quite OK with product placement. Content ads require that they are marked
as advertisements, and can then be blocked.

------
ralston
While I agree with the general/intended sentiment of "Advertising is has
changed from a bunch of slick white guys in suits, to tech", it might be worth
pointing out that Don Draper doesn't _exactly_ have anything to do with what
the author is discussing. The author implies that ad tech is ruining
_traditional_ advertising, which is true on the Sales side, but have you seen
some of the high PPC/CPM ads on some Youtube videos? They still _heavily_ rely
on great creative. And let's not forget that Don Draper was the Creative
Director - not head of Sales (which would've been Pete I believe).

------
roman_savchuk
>The brand getting the most buzz in the car industry is Tesla

Nope, It’s nowhere near that. The fact that tech media writes a lot about a
car manufacturer doesn’t make it the most popular manufacturer in the world
and brief google trends research shows that.

~~~
rcar1046
Tesla even managed to stand out in this very article when it is only briefly
mentioned with multiple comments alluding to this brief mention. I'd say it's
quite safely the car industry leader in buzz, if nothing else.

~~~
ghaff
In this bubble. I think a lot of people here would probably be surprised how
many automobile purchasers have never even heard of Tesla--or at least are
only vaguely aware it's "that electric car company."

------
siliconc0w
So there is 'discovery' which is knowing a solution exists to a solve a need I
might have (that I might not even know about). Technology is reasonably good
at this.

Then there is 'selection' which is picking the 'best' product in a competitive
landscape. Here I'm not convinced even Tech has this captured. If I am
shopping for cars, for example, I might get a Tesla Ad (they do have a few
AdWords) but the technology showing me that AD isn't optimizing for me, it's
optimizing for a click-through or maybe a conversion which are different
things. Maybe you look at me, my income, my driving needs and say hey - look,
maybe you want to go with like a Kia Crossover over a Model S. A Model S would
be fairly financially irresponsible given your income. The money saved with a
crossover would equal $XX,XXX by the time little Bobby is ready for college.
And what about those camping trips? You occasionally drive further than the
expected range anyway.

Right now if I want to compute the TOC of a Tesla vs a Kia given what I
usually drive in a year minus the tax incentives or whatever I'd have to bust
out excel and spend a few hours. This isn't sexy. This isn't what advertising
used to be, but if they want to do the math for me I'd pay attention to that
way more than that I do AdWords.

------
wpdev_63
It's scary how targeted google ads are now a days. I was talking about buying
a bed to my mother and noticed ads for mattresses started popping up in my ad
sidebars. I miss being anonymous.

~~~
braythwayt
“What’s an ad sidebar?”

Ok, tongue-in-cheek remark. I left Facebook, block ads aggressively, use
DuckDuckGo, and live in the weak sauce privacy of the Apple ecosystem.

Since I block ads, I also block a bunch of trackers. But given that I can’t
see most ads, I have no idea whether people are trying to sell me mattresses
after I discuss beds.

For all I know, I don’t live in a house with the shades drawn, maybe I live in
a house with one-way shades such that the advertisers can watch me, but I
can’t see anything they’re trying to show me.

——

If the above is the case, I will still be vulnerable to micro-targeted
astroturf stuff. Like bots posing as Members of whatever social media I
participate in, dropping brand names in their conversations.

Is everyone on Swedespeed really a Volvo enthusiast? If one of them posts a
picture of a Trek mountian bike on their roof rack, how do I know this is
“organic,” and not an ad campaign?

For how long will the above be a pleasant chuckle about a dystopian possible
future, and not everyone’s daily “reality?”

This is already happening with political discourse, it must be inevitable for
commerce.

------
nextweek2
Igor Beuker's speach at the Qt World Summit 2017 followed a similar premise.
Traditional advertising has gone the way of the Dodo and the Math Men have
taken over.

[https://youtu.be/y6gAUZW4DGE?t=4m23s](https://youtu.be/y6gAUZW4DGE?t=4m23s)

------
tim333
>In 2016, Facebook in effect charged the Trump campaign lower rates than the
Clinton campaign, because Trump’s ads made people angrier and thus generated
more clicks. Nobody took a decision to charge Trump less. It was the logical
outcome of the ad business’s core principle: the more attention you win, the
more you get paid. Since negative emotions are more likely to win and hold
attention than positive emotions, the system has an incentive to spread fear
and loathing. Russia’s entire propaganda campaign relies on an advertising
model that rewards paranoia and spite.

That stuff seems to be quite a problem these days. I was just looking last
night at how the Brexit vote was probably swung by a bunch of immigrant fear
mongering on facebook in the 2 weeks before the referendum - graph of the
polls
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DjIQI7gXgAAAmbd?format=jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DjIQI7gXgAAAmbd?format=jpg)
and one of the ads
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DjIM5XLU8AAuB7o?format=jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DjIM5XLU8AAuB7o?format=jpg)

The details are only gradually coming out - facebook released the ads a couple
of days ago and Dominic Cummings the campaign manager has refused a summons
from parliament to come explain what happened.

I guess we have to wise up to it a bit and maybe change the algorithms to be
less hate promoting.

~~~
mcguire
Then there is this:

" _[In a recent article for the New York Times, the sociologist Zeynep
Tufekci] found the same pattern on non-political topics: videos about
vegetarianism led to videos about veganism; videos about jogging led to videos
about ultra-marathons. The stakes were always being upped. YouTube, she
concluded, was a “radicalising instrument”. That isn’t, she says, because
YouTube’s engineers are zealots. It’s because Google (YouTube’s owner) is
selling attention to advertisers, and its algorithms have learnt that the best
way to keep people hooked is to push ever more extreme material on them._ "

It's pessimistic, since by design it can only get worse.

~~~
tim333
I think it would take some active design changes to improve that but it could
be done.

~~~
mcguire
You'd have to break the more extreme -≥ more views -> more money feedback
loop.

------
inthewoods
I disagree with a number of points in this article.

"Now, we live in an age in which the intangible haze of soft-sell is no longer
necessary, and the battle for market share comes down to the raw strength of
your product. “The sun has passed midday on brand,” he says."

I don't think this is remotely true - as an example, take a look at the
insurance industry (GEICO, AFLAC, AllState, etc). These guys are spending on
massively on brand advertising. Now, obviously, the LTV of these customers is
huge so they can afford the high CAC that comes with brand advertising. This
advertising is pure Don Draper imho.

"The brand getting the most buzz in the car industry is Tesla. “What’s
different about them? No advertising. Innovation in the car industry is not
about putting Cindy Crawford in a TV ad. It’s about building a better
battery.”"

Yes they have a great product - and, at the moment, they have that
differentiation and, most importantly, buzz. That will change as the market
for electric cars matures - and then you'll see Tesla start to advertise. It
doesn't make any sense for them to spend on advertising right now given that
they are in the press literally every day (right now for some stuff that isn't
necessarily positive). Maturity of market matters.

"Clients have even started to question the ad business’s claim to efficiency.
The model I described above is a simplified version of a dizzyingly complex
system whose details few can fathom, involving multiple companies taking
multiple fees. Unsurprisingly, fraud is rampant."

If this is true we'll likely see a pullback in digital advertising - or at
least a movement to direct buys only on specific websites (vs. network buys).

My opinion: digital advertising is proving to be less and less efficacious,
with costs going up and results going down. At the same time, we have less and
less product differentiation. The result should be more spending on
traditional brand advertising. Digital advertising is a channel - and spend to
that channel will ebb and flow.

In my small world of advertising (B2B SaaS), I've seen digital advertising
becoming largely ineffective. Too many companies marketing similar products
and services. I would argue, in this world, brand advertising therefore
becomes more important. That is, developing a brand is as or more important
than product because all the products (in the eyes of prospects) are largely
the same. Note that I am not saying product doesn't matter, or that a product
cannot differentiate in a specific market (e.g. Slack), but that companies
need a distribution advantage to succeed over every other company - and that
either comes from the product or brand (e.g. Drift).

Now, having said all this, do I think the Ad Tech industry is a mess and that
a major shakeout is needed? Yes. Do I think that digital advertising is
largely too consolidated with a handful of players (Google, Facebook and now
Amazon) - yes. Advertising can be still be great and useful - but Ad Tech
needs some help.

------
bko
> Advertising, once a creative industry, is now a data-driven business reliant
> on algorithms. The implications are deeply sinister – not only for the
> consumer but for democracy itself.

When everything is labeled a "threat to democracy", nobody takes that actual
threats to democracy seriously.

> These days, consumers are less likely to have favourite brands, since “their
> favourite brand is going to be whatever Google tells them at that moment is
> going to match their exact needs”. The brand getting the most buzz in the
> car industry is Tesla. “What’s different about them? No advertising.
> Innovation in the car industry is not about putting Cindy Crawford in a TV
> ad. It’s about building a better battery.”

Really? I would use Tesla as an extreme example of effective marketing and
cult of personality around Elon Musk. Elon Musk is Cindy Crawford.

> “When’s the last time you saw an ad agency executive on the cover of
> Business Week?"

Not sure Business Week is really a barometer of what's going on today, but
that's fair. However you do regularly see the leaders of these companies, who
are the face and effectively the advertising. Not sure if there is a person or
team behind their image.

> Clients are spending less on the kind of entertaining, seductive, fame-
> generating campaigns in which ad agencies specialise, and more on the ads
> that flash and wink on your smartphone screen.

Really? I think sponsored content that's actually entertaining is a lot more
common now.

> Clients only have to decide how many people they want to reach, and how much
> they want to spend; algorithms do the rest.

Wasn't this automated before and the automation was just done by the ad
agencies? Why bother hiring ad agencies in the first place

> The advertiser might create multiple ads and serve different executions to
> different slices of its audience. Some companies, such as Cambridge
> Analytica, claim to be able to target personality types using this method.
> The more valuable your particular profile is to the advertiser, the higher
> price its algorithm will pay the publisher to get an ad in front of your
> eyes. In this way, every scintilla of attention is transformed into money.

In the past advertisers often had multiple ads that played in multiple
mediums, targeting multiple audiences. And yes, more value mediums (e.g.
target market with a more affluent readership) does cost more. Why wouldn't
it?

This whole article is just a list of complaints and contradictory observations
without a central theme or any coherent structure.

Marketing doesn't work but is extremely common. Its rampant with fraud but is
incredibly convincing. It's a huge turn-off with consumers tuning out but it's
dominating our lives

------
kokey
I misread the title as 'The death of John Draper?'. This left me rather
confused for at least several paragraphs into the article.

------
cylinder
Good news for Germans.

~~~
distances
Please explain a bit what you mean?

------
gboudrias
Cry me a goddamned river. The evils of GoogleFaceTube are nothing but the
logical conclusion of advertising. This is like someone being sad at a faster
car than theirs being invented, only both cars annoy the shit out of everyone.

------
beerlord
Its interesting that if you watch Mad Men, this was actually discussed in a
show set even in the 70s - that precise targeting and media would outpace any
creative work.

------
nav
You guys should check out - lazyeight.design , we're essentially trying to
build the world's first creative agency on the cloud and using a ton of data
for project estimates and to calculate our monthly hourly pricing (which
changes monthly).

