Do you honestly not see how all of your examples support the notion that people are influenced by marketing?
As you said, Ford drivers can't be convinced to switch to Chevy. In the industry that's called "Brand Loyalty." Ford isn't sitting idly by in the marketing department. A large chunk of a company's advertising is aimed at retaining existing customers.
There's another well known phenomenon around soft drinks; Coca-cola is the leading soft drink and people are very particular about 'Coke vs. Pepsi' even though in double-blind taste tests Pepsi often wins.
Governmental advertising bans are an excellent example, though not for the reasons you gave. We first saw their impact with underage smoking rate. In places where advertising to children was curtailed and anti-smoking campaigns were launched, smoking went down. There's also a well known correlation between obesity and access to sugary drinks.
The key message here is that adverts and propaganda rarely exist in a vacuum. There is almost always multiple brands or messages fighting for dominance. In spaces where there is only one (N. Korea comes to mind) it's astounding how much penetration even outlandish claims can have. As an example, the reason why political ads for Bloomberg didn't translate into a avalanche of votes for Mike is because those ads were mixed into a sea of ads and messages also vying for people's votes. Trump, Biden, Warren, Buttigieg, Klobouchar and others were all running their own ads. Despite skipping the first four states Bloomberg got 2.4MM votes (not "a handful") - beating out Warren in those races despite his late start. Given the saturation of the race one could argue that Bloomberg's ad blitz was remarkably effective.
Your entire premise that advertising isn't terribly effective would mean that companies and campaigns waste hundreds-of-billions annually unnecessarily. If that were the case, don't you think most of them would have caught on and realized "hey, if we cut our advertising budget we don't lose much in profits!?"
You seem to want to have it both ways. I'm pretty sure the whole complaint about Russian Facebook ads wasn't "Russian intelligence agencies helped preserve brand loyalty for the Republicans, thus delivering the victory to Trump."
And does it really matter who ran the ads? Both campaigns put out messaging, speeches, interviews, ads, had debates, etc. The American people had the opportunity to see all of that and make their decision.
To debase the verdict based on some Russian advertisements is a complete copout, of exactly the same sort as the Trumpie "voter fraud."
The fact is Republicans grew their voters by well less than voting age population grew, and Democrats went backwards. Any company that releases a new version of a product and sees growth stagnate to below market growth levels, or go backwards, would easily conclude they released a bad product. Not that the other guy's marketing was better, especially when the other guys also had a bad product and bad sales.
Despite skipping the first four states Bloomberg got 2.4MM votes (not "a handful") - beating out Warren in those races despite his late start. Given the saturation of the race one could argue that Bloomberg's ad blitz was remarkably effective.
I'm not sure how $400 per vote can be see as effective in any context. He would have been better handing out envelopes stuffed with Benjamins in the voting line.
Your entire premise that advertising isn't terribly effective would mean that companies and campaigns waste hundreds-of-billions annually unnecessarily. If that were the case, don't you think most of them would have caught on and realized "hey, if we cut our advertising budget we don't lose much in profits!?"
Another complete copout. For one, you are completely misrepresenting my argument. I did not say that advertising dollars were a waste. I said that the manipulability of the average person is overstated. You deliberately misconstrued that into a strawman argument.
Second, there's survivorship bias. You don't see the ad campaigns stick around for very long, for products that people don't like. Maybe advertising is effective when you have a genuinely good product (Obama, Volvos, iPhone) to compete against other good products, but is just blowing money around a terrible product (Bloomberg, Zune, Fire phone)
(as an aside, I chuckle at the thought that perhaps advertising greatest victory was convincing CEOs and CFOs that advertising works. A silly thought, but pretty funny!)
Governmental advertising bans are an excellent example, though not for the reasons you gave. We first saw their impact with underage smoking rate. In places where advertising to children was curtailed and anti-smoking campaigns were launched, smoking went down. There's also a well known correlation between obesity and access to sugary drinks.
Smoking rates have gone down everywhere, because people have realized they are cancer sticks. Bizarro world you live in, where people cannot be credited for making healthy choices, instead the credit has to go to bureaucrats. Nightly news reports and public health reports bringing public awareness around the hazards of smoking surely cannot be equated with build-the-wall facebook banners, right?
Obesity...and yet the biggest nations in the world deploying all their might into limiting ads and access haven not managed to make a dent in obesity rates...
Poll
