Without advertising in the world, it'd be a much poorer place. Advertising exists for more than a thousand years and it's the only way for other people to know what you can do for them in exchange for something.
Except the advertising industry of today is akin to mental manipulation. It's less about letting you know what the product can do for you and more about getting you to buy/pay for it.
It's easy to make a strong argument when it's also woefully incomplete. :P
If all advertising were just abstract economic information that a service or product existed with certain features at a certain price-point, then we're left with a whole bunch of inexplicable mysteries, including-but-not-limited-to:
* Why would there be some expensive messages that lack any of that economic information, such as those which show a succession of nice things (that aren't being sold) closing with a brand-name the viewer is already aware of?
* Why would senders deliberately seek to ensure that the same person sees the same repeated message multiple times, even after they declined to purchase the first time and their situation wouldn't have changed?
* Why would any info-packets be crafted to make previously-neutral viewers experience fresh fear and dissatisfaction?
* Why would someone spend unnecessary money on funny mascots or catchy music?
* Why would (where not illegal) the product have a time-limited discount that wasn't actually time limited nor discounted?
You can answer all the questions with the same answer (quoted from my comment above):
> Advertising exists (..) for other people to know what you can do for them in exchange for something.
Your questions are just requiring more sophisticated answers that will all boil down to that. What you say is "unnecessary funny mascots or catchy music" is brand awareness which is still "letting other people know I exist and I can sell them stuff - I hope they look me up later or remember me when they are at the shop". The others are similar. One might have distaste for the manipulation but then your problem is with people, not advertising. A slimey sales guy does as much or more manipulation without needing to buy ads.
I agree that a good salesperson manipulates people too. Instead of trying to compare how much manipulation is done by salespeople vs in ads, I think it's worthwhile to consider how the manipulation is performed.
Both ad and salesperson will probably attempt to make us feel some emotion - best case without our conscious awareness of it. The tools an expensive ad has at its disposal seem to me much more effective in evoking emotion; visual stimuli, carefully crafted music, decades of psychology research, etc.
And while we've had a chance to evolve strategies against human to human manipulation (doors, perhaps, and various subtle triggers of distrust), the ad environment is a very recent development.
I agree investigation is worthwhile. As an adult, being aware of techniques like fake sense of urgency or scarcity, playing on your maslow needs for belonging and self-actualisation etc are things you should be aware, to develop a better sense of "smell" for bullshit.
I don't think any of this is new though, I'm pretty sure the local Roman seller of beads and nice dresses did the same things to their customers on the posters they put on buildings and the cries they shouted in the square, or olive oil salespeople using gladiators to have spectators buy that specific kind of olive oil. You can look these examples up because they are real.
The technology and mediums change, but human emotions and our reactions to them change on a scale of many more years than only a few thousands.
Thats an interesting point about the age of manipulative sales strategies! I didn't consider it.
And I agree with your position that emotions change over a rather long timescale.
In fact that's exactly why I'm concerned about the speed of technological development in psychology and data science. I fear that it's no longer salesperson vs consumer. Now it's salesalgorithm and a large chunk of the behavioral science academic efforts vs consumer. The power that the producer wields is increasing at a much faster rate than the emotional awareness of the consumer.
My perpective is influenced by the Center of Humane Tech's positon. The people behind 'The social dillema' documentary and the 'Your undivided attention' podcast. Manipulative capabilities are increasing FAST. And I believe that this speed of change is unprecedented.
I call what you are describing "informational" advertisement, and indeed it is totally fine. However most modern advertisement is not trying to inform but rather to convince, using a variety of psychological tricks to manipulate viewers into a specific position. This is totally not okay.
I'm sorry but that's bullshit. Advertising is carte blanche mind control.
Markets and products can easily exist without advertising. In fact, they're better. You go to markets, and you have curators. Advertising outside of a market should be not only illegal but culturally frowned upon as a root ethic.
> Markets and products can easily exist without advertising
Source needed - seeing I don't know any company that doesn't advertise in some shape or form. The ones that I found that claim they don't, actually do advertise and use the "we don't advertise" as further advertisements. By definition I think it'd be hard to find companies that truly don't advertise, so maybe you know of some that are successful but don't do it?
I'm not a fan of Tesla but to give credit where it's due, I have never seen an advertisement from them. The closest thing I have seen is branded chargers, which is also a functional display of their brand (you need to know if you can use the charger or not).
There are also tons of small companies that have no advertising. Think one or few man shows that operate on word of mouth, and are not looking to grow.
