[pksebben]

I can see we need to define terms, here. I apologize for any previous misunderstanding.

I use advertising in this context to mean: paid signage (physical, digital, mailed, etc) where the business pays a fee with the explicit and unary intent to drive business.

Listings, whether in a maps app or a phone book, do not qualify (most times - paying for preferential treatment in these places is a travesty deleterious to the integrity of the source - and why Google sucks now).

I've found salons by seeking them out on my own - in places they did not pay for preferential treatment - because that spend is either

a) detracting from spending that would make the business and service actually better

and/or

b) covering for a shortcoming in said business / service

If you're using the term advertising to mean other things, then we are speaking two different languages, or perhaps I'm simply not using the most correct term, for which I apologize.

hope that clears things up.

[marketerinland]

So in essence you’re willing to do a lot of work.

Your theories and methods do make some sense, but a business that spends a lot of money on advertising doesn’t need to be inadequate per se.

I’ve been Marketing Lead for 2 startups and have now started 3 companies.

4 of the 5 have grown through advertising.

In all 4 cases, the market wasn’t even aware that a solution like ours existed. (You can’t search for something you don’t know about.)

I doubt you would argue that advertising these products is some kind of systematic failure.

Second; let’s come back to the hair salon example. Let’s just say it’s brand new.

I doubt you’d argue that a brand new salon is making its product suffer by advertising. After all, it is suffering right now because it has zero customers.

And let’s take a third example - where word of mouth is unavailable. There are many products and services where word of mouth is simply not available as a marketing channel. This is common in B2B where the people picking a service just have no one in their networks who would be interested.

I doubt you’d begrudge them the need to advertise?

Yet a huge amount of marketing spend falls into these three buckets.

I should also add that your out of the way hair salon would never have been able to start without the assistance of advertising. You’d have to be insane to start a business in a low traffic area if you’re prohibited from promoting it.

[pksebben]

Yeah, you do hit on a point here. There are types of business that don't benefit from the same kind of locality that a brick-and-mortar business has, and in those cases, it may be really difficult to become a known entity in a space.

I'll admit to being a little overzealous in my frustration with the advertising industry - this is because of the absolute bombardment we experience (and something that, I would think, folks like yourself would prefer to combat - as it reduces the efficacy of good advertising). Here, I mean things like relentless coupon mailers, blanket campaigns like those run by fast food chains and insurance agencies (where it becomes impossible to avoid their brand). That kinda stuff.

As for word of mouth being unavailable - well, I think we might have different ideas about the proper 'velocity' of a product. I think we move too fast in general, and it opens up a whole slew of externalities. Not in every case, but in most.

I'm not against ALL advertising, but I think we've gotten to a point where controls need to be put in place. Not just to protect delicate, wilting flowers like myself from the cesspit of aggressive marketing that is the norm, but also to protect the integrity of 'good' advertising - it's gotten to the point where I use advertising as a metric of bad business, and accept that I'm losing the marginal benefit of being informed about stuff like you're talking about in the name of not spending an inordinate amount of time trying to separate the wheat from the chaff.

It's actually a lot less work to do the research I do, because it's focused, and it would be a ton of work to:

- buy a thing because it was advertised a bunch

- realize I made a bad bet and now own a piece of crap

- NOW do the research

- deal with getting rid of the junk

- buy that thing twice

edit: formatting

[marketerinland]

Thanks for these thoughts and the interaction :) I have enjoyed it a lot.