| 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 |