I feel the same about SEO stuff. Stuff that's designed to attract peoples attention doesn't just not work on me, it often repels me. Some of it actively irritates me. Some of it I can't even stand to look at.

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[–] 19 points 1 day ago (6 children)

My AuDHD friend back in high school got into Pokemon for the very first time in 2010 because the girl he had a crush on had a Pokemon trinket thing on her backpack at school. I believe it was a Piplup. So of course, he went and researched Pokemon and bought a Nintendo DS with his Christmas money and also developed encyclopædic knowledge on Pokemon.

Does this count as advertisement working on him or not?

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  • [–] 13 points 1 day ago*

    That is what, in the business, is sometimes referred to as peer to peer advertising. Basically the concept is that one of the best ways to advertise something is to convince someone they look up to, or consider attractive, to buy an aspect of the product, thus convincing others to get into it and buy it. It is the basis for influencer advertising, which works through the pseudo-peer, but much more subtle.

    Marketing people are operating at a bunch of levels, much of which is convincing the people that pay them that even their indirect advertising is purposeful, which to a large degree it is.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 day ago (4 children)

    Perhaps. One might call random merchandise as a form of advertisement. I’m not sure whether or not I subscribe to that line of thought though.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 day ago (3 children)

    All I can tell you is that it doesn't really matter if you subscribe to that line of thought, the marketing people absolutely do.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago (2 children)

    If a new PC game looks interesting enough for me to pirate, does that mean the marketing people won but the company lost?

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  • [–] 1 point 16 hours ago*

    Depends on who you are listening to and/or what studies you believe. However, yes, the marketing team has won either way because they got paid to do the thing, the sale itself is more or less irrelevant.

    However, most studies indicate that a pirated game is unlikely to be a lost sale, because a person in the first world who pirates a game had a very low intention of ever purchasing the game legitimately. A much larger area of 'lost profit' is from regional pricing, where one region is priced cheaper, but then games are resold on the market for lower than the expensive regional price. However, without regional pricing, you do get into the issue where pirating is actually lost sales, because customers in poorer regions who would ordinarily pay for the game are forced into pirating because they are priced out.

    So... The marketing team wins and the company kinda loses, maybe?

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