This man knows nothing of Inception! 🧐 I will, however, buy his book and display it prominently on my shelf, so that people will see it and think I'm smart.
yeah, he couldn't help himself in inserting irrelevant (to the topic) comments about the film's loopholes. i did enjoy Inception but i thought Tenet was ridiculous. i think the "why no gravity on the 3rd(?) level" can be explained by 'different dreamer' - that dreamer was not feeling the lack of gravity since he was now in someone else's dreamscape. (it's really funny that the top comment on this video is NOT related to the video subject :D - kinda makes the true intention of the video shine through !!)
I remember once meeting Pavlov on a bar! He did leave quite quickly though - a bicycle rang the bell outside and the jumped off of his chair saying " I have to feed the dog!!!"
Of course. Strongbow is now publicly associated with being sophisticated and philosophically minded. Naturally, students would like their friends to think of them in this way.
Very interesting topic, although i will make some remarks. 1. The dichotomy rational vs irrational seems to me a very clear double standard. Mr Kaplan assumes irrationality because emotional inception would be akin to manipulation, yielding an "uninformed" purchase, while social connotation would be rational because it would yield a particular predictable outcome involving how we are socially perceived. The thing is that both theories assume the following: product A is associated to B, therefore buying A yields C. In the first one C would be the "emotion" B itself, while in the second one C would be the social perception of B. The problem with calling social connotation theory rational is that you are assuming the association between A and B, which is the entire point of the emotional inception theory... If you ASSUME that cool and rich people use nike AND that other people make this assumption too, then buying the product is rational if that is what you're trying to convey. But if you assume that cool and rich people use nike, then buying the product would also be rational under the emotional inception theory. 2. The notion that emotional theory should be everywhere if it were true makes no sense, because it would imply that every single kind of ad would be able to exert the same influence be equally capable of proposing an association to the consumer. This is obviously not the case, and it cannot even be isolated as a variable. The difference between a pizza flyer left in a door and a nike ad superbowl goes far beyond the thought that many people are watching. Trying to propose an association through a tv commercial, stimulating one's hearing, vision, telling an actual story etc. is entirely different from doing that through a flyer, and the fact that there are more association ads on tvs for example does not necessarily imply that emotional inception is wrong, only that tv might be more convenient for that type of ad.
You could also defeat the distinction by simply invoking David Hume's argument that reason and rationality alone can never move a human to do anything, let alone buy a product based on advertising.
With respect to your first remark: if you don’t believe in the association between A and B, or know it is irrational, but you believe that others believe it to be true, then your decision can be rational. That is, “I’m smart enough to know the association is bogus, but everyone else is stupid and thinks it’s real.” That’s not a particularly intelligent worldview, but it makes the decision in question rational (even if incorrect). TLDR: for social connotation theory to be rational only requires that the consumer believes that others believe in the association between A and B, which is different from the consumer themselves believing in the association.
"The thing is that both theories assume the following: product A is associated to B, therefore buying A yields C." No, this is exactly the distinction is that they don't both assume this. The association between A and B does not cause C in the case of K's theory. There's an intermediary step, which is a deliberative (i.e. rational) decision that a purchaser makes. In the case of emotional inception theory the circuit is from A to B (association) to C (purchasing decision). In K's theory (forgot what he called it) it's from A to B to X to C, where X is a decision predicated on an awareness of the association between A and B that others have in their mind. You could say that EIT is deterministic (as vulgar behaviorist theories tend to be) as where KT is cognitivist since it's about the rational (not in the strong normative sense but in the deliberative sense) thought process of consumers. If EIT made space for that I suspect it would simply be K's theory. IF you pay attention to the video, you will observe that K himself actually points out that he agrees with EIT about the idea that (at least some kinds) of advertisements depend on the development of an association in the consumer's mind. Where he disagrees with it is in this idea that it is the association itself that, as it were, unconsciously regulates our purchasing decisions. You also are mixing something up when you discuss their assumptions. The consumer does not need to assume that cool and rich people use nike, anymore than K needs to assume that inception is a real phenomenon in order to use it as an analogy to EIT. They are assuming that there is this idea in our society, this association between the two, that they can draw on in order to communicate with others intelligibly. So the roles for association vary between the two theories. In EIT it is a psychological explanation for purchasing behavior. In KT it factors insofar as the capacity for commodities to function semiotically depends on arbitrary associations of this kind, just as we need to associate words to concepts in order to use a language. So even if it turned out to be the case that cool and rich people did not use Nike, that would make no difference to the consumer under K's theory, since it is enough that this association is there so that it can be used symbolically. In his example from his own life for instance: It isn't that everyone at the party thinks "all people who drink X drink are party girls, she brought X, she must be a party girl." It's rather something like "X is cheap and you can get drunk on it. This girl came in here with a whole case of it. She must be here to party." You see the difference? It isn't the bare association itself that is driving the thinking there. That is, this train of thought wasn't imposed on any of them from somewhere within their brain inaccessible to introspective awareness. Rather, an _inference_ is being made on the part of the party goers. The decision to buy would not be rational in the EIT account, since in that account, it never passes through anything like a decision on the part of the buyer, but rather operates covertly, influencing our decisions for no other reason than that this association exists (rather than, as in K's theory, that it facilitates a communicative act) . So if you ask someone why they bought some medication they will never say "well I saw an add once that showed really happy people next to this product so I just assume that people who take this medication must be really happy. In K's theory it's not like people go, "cool people drink bud light, i want to be cool so I will drink it too." It's more like "bud light is associated with cool, laid back working guys and I want to give off cool laid back working class guy vibes right now so I'll go with that." "The notion that emotional theory should be everywhere if it were true makes no sense, because it would imply that every single kind of ad would be able to exert the same influence be equally capable of proposing an association to the consumer." This is in fact _exactly what EIT does think, and indeed, what it would have to claim. Notice that it is behaviorist in its essence. You can make a Pavlovian connection between any two stimuli under behaviorist theory. So long as the organism can become habituated to associate the two stimuli the stimulus response can be conditioned. There's no intrinsic connection between the sound of a bell and food. It's arbitrary. They could have chosen literally any other stimulus, the color red, the smell of gasoline, whatever. It is purely the repeated association between two stimuli that is needed for operant conditioning to occur. In the same way, in EIT it is the mere presence of a repeated association that creates a positive association in our minds and drives our purchasing decision covertly. And EIT would have to assume this even if that connection were not explicitly made, since it has no theory for why some associations work and others don't. In fact the whole point of the theory (or so it seems to me) is to explain a transition from the rational appeals of earlier advertisements to the completely tangential free association style commercials of the contemporary age. That's its appeal as a theory is that it seems to give a nice explanation of why advertisers make ads like that. And I think the reason it's so popular as a theory is because everyone has seen some completely bonkers commercial and thought "how is this a toothpaste commercial what the hell does that have to do with toothpaste???"
He lost me at some point. This feels like way over-examining the issues. Some things play on internal emotions because we associate things with feelings, that we do not care who else knows about, and somet things we do care if others know about. Some things, both. See a nice car, think of how smooth it is, how enjoyable it is to ride in, the new car smell, the nice sound system, the reliability, etc., and those are all internal, but also external, like "People will think I am smart and cool and successful for owning this car." We may share preconceptions about what kind of person i am for buying this car. Why do people always need a "theory" to understand things? I know it gives it a name you can use and share, but is it really so hard to say that advertisements use VARIOUS means by which to manipulate us and also communicate things to others?
@@phyllo8958 i thought of your argument as i was writing the answer, but it dismissed it since that would imply unstated premises. If there are no other premises (like the one you said, for example, "i am smart, everyone else is stupid"), that it should work for everyone else is predicated on it working for you, so if it doesn't work for you, there is no reason to assume that it should be working for everyone else.
I agree with you that purposeful social signaling plays a part in how advertising influences behavior, but I think conditioning is also important. There are numerous studies showing that vicarious conditioning is effective. Seeing someone else being rewarded for a behavior can reinforce that behavior nearly as strongly as a direct reward. This is why we have so many stories about a character being rewarded for doing something socially desirable; these stories are effective tools for shaping prosocial behaviors.
Good points. I can't say I understand what the video is trying to actually say. The argument for association in advertising is that on some level it must work really well considering the trillions of $$ spent on ads using it and the products it sells. And definitely 'vicarious conditioning'. I can tell endless stories of being the guy who tells the drunk on the train, "This is the no smoking car, don't light that." Everyone else when the guy finally shuffles off applauds me. While I was talking to the guy, everyone else had their heads down. They would like to be the.... but they're afraid to. They capture some of the feeling by applauding. (If you want to be part of the band, it's not clapping, it's if you dance.) Take the SUV/truck with the kayak on the roof. We've all seen this ad for at least 50 years. Kayaks don't cost nearly as much as the vehicles, but millions of vehicles are sold and very few kayaks. I remember seeing beautiful two wooden kayaks on the roof of a truck on the low tide banks of the Russian River in California. Sunset, it was just like a well shot commercial. I knew immediately what they were, but had never actually thought about kayaks before. Eventually I made a couple of kayaks, but more so I learned how to paddle them, how to be safe paddling out to sea solo. Potentially very dangerous. I was building a wooden kayak and learning about safety, and the huge potential dangers, before I'd actually paddled one. I also understood that I would have to go off the coast to fully experience and enjoy kayaking. I then did this for 15 years. It was even better than I thought it would be. Whenever I see a car/truck commercial with a kayak on the roof my brain pings, "You don't want the vehicle, you want the kayak." Know what I see on the freeways of Los Angeles? Endless lines of SUVs, pickups, etc... none of which have kayaks on the roof, none of which are even muddy. (I'll bet Jeeps and Subarus go into the wilderness and none of the other sports vehicles ever do.) Know what I see off the coast of California, population 40 million? No other kayaks. Everyone wants the dream of the kayak, no one seems actually capable of making the effort to do it. The pay off is absolutely amazing, and there's no monthly car and insurance payment... and yet almost no one does it. I now have a sailboat, very big, very comfortable. In the two years I've owned it, 5 other people have gone sailing on it. I thought it was a no brainer, free yacht sailing, Channel Islands, whales, sea lions, dolphins, amazing scenery.... my friends would love it. Nope. Almost everyone I know has an excuse why they won't, can't, etc... Of the 5, one did an overnight trip. She's got her own boat. Everyone else showed up with a reason they could only go out for the day. A consumer is someone with dreams who instead of pursuing those dreams, buys a consumer product. The advertising business is all about associations sold to people with limited will power. The beer commercial is typical and never changes: Shlubby guy in a bar ordering the major brand beer and suddenly beautiful women appear.... It must work. The reason that college girl showed up with that brand of cider was not, "I want to party," it was an offer of availability for sex. When you're young you need these signals. I think what happens to most people is that they're tightly connected with family, friends, work/school and have given up thinking, 'I want to go camping, I'll ask my people, and if they say no... then I'll just go by myself.' Instead they thwart each other. In the store you can always buy the beer, at the dealership you can always buy the SUV.... You want sex and intimacy, you'd love to go sea kayaking... we all want to live an amazing life, instead we buy stuff.
I was obvious in less than 2 minutes that this wasn't a video about how advertising does or does not work. That was thecIickbait ploy. This is a video to get... _views._ People trying to analyze it have been hornswoggled.
As long as these perceptual rewards are seen to be equitable and honestly - not nepotistically or otherwise corruptly - distributed. Much slippage that way and the product reputation incurs damage (small dents and gouges, missing pieces, can quickly and entirely negate the feelings a new purchase/reward brings) and why with promotion of brands you also at the same time have to have enduring quality and very good after transaction service (or what is loyalty when dealing with people).
I work in advertisement. There are people in the profession who theorize the way this gentlemen does, but it turns out their yields aren't any better than anyone else's. We do consumer panels to test our ad concepts, and would it surprise you if I told you the dumbest ads get the best results? (very frustrating from a creative perspective of course) Sorry Mr Kaplan, we don't sell dish soap the same way we sell a Rolex.
I have also noticed (as an American voter in Wisconsin) that obviously fear and anger-mongering political ads are very effective at turning out the vote for right-wing candidates. They tap into already existing racism, homophobia and other prejudices. They don't even have a product to sell, really -- many of these candidates get elected, people forget their names -- but they get large numbers of people to vote against Democrats.
You know... He actually does say that dish soap isn't advertised this way. He specifically singled out dish soap and bedsheets, so your comments suggests that you did not watch the whole thing.
I think he is really pulling a rug pull on everyone by inception. He is trolling with bs theory he made up to defeat his other bs theory. But really he wants your email info to sell it and sell his book. He starts off with making you think luxury marketing tactics don’t work by subverting your thought of them. He subverting you he is intelligent and he is right and hoping your too stupid know better. Then pushes he has book and needs your email. Then sends a shoutout to his fellow friends in on the joke. He is the dude in thrid level of dream. lol living rent free now when you get spam emails and think you got hacked. His arguments don’t make sense in his own examples how the hell is he a phd teaching? You could never pass his class because his made up theories rule them all. All of his students aren’t dumber thanks to him and wasted money when watching madmen would have been better education. He is making himself a target in academia as a PhD. It’s a joke or a rug pull to get your emails and prove his theory is true.
@@mururoa7024 If he were right, cat food would be advertised similarly to dish soap. Neither would be using association. I'm pretty sure the association ads are the ones promoting name recognition.
I understand what you're saying but advertising works on children. I am unsure if a child is trying to evoke to peers that they are happy when they want a happy meal at McDonald's. A parent may want to create an associate with themselves and happiness for a child but for situations where the child is requesting a product based on advertising, I am not sure if they are contemplating the construction of self from some sort of Lacaning other. I don't know.
I’d argue the social argument may be even more effective against children, as many don’t typically keep pragmatic affairs front of mind. An adult can reason away the desire for a purchase due to practical limitations, but a child is either given it or turned down, which, in the latter case, often exacerbates the underlying desire.
Does advertising work on children? I don't think children like McDonald's because they saw a commercial and people were happy in it. I think they like McDonald's exactly because their peers do, and their family does, and also because they like clowns and toys and playgrounds and all the stuff McDonald's has. I also find the Lacan reference funny given that Lacan does think this is what children do. The mirror stage for Lacan starts at like 6-18 months for Lacan or smth like that right?
I think it's fair to say that it's not the _only_ way advertising works - yours is a good example, like I would guess McDonald's goals are probably somewhere closer to "remind you of something you already know/like" or "catch you at the right moment when you're hungry." But I think this theory still applies for a lot of things we buy but don't *need*. Like sure a kid may ask for McDonald's just bc they're hungry but they also might ask for a certain toy just bc they want their friends at school to think they're cool. I think kids definitely are tuned into those sorts of things but just are influenced differently than most adults
@@Deantrey There are laws to protect children from advertising because children have a difficult time "knowing" that they are being advertised to. The tool of advertising has been shown to be effective regardless of social and family norms. The behavior of consumption for adults is more conscious but the evolution from a child's to an adult's relationship to advertising isn't discontinuous. I think both theories are valid based on the situation. Newton physics applies for some situations and quantum mechanics in others.
@@noshiko5398 The ability to communicate the abstract concept of "happiness" is expressed through the language of lacanian other for the child but that language is also used in advertising to adults. I still struggle with the lacanian concept of desire but he states that there is never the concept of need. The child will desire food but the desire for McDonald's is expressing a different desire from the "need" for food.
Emotional Inception theory and Social Connotation theory aren't really competing theories. They're complimentary. They're two different but interrelated processes that build on each other, and advertisers use both in combination, not one to the exclusion of the other. Emotional Inception is more complicated than Pavlovian conditioning, but basically serves as the initial pioneer process to get a product into the social and cultural scene. Once that work is done, and the product has established cultural connotations to work with, _then_ Social Connotation can exploit this to sell it on those connotations.
"ComplEmentary" = combining in such a way as to enhance or emphasize the qualities of each other or another. not "complImentary" = expressing a compliment; praising or approving or given or supplied free of charge.
I'm sorry I got baited into watching this and I was duly disappointed.... Total strawman - there is actually no such thing as "emotional inception theory" so create something imaginary then rail against it. I know it's supposed to be a summary of everything learned from Madmen, but that doesn't make it right. "The Emotional Inception Theory" - (which he just made up) - would use association for "all different types of products"? Why would this necessarily be the case? I suppose since he invented the concept, then it must do. But assuming he means that humans have a subconscious emotional response to events in our lives - then why would those have to conform equally to socks as to cars? If people buy things because of emotional connections I would not expect that to apply to q-tips. If the argument is that in fact we make "rational choices" rather than "emotionally inceptional choices" - then we have another strawman. The point that observers of the marketing industry have been making for decades is that humans aren't often driven by conscious choices - they will buy things for reasons other than they say they buy them for , or profess to buy them for. Nobody says this is irrational. Irrationality is *not* the same as making decisions using subconscious reason. When people buy high status products like a car "because they like the sound system" when in fact it is a status symbol , is not an irrational choice. Conspicuous consumption (Veblen) . Yes obviously people are driven by status - but conspicuous consumption is a specific form of consumerism that involves paying for things that are exclusively designed to serve as symbols of wealth. Not your friend buying Strongbow cider to get pissed (or ironically "Beano", "Hooley Hoo") (minor point - the Madman episode is not called "The Carousel" is called "The Wheel") TLDR = so yes of course Emotional Inception is a myth , because you literally just made it up. And the "Social Connotation Theory". And then "how to choose between these two competing theories". Advertising does work in the way we think it does For those watching its a good lesson to know that just going to Cambridge University in the UK doesn't stop you from being an intellectual snake oil salesman, although it probably works on the undergrads. And this is how a lot of journal papers are written. A really good marketer to watch is Rory Sutherland, who is not only an expert on consumer behaviour, he has worked in the business for decades and has made huge amounts of money for his clients
Glad you understand what Veblen was really writing about. He died in 1929 so he missed the phenomenon of pickup trucks ... so many oversized pickup trucks owned by people who never need to haul anything big, but they will pay large fractions of their income (sometimes more than their total income) to own them.
I think the same. I have a degree in marketing and I doubt remember the terms and theories anymore. Maybe he is pissed madmen teaches better marketing practices than his classes and needs to make sure his students quit using it as references in papers. I could totally be a student of his and write why madmen would be a better investment in time and education for marketing. I might not pass an exam of his but i bet I could make better ads and campaigns than he can. Almost every point he makes seems off and maybe he thinks he is being funny. His jokes are not funny and his defense for most of his points don’t make sense.
I also think strongbow story is missing the point. Seeing a girl bring in 20 bottles of alcohol means crunk despite the choice of drink. If she brought a bottle of wine I would think she thought it was a dinner party or she likes wine and knows everyone doesn’t like wine. If she brings a lot to drink and no party was expected maybe she wanted to get you drunk and have sex but she hated him sober? Idk I hate all of his opinions and his analysis even if he is making it up it doesn’t make sense. But I will say like most ads the promise something that really lets you down after you experience it. I think the title was click bait or this is a joke that is too stupid or funny only to him and like 3 people he knows as a hoax. And Beno and boo boa line I think he was trying to rip off goodwill hunting with George pimleton and be ironic with it? He is definitely putting his credibility on the line. I’d rather learn from your comments than his lectures. Or watch madmen again.
@@jaymccormack6875 I've never watched a full episode of Mad Men, but judging from the bit in this video, the writers appear to understand human emotions vastly better than Jeffrey. I honestly worry that too many (male) undergrads today will fall for this sort of intellectual bilge water. By all means read J. Stuart Mill! -- he was a pioneer in political philosophy and way ahead of his time on women's rights -- and decide for yourself what he would think about UA-cam ads.
9:00 when I was a child, before ever having a girlfriend, I remember distinctly the emotions I felt about songs and movies and images that I had no real-world experience with. Here you say that humans, like dogs, *would require visceral experiential triggers to facilitate response mechanisms and I completely disagree. Humans have relativism, fantasy, symbolism and the like to connect dots (even when the dots aren't necessarily logical in a literal sense to do so). Ill finish the video, but just found the argument at this point going down a road I don't find compelling so far.
Yes! This is why I still feel attached to Sonic the Hedgehog after all these years. I have never even met someone *pretending* to be Sonic but I bought a plush toy of him for $30 last year and I'll probably pay $15 or more to see the movie coming out this month.
A couple of points firstly living in the UK it could have been pretty much any alcohol not just cider. And secondly, there have been times when conspicuous consumption occurred before the industrial revolution such as ancient Rome and medieval England when the king and the aristos got upset the ordinary people were wearing fancy clothes so they made it illegal with the Sumptuary laws. Defined as: "Laws made for the purpose of restraining luxury or extravagance, particularly against inordinate expenditures for apparel, food, furniture, or shoes, etc."[2] Historically, they were intended to regulate and reinforce social hierarchies and morals through restrictions on clothing, food, and luxury expenditures, often depending on a person's social rank.
@@JaneNewAuthor The use of purple dye for royalty's clothes goes back to the Phoenicians (3000 years or more). I have no doubt there were sumptuary laws in Tyre or other Phoenician city-states. It was very important politically for everybody to see who was part of the elite and who wasn't. Just like the red ties and other pieces of clothing are so important for MAGA today.
So, in summary, Advertisers don't implant emotional associations in your head to get you to buy things - That would be insanely hard and make us irrational - so instead, they implant emotional associations in the heads of ALL THE PEOPLE WE KNOW, so we RATIONALLY choose to buy the product, to avoid us getting judged and criticized (irrationally) by everyone else. Genius.
They don't implant emotional associations in everyone's mind, they implant rational associations. If you see me wearing a rolex, you might think that I'm very wealthy, because rolex watches are expensive - you and I know this rationally, and it might make me want to get a rolex in order to show off.
According to Kaplan's theory, advertisers do, in fact, implant emotional associations and ideas in your mind. Rather than irrationally believing that consuming the product will directly elicit an emotion, you rationally consume it as a way to communicate something about yourself to others-specifically, the cultural associations of the product shaped by advertising.
It's all emotional. All the associative stuff is is a desire for emotional belonging. The type of add you see has a limited ability to work based on the product itself. The product is the limiting factor. That is why "we" are increasingly the commodities being sold to ourselves. The pitch is to love yourself by consuming what is self actualizing.
Yeah, signaling your identity based on arbitrary connections made up by advertisers isn't in any way a rational behavior. If we were rational beings we would see this farce for what it is, rather than continuing to play the game mindlessly.
Except there doesn't need to be any association or emotion for advertising to work. Think about product placement. There's no association there, emotional or otherwise. It's just a product in front of your eyeballs. Companies spend millions on it because it works. Also, it's "ad", not "add".
~8:30 quite the opposite, you have the concept flipped exactly backwards. They are not trying to generate a sense of adventure from use of their product they are attaching their product to a preexisting enjoyment of adventure and motorcycles. They don't want you to seek adventure when given their product, they want you to seek their product when considering adventure.
Interesting point, but how is advertising distinct from culture? Isn’t it more accurate to describe advertising as a part of culture such that it can influence and regulate behaviour *but* isn’t by itself the sole way in which this happens? I don’t think advertising is shaped by culture, but rather that the former is a way in which the latter is manifest.
But also sometimes they're trained by advertisers. DeBeers selling diamonds was essentially an association invented and installed into culture from whole cloth by a company advertising that its product should have a particular association.
Exactly. I didn't watch the whole video but it wouldn't surprise me if Jeffrey completely avoided the word "culture." It's really myopic to dance across all these disciplines and yet ignore anthropology.
@@thefuturist8864 Culture came from our nature. Where people lived determines features of our bodies to how they had to behave to survive. Culture develops from that. Advertising is just communication and persuasion. Any animal does that when they say, "You don't want this fight." Ads like their mating call as well.
The irony is that the whole theory of "common knowledge" simply projects emotional inception onto the target audience the consumer has intended to influence by their purchase.
This isn't directly on the topic of this video, but it is a question to Jeffrey Kaplan, or alternatively to anyone who knows either him, his works or his channel enough to answer. Given that according to Russel and Goedel, we can't ever comprheseively reflect upon ourselves, without running into paradoxes. Given, that this insight has been around for at least a bunch of decades by now, there are off course a number of philosophers, that started to debate the question, well, if paradoxes are unavoidable, what do we then do with them. I found ideas to answer that in various writing. Niklas Luhmann basically says, we can't avoid paradoxes so we become religious. (Die Religion der Gesellschaft) Post-structuralist frenchies to my understanding make the case, we can't avoid paradoxes, so we use them to create horror stories and enjoy them (this is not an exact summary of the content of their works, but to my understanding a correct summary of the pragmatic result of their works.) Kafka and Monthy Python's said: we can't avoid Paradoxes, but we can make great and scary jokes about paradoxes. My question now is: What do you Jeffrey Kaplan think is the best way to deal with the fact, that we can't avoid paradox? Is there anything you already published to that question, where I could look up the answer, or do you have any quick replies, that you can squeeze into a youtube-comment? Awe, horror, sordid laughter.... is this an extensive list of possible reactions, or have I missed something? Any recommended texts, that I have missed so far? (I know about Thomas Kuhn, but he is only attempting to answer the question within specifically science)
While I greatly admire Gödel, what he basically shows is that you can't have self-referential logic (in a general way - it's possible if you constrain the system enough, in which case it would be "incomplete"). The best shorthand way to put it is that logic is only dependable if it's used as a hierarchy. The moment you self-reference, you break the hierarchy, which breaks the logic. The "paradox" is that if you add self-reference to your logical system, you necessarily create contradictions. That's a limit of logic/math, not a fundamental theory of reality. We actually run into this a lot in computer programming. Once a system gets complicated enough, it can become very easy to create circular references, and every now and then we have to rewrite a large section of code to move the logic causing circular references outside of the entities trying to use it. Nor is this a problem of consciousness, thought it might seem so. It's easy enough for us to think of computer code doing self-referential things, and even write code that essentially does that - for instance using recursion instead of explicit declarations. We tend to avoid recursion, however, because just a 100 iterations or so can cause the system to run out of memory/threads/etc. Heck, we humans can even think of division by zero. We just can't stick that into a logical system. It works great in a "sarcastic system" though - it is possible to say things that are neither true nor false but contain meaningful ideas that lend understanding to the world. And gosh, it's wonderful that we can do that, otherwise we'd all start sounding like lawyers, as with every sentence we'd have to list all of the exceptions to every single generalization or joke.
Gödel's theorem shows that any formal system of sufficient complexity has certain truths, expressible in the grammar of the system, that are nonetheless unprovable from within that system. Gödel's theorem simply does not address human thought, as our thought processes are not based upon formal systems. The proof of Gödel's theorem is, indeed, evidence of that fact, as it is entirely based upon our ability to construct such a statement in any arbitrary formalism, that is both trivially easy to show to be true, while being unprovable from within that system. The gist of the proof is: In the grammar of any arbitrary formal system "[ x ]" that is sufficiently expressive to state and prove first-order logic, it is always possible to construct a statement such as "This statement is not provable using [ x ]." This statement is clearly true, as proving such a statement within the system would lead to contradiction. And since Gödel provided a way to construct such a statement within any formalism, it provided proof that at a minimum, any formal system meeting the described requirements, is necessarily incomplete, or, much worse, inconsistent. We do not think in formalisms, and therefore our thoughts are in no way bound by them.
An unconvincing argument. Emotional associations are not the same thing as conditioned (Pavlovian) responses. Pavlovian responses are subliminal, whereas emotional associations persuade the conscious mind by suggesting how we will feel if we use a certain product. Advertising during big sporting events is very expensive and so only very big and successful brands can afford to do it. It's simply not true that dishwashing liquid and tissues and soap and toothpaste advertisements don't use association techniques. Trying to signal things about yourself to other people by buying stuff is not rational (it's expensive and inefficient and only really works if everyone agrees on the meaning of a particular product - which they don't).
@@RickJaeger Most advertising is trying to get you to choose one brand rather than another but, to use the apple cider example, any brand of cider is going to send the same 'let's get drunk' message. If all you are trying to do is communicate that message, how do you decide which brand of cider to buy?
Sort of irrelevant to what I said. We choose products that communicate messages about ourselves based on what we think those products communicate, based on contextual usage, just like words and symbols communicate meaning. It's about as rational as language, i.e. as rational to expect that words and symbols more or less mean the same kinds of things to everyone as they do to you, the one using them.
@@peterbreughel4440 A dictionary is just a compilation of what other people say words mean, and you believe them. You do the same with every other carrier of meaning, including shopping choices.
I can't find the words to properly describe how clearly the concepts in this video were communicated and how cogent the final argument was. The analogy to the Einstein/solar eclipse could not be more perfect. Every now and then you come across a video that changes the way you think about something forever. This is that video for me, and while advertising is a relatively nice subject in the grand scheme of life, there are deeper connections to social relationships and self reflection that can be mined as well. This was an absolute masterpiece.
why is the eclipse analogy perfect? it could be substituted by an analogy in literally every area in which mutually exclusve theories capable of predictions exist.
@@shebaloso You're right - it wasn't perfect in terms on finding an apt analogy, because of how easily it could be substituted or applied to any number of other areas. But for me it was beautiful communication because of how it visually crystallizes where the argument gone so far and where it's going next.
@@shebalosoI disagree, it is actually a perfect analogy. I don't think any scientific theory has been as successful in predicting its very own convincing proof as general relativity. Many theories evolve and are modified over time in order to reconcile with new evidence. This is normal and is part of the scientific process. However, general relativity is out of this this world. Concepts that are so abstract, so counter intuitive, that the only reason that we think it is true is because we have verified its predictions time and time again. And it basically started as a thought experiment, without the the necessity to reconcile inconsistencies in physics... Newton's theory was reasonable, explained most observations and was more intuitive, but it could not predict phenomena which hadn't been observed before. My point is this: while the commonly accepted theory of emotional inception theory seems more intuitive, it is unsuccessful in predicting its own proof. Conversely, social connotation theory appears much more successful in doing so, and it's derived from a thought experiment conceived 180 years ago, way before of modern advertising.
@@rokusvandendool4563 I propose cats are predators of mice, you propose that mice are predators of cats. If i am right, encounters between cat and mice lead to mice being dead, if you're right, they lead to cats being dead. We see that cats kill mice when they meet. Therefore my theory is right. How is this analogy any worse than newton vs einstein if what you're trying to convey is simply that theories can yield falsifiable predictions?
Edward Bernays, the guy who wrote the book on Propaganda and “Public Relations” and participated in many successful early advertising campaigns (Lucky Strike Cigarettes for example) Advertising is commercial propaganda, and it works the same way, positive or negative reinforcement of behaviours by any means necessary.
Yes exactly - I think he is not trying to put people "off the scent" exactly , but is trying to "be different" to get his publications out. Another great book is "The Hidden Persuaders" by Vance Packard. It's slight dated but really kick started the analysis of the ad industry
Why can't it be both? People who like coca cola enjoy drinking it by themselves too. People don't smoke different cigarettes when they are by themselves then when they are with friends. So clearly there is an element of advertising having an effect on how we feel about a product. Also if its only rational and not emotional wouldn't we all recognise that the emotional explanation is incorrect? Because we ourselves would know that we choose to buy those products because we want to send that message to other people. Also the idea that you can prove or disapprove an idea with one experiment i think is wrong in many cases. When things are complex you have to look at many aspects and many variables and make multiple tests and possibly multiple levels of tests. Im nkt saying we should do those tests because whos got time for all that. But im saying without them sometimes we should just say its complicated, or say it look like this is an element of whats going on. Im also curious to what extent his experience with the apple cider made him take this path and thereby look to prove what he already believed to be true.
That's how I see it. My thesis advisor was careful to point out that I need to prove that my causal explanation wasn't actually an intervening process. Also I see no mention of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Also, when your career is contingent on developing "new" ideas, there's built in bias for positive results. This guy is taking something mundane and gesturing as if it's a Ted Talk. It's more of a TEDx talk.
@@catsupchutney Personally I think videos like this are good. It creates a discussion and I think its a good starting point. He has thought about is and is brining up intersting arguments. I dont think I could have made my comment with out something substative to comment on.
The book Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman does a good job showing how commercials works as myth and are not able to be argued with by propositions. I’d be curious how chapter 9 of that book sits with this theory in the video.
It’s a joke to prove his inception. He is inceptioning you to believe him if you’re dumb enough so he can get your email and sell it and prove his point. It’s a joke. Or he is the worst phd and making questionable life choices regarding his credibility as a professor.
It’s a joke to prove his inception. He is inceptioning you to believe him if you’re dumb enough so he can get your email and sell it and prove his point. It’s a joke. Or he is the worst phd and making questionable life choices regarding his credibility as a professor.
I think I remember reading some Neil Postman in my AP English class in high school. It would've been the only time my high school adequately prepared me for the MAGA apocalypse.
When you brought up "Pavlovian response" it made me feel all uncomfortable in my chair. Then i remembered the summer Pavlov spent with my family at the lakeside cottage, his bell, his belt.
I don't know, I am pretty sure I saw bedsheet and detergent adverts on tv and on the streets linking the products to lifestyles and celebrities... not sure why you are stating that this is non-existent... Very much undermines your point.
Anyone who wishes to run an ad campaign as a tax write-off should follow this instructive video. "Cider doesn't taste good but Ale does, " is something no one ever seriously said.
They get you to associate their brand with being physically attractive. While not a lot of people will see you wear it, some people still will such as when changing in public changing rooms or in private situations and some people would be affected by how they believe other people will perceive them for using this brand.
Excellent question. I my first thought is that few people see us in our underwear, but the few people who see us in our underwear form opinions about us that we care about a whole lot. People who spend the most time, money, and thought on their underwear are, I would imagine, single and anticipating romantic activity where they want to make a good impression.
@@profjeffreykaplan Yes! I wonder if someone smarter than me could develop an equation that accounted not just for the opinions of the people who see us consuming, but their number (fewer people see us in our underwear than our sneakers), and even their relative importance to us (a lover being more important than a neighbor) to measure a relative value of importance...
There must be non-intimate products that fit this question. The theory does not fall short, if psychology is added - the feeling of wanting to belong could be stronger than the logic that no one will see it. Just for yourself, as one says
@@profjeffreykaplan I would also say you're forgetting that we use consumer choices not only to communicate to others but to communicate to ourselves, to construct a self. Funny enough (and I am embarrassed to admit this) I switched from tighty whities to boxers for the social reason. Because I didn't want anyone at school to make fun of me I wanted to seem like was one of the cool kids you know, nerds wear tighty whities, but cool kids wear boxers. But I switched from boxers to briefs more for, well still the social reason but also a personal one. Well for one, I think I look better in them. And I am anticipating (as men tend to) sexual encounters. But also, I just feel like briefs give a more mature man vibe than boxers. You know what I'm saying like..? I know it's silly but I swear that was my real thought process.
As a fellow philosophy teacher, I appreciate how you build your arguments organically, pointing out what you take from each paper without losing track of the overall picture, leading to the core arguments without falling into tangents. This lecture got me thinking about Bourdieu's theory of aesthetic tastes in his Distinction, I'll be probably integrating aspects of your explanation of social connotative advertising into my class on Bourdieu. Until then, I'll keep recommending your channel to fellow teachers looking for an introduction on specific subjects.
The counter thesis presented in the video, that advertising only works through social connotation and not through emotional influence, is too rigid in its exclusivity. Advertising works on different levels and through different mechanisms that complement each other. Both emotional and rational, social and informational components come into play. The social signalling function of products is an important explanatory approach, but it cannot replace emotional conditioning, cognitive heuristics, mere exposure effects and other well-documented psychological factors. The model presented by Mr Kaplan therefore underestimates the complexity of current research. A dialectically balanced view would recognise that 'emotional inception' is not an all-encompassing principle, but is certainly part of a broad repertoire of advertising effects. At the same time, the social signalling character of products and brands is an equally relevant component. Overall, it makes more sense to assume an interacting network of different psychological principles than to assume a monocausal explanation as the sole 'decoder of myths'. Mr Kaplan argues rhetorically skilfully, but uses one-sided exaggerations and presents the opposing position in an extremely simplified way. He uses rationality as a yardstick to discredit the opposing theory, without admitting that irrational, implicit or semi-conscious behaviour is normal in consumer psychology. From a dialectical point of view, his argumentation seems more like a rhetorical manoeuvre: it is limited to a simplistic juxtaposition of two theories and attempts to present the other as superior by emphasising the implausibility of one theory, rather than conveying a more complex, integrated understanding of advertising impact. On one point, however, I agree - the film 'Inception' has a very poorly written script.
Confirmation bias and dependency on groupthink for approval can cause otherwise logical minds to ignore your wise comment. These two phenomenon explain why Einstein's erroneous Relativity ideas can never be proven wrong, despite the fact that Einstein's work is overtly fallacious.
@@Chicken_Little_Syndrome Sometimes it is truly fascinating how comfortably we can settle into familiar ways of thinking. A little scepticism as a pruning shears can certainly do no harm in allowing new ideas to sprout from time to time. Thanks for the food for thought.
You seem to: 1. Put a lot of weight on the rationality evaluation of the decision. You can’t isolate and evaluate the rationality of such decision in a vacuum, for all people, as the calculation what’s rational and what’s not rational, is entirely dependent on the person perceiving the situation at the moment, their frame of reference and what’s important to them. People like to declare that their political decisions are rational, they often think they act rational, while being scammed or manipulated, etc. 2. You assume that people have to go through a conscious process of decision making, with some internal monologue. That’s not true. Our brain can calculate the end result, and we don’t have to be the witness to this process.
I like the way this video ties into the philosophy of language lectures. It shows how flexible philosophy can be. Basically, association ads try to sell you an identity. Something that interests me is the contrast created by the distinction between information and association ads. When held up against the idea that association ads only really exist to motivate conspicuous consumption, information ads look like the desirable alternatives for shoppers interested in products for some reason other than conspicuous consumption. It's not a big deal that we don't get an exaustive list of all the advertising there is. It matters a little more if it's an expression of scientism. At the very least, I am left wondering, "Why isn't the most rational way to shop by a comprehensive spread sheet of everything on the market described in as perfect detail as possible?" It's not that I need convising that it isn't the best way to do things. It's that the reasons why not are interesting and insightful.
Why do we have 75 different types of toothpaste that are almost all the same only superficially different. But we don't have even 1 affordable apartment that has enough space.
He isnt a salesman and doesn't know anything about selling products to people. He might have wangled a couple of consultancies based on his professorship. Have you seen Rory Sutherland on youtube ? Excellent marketer and expert on consumer behaviour - plus he worked for Ogilvies with some huge clients. Great to watch and really engaging
Back in the 80's there WERE ads for bed sheets and dihahrhhea medicine and deuush! And every ad had a jingle! And everything was better. Though, perhaps, not in NYC. Unless you like getting stabbed in the subway. Seriously, though, I've definitely noticed a shift in how ads have worked over the last few decades. 80's ads were usually a bit goofy, or laughably serious. Modern ads feel invasive somehow; intensely more manipulative and irritating as a result. This is, perhaps, a result of this modernistic, Inception method of advertising.
I was thinking the same thing. Most of the advertisements I’ve seen in the last 10 years are just annoying The advertisements don’t really tell you about the product. Instead, they seem to be mostly images of propaganda. Perhaps this advertising theory of making associations in your mind without actually talking about the product or showing what it does has come from this theory. What I know is that if these advertisements have the inverse effect I am completely repulsed by advertisements to do this. And in fact, have disconnected from the television completely in recent years because of the combination of propaganda on shows and advertisements
I completely agree with both of you. How many times has coca cola told me that they'll make my family gatherings so special, my christmas so unforgettable, compared to pepsi which I dont think i've ever seen an ad for. Wich one do I buy? The one that's on a discount. I guess they've manipulated me to such an extent that I'm buying coke every day thinking that i'm getting water and just don't notice it anymore.
Thank you professor Kaplan! I am currently a undergrad student in philosophy, and your video lectures always help me understand a topic or argument effectively and clearly. I hope one day I could explain things as clearly and entertainingly as you. Btw, best of luck to your new book! Me and my follow friends are very excited!
It's akin to people who wear underground music artists T-shirts. To people who know...there's an "in-crowd", in-the-know mentality and superior artistic taste feeling between the likeminded individuals.
I speak in front of others in meeting and part of my job is to single handedly break down complex subjects to a wider audience. I’m in awe of how securely and solidly you placed all your arguments, the pace, the sequence aaarg, I’m so jealous but I’ll take the consolation prize that I live in a world where this content is just out there for free for me and others to enjoy. Thank you very much
You know you can make timestamp segments for your UA-cam video? This allows, your viewer to be able to see which area in the video Each point of presentation you’re trying to display. It’s really sophisticated stuff. You should try it.
First off, i'd like to tell you how much of my life is indebted to you. When i was a freshman studying law, i couldn't fathom how much the course s*cked. Memorizing boring laws and shady concepts was not my groove. But, one day, a youtube thumbnail popped my atention. It was a playlist of lectures on 'Legal Positivism according to The Concept of Law'. The rest is pure magic. Those classes were clear yet highly interesting. After finishing the playlist i immediately ordered The Concept of Law and read it. But reading it prompted me to read The Province of Jurisprudence Determined, then The Pure Theory of Law, which prompted me to read General Theory of Law and State, which prompted me to read x, y, z and so on. After many books and countless essays, articles and papers (and some published works myself), i look back to those youtube videos and think where i would be if it were not for your unique way of teaching in an interesting way. Going to the point: i am working on an essay about legal duties, legal rules and sanctions. I aim to prove that legal rules (even primary rules) need not a sanction, and that legal systems could be formed of secondary rules and primary rules of conduct without ever needing a sanction in the system. However, i'm an ex-Kelsenian of sorts, and though i now believe standards of conduct precede the sanctions applied when the standards are broken, there is still an exception which bugs me. How can we explain ex post facto laws? I've not read anything about those in either Hart, MacCormick or Raz, and they seem to be a challenge to our notion of primary rules. How can we explain a sanction being imposed for a person who commited a conduct which, at the time of the conduct, did not breach any rule? This is very easily explained by Kelsen's theory (much like sanctions being applied to the family or relatives of criminals), but i can't think of a Hartian explanation for this phenomenom. I've searched google scholar and a few databases but all i've found is Hart's Fable and Dworkin's criticism of Hart's notion of discretion. Maybe if you know a work on this you'd kindly let me know, since this is a major impediment on my essay's thesis? Many thanks in advance
I disagree with many parts of this, but to be brief : Coca Cola advertises on TV during the Super Bowl, because they can afford it, and men buy Coke. The parent company of Palmolive can't, and men don't*. *Exceptions, more other stuff. Assume I am not an idiot, please. Even the bedsheets thing is wrong. White Sale ads, every year, regular as clockwork. Tugging at emotional responses is the Slinky of advertising. You showed us how it moves down stairs. It was fun. Thanks.
I guess being un-social makes most of this irrelevant to some of us. I never buy *anything* based on brand name recognition and hardly ever even based on the appearance of a thing -- unless it's a thing for which its appearance makes a difference to me. For example, I just bought pretty much the most generic car in existence based on comfort, maneuverability, utility, gas mileage, reliability and price. And I didn't look at a single advertisement in the process. (I hardly ever consume media where I see or hear any relevant ads.)
Brand strategist and agency CSO with 20 years experience here. This is a fairly classic distinction between “hedonic goods” and “positional goods” (read Spent: The Evolutionary Psychology of Consumer Behavior by Geoffrey Miller. Hedonic goods are like sheets and dish soap and can be marketed based on intrinsic benefits. Positional goods exist to telegraph personality traits, values, and social group allegiances in order to raise the status of a consumer to audiences they themselves are trying to gain favor with. That’s why “being seen to be seen” by advertising on the Super Bowl is totally why it’s worth spending millions of dollars on the ad buy. (And it’s not just a great reach vehicle, but is itself a form of costly signaling or conspicuous waste like a peacock’s tail or a Rolex proving the fitness of the brand.) Anywho. In my practice I identify rational (persuasion), behavioral (conditioning), and social (identity, meaning, and purpose) based levers for behavior change. Great vid for beginning to make those distinctions.
"She showed up with a 24 pack of alcohol because she wanted to communicate to us that she wanted to party." I don't think so. She showed up with a 24 pack of alcohol simply because she wanted to party, and then you INFERRED that she wanted to party. When my friend breaks his leg and buys a pair of crutches, he's not "trying to communicate to me that he's disabled," right?
But your friends decision to get crutches isn't exactly voluntary, is it? He has to get crutches because he broke his leg. The female friend, I assume, brought the drinks because she wanted to bring the drinks, not because she had to?
excuse me what? are you saying she just wanted to party on her own and not necessarily communicate anything? because the girl is the one who showed up to his friends with alcohol, not the the other way around.
@@MissWhiskers The female friend did in fact have to bring the drinks, because she wanted to get crunk. She couldn't exactly show up with a bag of salad and get crunk.
ironically, "inference" is a major theme in semantics. 😂 before you can buy crutches, you have to know what they are. if you don't, and nobody tells you, then you might buy a wheelchair instead. that's actually a great example of what advertising does: "so, you're saying if I put sticks under my arms, I'll be able to get around easier? how would that even work? I don't know anyone who would suggest that, and I've never seen it, so you must be trying to scam me! next you'll be trying to sell me one of those 'vaccines' - but I know better!"
Advertising works as a language. Together, all advertising creates a world of connotations where each connotation reinforces the others. In this world, we, the targets of advertising, connote, therefore we are. While we may not buy particular products, we do conform to consumption patterns to a large degree to confirm the connotations that have been constructed for us and that on some level we find valuable.
Nope. The "Social Connotation Theory" is also an "Appeal to Emotion" not an "Appeal to logic". I realize it's hard to fully flesh out a concept like this in 20min, that said I find most academics to be long winded story tellers with little in way of real insight also ineffective in the real world. The comparison to the movie is pointless. A discussion about Advertising without mention of Edward Bernays is incomplete. Not convinced, in fact the opposite. I had a hard time watching this video because of the jump cuts, so I closed my eyes. You have only convinced me that people are irrational story tellers.
Wow, nice to know someone else is talking about Edward Bernays (I mean in a comment, like yours). I think this video was more about product advertisement, like in the show "Mad Men". I guess a small mention would've been nice but, this Bernays guy was more focused on actual propaganda and psychological warfare than on capitalist affairs like the advertising panorama in a free market, which, again, is what I would say this video was about. Just saying, advertising exists outside of propagandistic interests, so maybe no need to mention "the godfather of propaganda" here. That said, no offense, but I think your comment is biased, and you affirmed this by saying "I find most academics to just be storytellers". Don't be so pessimistic, that is a BIG generalization! Also, think about it this way: this video promotes discourse in those areas that are of your interest, and I got to see your comment more or less because of that, which is good, because I can agree that this person could be of interest in this topic as well, but for the rest... I hope you gain a better outlook on others. I have trust issues too, though, I get it :P Have a wonderful rest of your life, my fellow sufferer!
@@ritishify I appreciate your reply and even tone. I agree, I am biased but I also think we are all biased and it's part of being human, to see it otherwise is to ignore the operating system we humans function under. I can also agree I made a generalization. I don't think it's pessimistic, it just applies more to certain areas of study. I do not think advertising exists outside of propagandistic interests, it seems pretty clear to me the two are joined at the hip, engaging in intercourse at times. We have proof. If you are familiar with Bernays then you must be familiar with the story about getting women to smoke. Peace.
@@yanapostolides601 Well, I suppose there are some discrepancies in our views, but it's only mainly about definitions. Therefore, I have to say that what you say is very much fair enough! I don't recall this story about getting women to smoke, but as I said, I understand why you say that these two concepts are basically the same. Again, fair enough, I guess, but still pessimistic outlook, in my view. I guess we could agree to disagree on these smaller observations, I would still suggest you revisit the idea of not generalizing so much, although I know, it might be justified in some instances, like when people say "ACAB" or that "all politicians are liars". Indeed, unfortunately, it is true in many cases. But we can agree on the view that advertising is a very powerful tool. I do like to say that marketing must be one of the most "evil" businesses out there, hahah... Interesting time to be alive, this "information age". I don't think there's need to discuss the matter any further either. Just saying, don't be mad at such things. So yeah, peace, man✌ We'll see what the future awaits, just sit back and enjoy the shit show and this joke that is our reality...
@@ritishify Those chords do resonate with me. I think your observations are good and your advice sound, so I'll do my best and not be so hard on the academics. (When it comes to politicians the gloves are off! Kidding.) I'm lucky, I've known some pretty awesome police, who saved my life literally also with wisdom pointing me in the right direction. Thank you.
@@yanapostolides601 It's a pleasure :) The way I think makes me happy and I want others to feel the same, I just hope I'm right hehe only time will tell. Farewell✌
8:41 yes that's exactly how movies and entertainment works. we root for the hero even though he's not real. it's the same reason celebrities and sports stars are giant billboards for advertisers and why sports team and advertising go hand in hand. 11:29 this is just then flip side of the same coin. advertising uses both. coco cola for one uses emotional inception theory. it uses childhood advertising nostalgia to cement it's position as the number one choice for adults. Disney the same
25:20 If I’m not mistaken, Saito ends up in the fourth level because he dies in the third; dying under sedation in Inception drops you into Limbo. I think it’s more confusing that there are three implicit levels, and that hooking into the dream machine on level 3 automatically takes you to Limbo.
Do they? From what I've seen, all such ads show blue ink being poured on said pad. I'd have classified them as "factual" ads-ads that give you hard facts about the product and expect to convince you logically and rationally-rather than as aspirational. On a possibly related note, of the hundreds of varieties of nearly-identical children's toothpaste at a Walmart Superstore, my niece wanted the exact same brand that Peppa Pig uses. (I didn't know which brand that was, so I bought her the cheapest one and lied to her.)
@nHans Hey! Thanks for your reply! In Poland where I live, ads for menstrual products are definitely association ads. They often show women in extreme sports, women that are strong and independent and not at all bothered by their period. They sell you a feeling, a feeling of security. So in my opinion, professor Kaplan's conclusion that association ads are only present in advertising of products that others see us use is wrong. I believe that emotional inception theory must be at least sometimes right!
Anyone who thinks there are no connotations in regards to laundry detergents or dish soaps hasn't heard a bunch of moms talking while waiting for their kids (sports practice, dance classes, etc.). It's ridiculous, but it's there.
The solution to advertising is to live by the following rule: NEVER BUY A PRODUCT YOU HAVE SEEN ADVERTIZED. Ever. (To address comments below: The criterion for 'advertising' is whether you sought out the information, as in googling for a product, or going to a store and browsing, or whether it was pushed on you against your will)
Even putting out your product on display in a store, or a description in a online store is a sort of advertisement, so good luck finding anything to buy..
I usually do this. The exception is, if you need to buy a car, it's impossible to buy a make that you have never seen advertised, unless you live in the US and buy a Lada or something.
I try to live this but I admit it's actually difficult in some cases. Let's say you want to buy tooth paste and are facing a huge wall of dozens of products. What is your choice? Chances are that you have a slight lean towards that one brand you are familiar with. You heard it somewhere. It has a small edge vs. all the other nameless alternatives. Not saying it's going to result in 100% hit rate but there is definitely an effect. You have to consciously not buy it. TL;DR: ads also make you familiar with brands or products you when a buying decision comes up the have a small edge vs the other choices, maybe a little but more trust simply because they look more familiar.
Yes, I have seen ads for bedsheets, and LOADS of ads for pillows. I suppose the theory in some form could still apply as luxurious home goods are things we can brag about to our friends to indicate how well we're doing financially. Still, I think we buy quite a few things based on "the feels" through entities like Amazon where no one will see us make the purchase and no one outside our home will ever know what we purchased.
Also: Einstein's General Theory of Relativity doesn't conflict with Newton's law of gravitation. It explains the thing. In fact, you can derive Newton's law from Einstein's theory. You just need to account for some facts we've discovered about the relationship between space and time.
I wasn't sure I was going to like this video, but I'm impressed that you went against the prevailing theory of advertising with a much more intelligent and rational view. Although I have to take exception that the advertiser's job is "easy". They can't just say that this product will be cool among your friends and peers--they have to *convince you* that that's the case. And you kind of recognize it when you say that lots of people need to hold the same idea that the ad presents. The idea needs to become a social meme of sorts that many people know about, in order for people to believe the idea presented in the ad. Another point is that your Social Connotation theory only applies to certain types of ads, and not all ads. Almost everyone seems to forget the most basic and important function of advertising: to let the consumer know that the product or that particular brand of the product exists to be purchased. Why would you even want to buy say, a doorcam or a Minions plushy toy if you don't even know about them? Sure you might accidentally stumble across them at the store, but that's not a reliable way to run a business. Sure, there's word of mouth, but somebody somewhere has to find out about it in some way before they can tell others about it.
Books do have that association in our society now. There exist articles, blogs, and social media accounts that tell you what books are trendy to carry around.
The Newtonian Dynamics vs Relativistic Dynamics dichotomy is misguided. Einstein would never have claimed Newton was wrong, and in fact when one launches a satellite, builds a building, calculates the trajectory of a projectile, or the flight dynamics of an aircraft, they use Newtonian dynamics. The difference between Newton and Einstein is the range of applicability. Newtonian dynamics are perfectly fine when velocities are small compared to the speed of light (v
Great videos! Thank you. I'm not a physicist, but I seemed to remember that in Newtonian physics light would bend as well. Just not as much. So I asked Llama 3.2 Sometimes these large language models make stuff up or otherwise don't get stuff right, so it might be worthwhile talking to a physicist just to check. I think light bends in both theories But the extent to which it bends differs. Take it away, Llama 3.2: In Newtonian physics, massive gravitational bodies can indeed bend the path of light. Since light has energy and momentum, it is affected by gravity, just like massive objects. However, the Newtonian prediction for the bending of light differs from the predictions of general relativity. According to Newtonian physics, the bending of light is half the value predicted by general relativity. General relativity, introduced by Albert Einstein in 1915, revolutionized our understanding of gravity and its effects on spacetime. The theory predicts that massive objects warp spacetime, causing nearby objects, including light, to follow curved trajectories. While Newtonian physics can account for the bending of light, general relativity provides a more accurate and comprehensive explanation of this phenomenon, known as gravitational lensing.
I think ads for products like laundry detergent and Q-Tips contain tons of emotional association. Perhaps you've just never watched these sort of ads that show on cable in the middle of the day? Lots of products show cartoon teddy bears or smiling babies to link those warm, fuzzy feelings to the brand iconography. Speaking of icons and such, how did you manage to make this entire video without once using the word 'semiotic'? Was that deliberate? Still, a pretty good video overall, I thought. I'm especially impressed by the quality of this comments section, tho. It's like virtually nothing I've ever seen on YT before. All these erudite motherf&ckers and sh&t. Wtf? I love it. ;%)
I don't think this necessarily holds true for a similar situation as with Pavlov. For example, food advertising. People have a lot of choices when it comes to satisfying hunger. Advertisers help people associate their hunger and its satisfaction with particular food products. I don't think people eat things all the time to be associated with others, but often do so for pleasure and satisfaction of their own. If you see a juicy hamburger on tv, and you are hungry, then you might be more likely to purchase the hamburger. And if you are more likely to purchase the burger once, for the first time, you will be more likely to purchase again when you are hungry again. I notice a lot of pizza ads during football games -- the ads show a cheesy slice being pulled from the rest of the pie, and it looks incredibly delicious. The ads accentuate my hunger drive, and then quickly offer the solution: buy the pizza that is tempting you. Has nothing to do with Peyton Manning or any other high status celebrity egging me on.
When I think of John Stuart Mill, I think of his marketplace of ideas. The marketplace of ideas being a metaphor for free expression and civic engagement in a democracy. He used it to argue against censorship. The metaphor compares the competition of ideas in a free market to the process by which the truth emerges. It assumes that when the public can freely debate issues, the best ideas will be heard and spread. The marketplace of ideas holds that the truth will emerge from the competition of ideas in free, transparent public discourse and concludes that ideas and ideologies will be culled according to their superiority or inferiority and widespread acceptance among the population. The concept suggests that just as goods and services compete in a market, ideas should also compete for acceptance and validation among the public. But truth be told, the marketplace of ideas in the political arena, could also lead to the rise of a Hitler. The marketplace idea would suggest that people would see through a Hitler, because by acting rationally, they should see the flaws in the hateful rhetoric he espouses. Critics argue the opposite: that this approach can be problematic when dealing with manipulative or hateful rhetoric that can easily sway certain audiences, potentially undermining the "marketplace" concept in practice. And on UA-cam currently, there is a rise of people using AI to produce English-translations of Hitler's speeches in his own voice, and these translations are rising in popularity, as some viewers are starting to claim Hitler made sense and suggest that the public was being kept from hearing his "wonderful" ideas for years. Which suggests that decisional choice rationality gives way to emotions powered by insecurity, fears, and groupthink, in which groups put unanimous agreements ahead of problem solving. Thus instead of being rational, people choose an already suggested course of action, and then rationalize it after the fact.
"In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles; all that was directly lived has become mere representation."
A great many psychological events in the real world have multiple causes. Some ads might work by emotional inception, some might work by social identification, some might work by simple brand awareness, and most ads likely work by employing all three effects at the same time. The independent variable in a laboratory experiment is carefully designed to try to isolate only a single psychological effect (often with questionable success). People wanting to use psychological phenomena in the real world, like advertisers, don't have to limit themselves to a single one.
The philosophy in this video was excellent as always, well structured and argued. I do think it suffered for a lack of a dedicated section on the different types of advertising and how they work. This has led to confusion in the comments section. Emotional suggestibility does play a large role in a wide variety of advertisements. Everything from the colour palette, the fonts used, background music, the choice of actors, the choice of the accent of actors etc., all can play the dual roles of communicating information AND conditioning the potential customer on a more subconscious level. I do agree with the thesis of the video that the former is more powerful. For example, an advert for bedding (they do exist!) may use classical music, a soft relaxing voice over, muted or warm colours to invoke comfort, luxury. Attractive actors in expensive houses enjoying their new bedding. Multiple things are happening in this advert, all the individual choices made by the advertisers contribute to the effect. The advertisement induces a mood where the viewer will consider how much they value a comfortable night's sleep, while also communicating the idea that this is a luxury brand that can be relied upon to provide a high quality product. Companies are always yapping on about their "brand" and their "values". The purpose of much advertising is to communicate to the viewer that this company cares about these things, and their product can be expected to reflect that. I'd argue that this type of advertising is better understood under the same paradigm lefthand Social Connotation Theory. Which is to say, looking at the relationship between the advertiser and the customer as chiefly operating under assumptions of rationality as opposed to pure emotion. In reality, any ad will utilise a combination of both. Irrational association may prime us, it may make us more suggestable in the moment, but for most advertising this is the set up for a rational communication of information (true or false) that the target of the ad is expected to act upon. If the video had one flaw I'd say it was in focusing on too few examples of advertising and thereby lacking a broader context of a theory of advertising in which to couch the two competing theories explored.
this dude was telling me about this conversation he had with his grandson, but i swear i heard it before, point for point, word for word, then i heard it again on morning radio. it was an ad. i don't even think my friend was lying. he just subconsciously recreated it with his gson who may have also heard and mostly forgot it. this is knowledge, kinda common, but neither are aware that even they know yet alone the other. a lot of stuff slips into our minds without us paying attention. if you never heard something, it sounds so foriegn your mind cannot process it, but you hear something many times before it even makes your radar. sometimes it seems to come to you all at once as your own idea, so you think. this also doesn't contradict any theory presented here. it is another layer of nuance. once you do become aware of the idea it seems to be everywhere. the more you hear something conciously you may not fully accept at first, the more true it styarts to seem. that's how the neocons did it, and they won. they're fascists now, because they did so well, they ain't even gotta fool us nmo more, just kick us in the heads
Youve missed the main technique of successful advertising. It is presenting a solution to a "problem". The problem may be not even be known by the subject, hence you get educative advertising...teaching the audience about the "problem" they have. There are levels of this process, ultimately arriving at a version of the ad that says, "you know what the problem is, you know where the solutions are, here's why ours is best". The last bit of this last step is where you often find the emotional association bit.
I saw one video of this guy (the mathematics paradox one) and I instantly subscribed to the channel. Now I’m watching the second one (this one) and I’m enabling all notifications! Good job! 👍
Both miss something qualitative. If an ad promotes a specific image and I decide it's ridiculous, it means I've evaluated it qualitatively. It works the same way if I like the image. Whatever I want to signal to others, first, I have to decide that I agree with the conclusion of the ad. With that, the signaling part is no longer essential because I have to deal with the ad on its own merit either way. I do believe that signaling boosts it, though.
I'm not fully convinced people are rational beings. We just *like* to think we are. Zoe Bee has an amazing video on how facts in fact do care about our feelings. We make judgements and decisions based on instincts and emotions, then rationalize them. So the appeal to that idea of our rationality could be considered emotional manipulation. This is not meant to be a callout, just finding it funny and ironic that you're appealing to that idea while saying "oh no, don't worry, advertising doesn't emotionally manipulate us"!
The problem with using the social connotation theory to explain our response to advertising as rational behavior, is that, if that was the case, there would be no need to explain it. We would all know fully well, and alternative theories wouldn't even exist. So, the social connotation theory may be correct, but it may not mean that our responses are rational. Also, there's a very good chance that we're more emotional about how we are seen, and more rational about private and practical matters. That would pretty much wipe out the difference between the two theories.
Worthwhile reading, Vance Packard's books from the late '50s and early '60s. As long as conspicuous consumption is on the table, Packard's "The Waste makers", The Status Seekers", "The Pyramid Climbers" and "The Hidden Persuaders" offer insights from the inception of Madison Avenue and the Corporatocracy. As a real estate guy, I can verify that people spend large amounts of money in order to buy too much house, but with higher status.
19:40 That prediction is not plausible at all. When you look at an ad at the top of search results, you're paying attention and looking for the kind of information you get from a good search result. That's the kind of circumstance where inception is least likely to be effective. Just because (by hypothesis) association ads work by inception, it doesn't follow that everyone is always open to inception. Inception (if it happens at all) happens best when we've left the brain door standing open and unguarded. That ain't when we're actively searching for specific information about the product in question. Likewise, emotional inception (given, by hypothesis, that it's successfully injected) isn't going to be equally effective at motivating sales of all products. No one is particularly emotional about Q-tips, and when they are it's anxiety about discomfort or whatever: not a useful emotion to implant some of as a way of priming the pump.
Appreciate the new video, and would suggest looking into the work of marketing researchers like Byron Sharp and educators / practitioners including Mark Ritson, Tom Roach, Karen Nelson- Field, Jenni Romanuk and others. Their work has been vetted by extensive studies and is worth examining in light of the arguments presented here.
I think that red bull advertises with extreme sports because it reaches their target demographic of probably 16 to 32 year olds less expensively than television advertising, so they are just picking something that their target demographic already watches and then paying the event organizers/"atheletes" in order to have their target markets eyes on their product. It's not more complicated than that. Individuals may imagine that buying a red bull associates themselves with extreme sports but I always bought red bull at nigh clubs or grocery stores simply for the taste, and I liked the picture on the can, although I might be reminded of it based on a commercial and then that way I might buy more product than I would if I had not been reminded. It also depends on the product if it is a food that is much different than a status symbol type purchase such as a car. If it is a status symbol I think it follows the "Status Symbol" theory which is basically similar to your "connotation" theory. Actually I think food can also be a status symbol purchase, but ultimately your "social connotation theory" is just rewording STATUS SYMBOL. Also you shouldn't base your theories off of TV shows and movies because those things only seem realistic to children.
Strongbow is just cheap, mate. It doesn’t mean “wild partying” in itself, it means the purchaser is poorer than you and can’t afford bottles of cask conditioned ale by the crate. _All_ large crates of alcohol means “wild partying”. Nothing to do with whether it’s Strongbow or Abbott Ale.
But with Facebook and other social media, we can now tell a whole bunch of people about our bedsheets experience. Which means we are able to let them "see" us using those sheets. This can apply to nearly all the stuff we buy. Think of taking selfies or the idiotic practice of taking pictures of the food we order at a restaurant. I think many people have turned themselves into ads.
You left out an essential factor of successful advertising. One of the first lessons in sales is that people don't buy what they need, they buy what they want. Therefore, the object of an advertising campaign is to get the target to believe the lie, "It is solely my idea that I want that product enough to spend my money on it." I call it a lie, because the wanting of it was generated by the advertising. The advertiser must push the target into the right brain where our feelings live in order to accomplish this. The left brain is where logic and delayed gratification live; it cannot tell or believe a lie, because lies do not make sense. The right brain will willingly tell or believe a lie so long as it brings instant gratification. To do this, various propaganda devices are used. When my children were small, I taught them to recognize the most widely used propaganda devices. When they watched tv ads aimed at children, they would gleefully yell out the devises being used rather than be taken in by them. Those ads failed to influence them into wanting the sugary cereals or the silly toys. When they did want something, that wanting was self-generated. If elementary schools taught children to recognize those manipulative devises, perhaps they would all grow up to be critical thinkers, and we'd all be better off. Matilda Paxton: Author, How To Peace, Out Of The Frying Pan: Into The Meadow, and 1=0.
Where's the beef? Okay then. Burger joints sell burgers yet the question suddenly becomes, 'Do they?' No. That doesn't work. The ad must have referred to quantity. The quantity that hits one right between the buns. We're not talking quarterly stock holder meetings so get your mind out of the gutter! I remember telling my friend in the fall of 1994 while on his sailboat, he was excited about his digital Satelite dish and the plethora of channels, I said, in the future, less channels will far more preferable, suited your individual tastes, where programs are like candies in a bag. The kicker though that will make thar possible will be the custom tailored ads. The results of which will involve any number of shoppers in the same aisle at once, spying for laundry detergent. These shoppers may only share one basic yet obvious, thing in common, but what is unknown to each is the fact that the ads they watched varied considerably. Proctor and Gamble had tailored their ads to the point that brand loyalty was a foregone conclusion. Each shopper followed their natural impulse, Tide may just been something so innocuous, so simple, but so too was the insights employed by the advertising folk. Shotguns vs the subtle cues that allowed one to almost feel 'known'. Sound familiar? Then I said, now imagine that at every angle. Everyone would feel appreciated and just maybe, right with the world. He looked at me and said, Man...! When did you get so deep?
Before watching, generally advertisements are more about keeping a product in your forbrain. There is no need for Coca-Cola to get new customers, when you're standing in front of a case full of 40 different drinks you are FAMILIAR with cola. You either don't want to drink something you've not had before or you have a hard time deciding and go with what you perceive as the most popular. If you like 2 things, the one you know better will be safer. You can't be forced to feel emotion but you can be forced to connect a lot of your life's visual input to the product. ‐--- Afterwards: it only got touched on a couple times but it easily folds into the connotation theory. Recency bias wouldn't be as powerful as it is if the advertisement has to create an emotional connection while Coca-Cola has positioned themselves as being everywhere and "the old reliable" even though almost all other soft drinks have recipes that are measured by the thousands of pounds making thme just as stable a choice. Some ads that just remind you of the product existing and are informative give off the recency bias vibe.
I disagree with a lot of this because I do not see the distinction between the two theories. They seem like exactly the same theory to me, merely expressed in slightly different ways. From the video, it seems like the distinction is "common knowledge", but "common knowledge"...isn't. Instead, "common knowledge" is the *assumption/perception* of common knowledge. There is no real distinction between the super bowl ad example and the pop up ad example; in either case, I do not know for sure if the other person/people I'm modeling for have seen the ad. And so, in either case, I can proceed as though everyone has seen it, or proceed as though no one has seen it. But a fundamental issue, here, is that people also self-model. That is: they do things in a certain way to perceive themselves in a certain way, despite knowing that they're doing it (e.g. manifesting). In the case of "Emotional Inception Theory", this would be "monkey see monkey do"; i.e. imagining yourself as the person riding the motorbike. In the case of "Social Connotation Theory", this would imply that there is always common knowledge in any interaction between me and myself.
Three rules to business success: 1. Create a need ... then fill it. 2. Sell the sizzle ... not the steak. 3. Customers will find many reasons not to make a purchase. What you need to do, is crush 'every single' objection they have. Then they have no choice ... they have to buy.
re: gravity transfer between dreams. diegetic mechanisms may be misunderstood or described incompletely by characters. [if interpreted this way, it makes the potential for worldbuilding much more interesting.] for example, it could be that gravity is additive past a certain threshold. of course, it could just be for the sake of narrative convenience and technical feasibility; if we said that movies had to both 1) be cool and 2) completely internally consistent, we would get many fewer cool movies. nolan has a lot of things hiding under the surface in his films; eg, love as a physical constant in interstellar is r-worded, but 2 possibilities are that 1) diegetically is actually is a mechanism of physical law and 2) it's a metafictional premise (eg, communicating that melodrama and traditional hollywood tropes are ridiculous and stupid), rather than diegetically sensical. after all, matt damon's astronaut character talks about the conflict between the imperative of preserving the self, vs the goal of preservation of the collective; and that love is commonly used as a narrative reason to optimize for the family at the cost of fucking society/the world (eg fast and furious). the man goes out of his way to make the sound mixing in his movies terrible, juxtaposed with the brilliant technicality in the rest of his productions. also, leo might only have had access to the dream equipment via the large corporation. (i don't know if this is accurate.)
Counter argument: Menstrual pad ads. They are rerely informational, and often focus on how it feels. That is not the kind of ad that would be explained by signaling. I argue that advertisement can create emotions, but not the kind of emotions that association ads would be attempting to inspire according to emotional inception. I also argue that drawing the line at rational vs irrational is not correct. And I think the commentary about the plot of the movie is for engagement farming. Note: I have completed the video when I write this comment.
No, you're completely wrong here. After seeing Don's ad, I DO want to buy a projector! You may have a point about an additional way to manipulate people, and that MAY be effective. But that doesn't negate the first way that was presented. There is no rational reason to think its one OR the other. Both can be true. Why even imagine the one negates the other? That's irrational.
Search ads are always perfectly rational because the user is looking for something which ideally matches the search keywords. If the search ad is more interesting to the user than anything else on the screen before they start scrolling down and to possibly next pages, then it gets clicked on, Google gets paid, and the advertiser gets to pitch to their potential customer. Never emotional, never conditioning; always connected from the idea expressed by the search terms to the product described in the ad's call to action.
As a former EA to the Chief Creative Officer at a top NYC ad agency, I get you and appreciate your pov. That being said, I gotta know - do you write backwards or just flip the video in editing?
That was a fun ride ... the relativity reference was pretty shallow and altogether unnecessary, but inception blast was a bullseye. Good points and made well about ads, I'm convinced ... although I wasn't aware there was some sort of academic argument about advertising theory. Seems pretty obvious what an ad is trying to do to you most of the time if you just watch it. What's funny is how often association ads get the tone wrong and just look like they're co-opting something that was subculture 2 years ago, or something like that. I don't know if other people think about this shit while watching ads, but I'm no genius and it's clear as day to me...
DiCaprio’s character required his team to have access to the person while he or she was sleeping. They couldn’t just pick and choose anyone they please and plant ideas in their heads to stop wars or have him pardoned at will. Also, you present the way people think advertising works in the worst kind of way. I don’t think anyone believes advertising causes a Pavlovian response to mindlessly do something without any choice in the matter. You have good videos with solid arguments but sadly this is an exception.
Right. And maybe destroying one big corporate conglomerate by a psyop is a more efficient use of that team's resources than stopping the latest war in Syria ... I sense that Mr Kaplan wants us to believe it is USELESS TO RESIST corporate power.
Counterpoint: Consumers are making these social connotations for emotional reasons: feeling included, projecting an image of themselves that feels good on different levels, a feeling of respect, peak experiences, etc. There is a false dichotomy being presented here, when both are right, and not mutually exclusive. It's a dialectic thing, where the synthesis allows both strategies to create a more effective gestalt.
15:54 As a being that always chooses things other people don't know, I know the lack of information the other being has is just as powerful as what you describe. The more odd my pick is (without being crazy) the more engagement I get. If I show up to a party with a drink nobody knows everybody will question my pick and will want to try it if offered. It is the power of the unknown.
This video ends with an ad showing some sincere and comfortable collegiate looking dude in a book-lined room with something to sell. Associative indeed !
Is there something to be said with your Pavlovian perspective where advertisers ARE giving you something? With the dogs example, the dogs get satiated with the food correlated to the bell, but the food brings excitement and that (along with the need to eat) may be a driver of the behavior. A thought I had is that humans can get the excitement, happiness, or feeling of belongingness through ads without being given something physical, the story and emotional connection of the ad may be enough to drive the decision to buy. Just a thought, it may be flawed but curious to see what response anyone has :)
A model/theory doesn't exist in vacuum, it's contextual. Newton's gravity theory works in 99% of the observable universe, in everyday life. Einstein's model of gravity works in that other 1% of the observable universe, where Newton's theory is less precise. But both theories fail trying to predict behavior of things at quantum level (there is a growing body of data and observations that validate this). So it doesn't mean that Einstein theory works and Newton doesn't. They are "correct" theories in their specific contexts. (just as the higher-spin theory is "more correct" in the context of quantum physics, where Newton's and/or Einstein's theories would appear "wrong", lees correct) Whenever a theory attempts to make predictions about human behavior, but takes into account only one perspective (rational or emotional), it fails. The classic example is "game theory", has been widely used in many areas. It works well in many situations, but it cannot predict all human interactions
Okay, admit that this entire video is just a critique of Inception disguised so that your comments don't enrage the film's entire fandom.
I don't know how easy that fandom is to enrage, but I for one quite liked the movie and still recognize that it doesn't make sense on any level.
Or an ad for his book
superfan here who isn't enraged but quite perturbed! and thankful someone else noticed and made me laugh about it!!!
This man knows nothing of Inception! 🧐 I will, however, buy his book and display it prominently on my shelf, so that people will see it and think I'm smart.
yeah, he couldn't help himself in inserting irrelevant (to the topic) comments about the film's loopholes.
i did enjoy Inception but i thought Tenet was ridiculous.
i think the "why no gravity on the 3rd(?) level" can be explained by 'different dreamer' - that dreamer was not feeling the lack of gravity since he was now in someone else's dreamscape.
(it's really funny that the top comment on this video is NOT related to the video subject :D - kinda makes the true intention of the video shine through !!)
I remember once meeting Pavlov on a bar! He did leave quite quickly though - a bicycle rang the bell outside and the jumped off of his chair saying " I have to feed the dog!!!"
r/angryupvote
@@jsalsman r/lostredditors
@@christianadler1297 guilty as charged
The bell was actually controlling him and not really the dogs
Classic 😂😂😂😂😂
💚
As an undergraduate university student, this video is a great advertisement for Strongbow
Of course. Strongbow is now publicly associated with being sophisticated and philosophically minded. Naturally, students would like their friends to think of them in this way.
Lol @@yoramgt
It's not half as bad as the video makes out either.
Strongbow is a vile way to get drunk. I had a brief encounter with it fifty years ago and have never touched cider since.
Very interesting topic, although i will make some remarks.
1. The dichotomy rational vs irrational seems to me a very clear double standard. Mr Kaplan assumes irrationality because emotional inception would be akin to manipulation, yielding an "uninformed" purchase, while social connotation would be rational because it would yield a particular predictable outcome involving how we are socially perceived. The thing is that both theories assume the following: product A is associated to B, therefore buying A yields C. In the first one C would be the "emotion" B itself, while in the second one C would be the social perception of B. The problem with calling social connotation theory rational is that you are assuming the association between A and B, which is the entire point of the emotional inception theory... If you ASSUME that cool and rich people use nike AND that other people make this assumption too, then buying the product is rational if that is what you're trying to convey. But if you assume that cool and rich people use nike, then buying the product would also be rational under the emotional inception theory.
2. The notion that emotional theory should be everywhere if it were true makes no sense, because it would imply that every single kind of ad would be able to exert the same influence be equally capable of proposing an association to the consumer. This is obviously not the case, and it cannot even be isolated as a variable. The difference between a pizza flyer left in a door and a nike ad superbowl goes far beyond the thought that many people are watching. Trying to propose an association through a tv commercial, stimulating one's hearing, vision, telling an actual story etc. is entirely different from doing that through a flyer, and the fact that there are more association ads on tvs for example does not necessarily imply that emotional inception is wrong, only that tv might be more convenient for that type of ad.
You could also defeat the distinction by simply invoking David Hume's argument that reason and rationality alone can never move a human to do anything, let alone buy a product based on advertising.
With respect to your first remark: if you don’t believe in the association between A and B, or know it is irrational, but you believe that others believe it to be true, then your decision can be rational. That is, “I’m smart enough to know the association is bogus, but everyone else is stupid and thinks it’s real.” That’s not a particularly intelligent worldview, but it makes the decision in question rational (even if incorrect).
TLDR: for social connotation theory to be rational only requires that the consumer believes that others believe in the association between A and B, which is different from the consumer themselves believing in the association.
"The thing is that both theories assume the following: product A is associated to B, therefore buying A yields C." No, this is exactly the distinction is that they don't both assume this. The association between A and B does not cause C in the case of K's theory. There's an intermediary step, which is a deliberative (i.e. rational) decision that a purchaser makes. In the case of emotional inception theory the circuit is from A to B (association) to C (purchasing decision). In K's theory (forgot what he called it) it's from A to B to X to C, where X is a decision predicated on an awareness of the association between A and B that others have in their mind. You could say that EIT is deterministic (as vulgar behaviorist theories tend to be) as where KT is cognitivist since it's about the rational (not in the strong normative sense but in the deliberative sense) thought process of consumers. If EIT made space for that I suspect it would simply be K's theory. IF you pay attention to the video, you will observe that K himself actually points out that he agrees with EIT about the idea that (at least some kinds) of advertisements depend on the development of an association in the consumer's mind. Where he disagrees with it is in this idea that it is the association itself that, as it were, unconsciously regulates our purchasing decisions.
You also are mixing something up when you discuss their assumptions. The consumer does not need to assume that cool and rich people use nike, anymore than K needs to assume that inception is a real phenomenon in order to use it as an analogy to EIT. They are assuming that there is this idea in our society, this association between the two, that they can draw on in order to communicate with others intelligibly. So the roles for association vary between the two theories. In EIT it is a psychological explanation for purchasing behavior. In KT it factors insofar as the capacity for commodities to function semiotically depends on arbitrary associations of this kind, just as we need to associate words to concepts in order to use a language. So even if it turned out to be the case that cool and rich people did not use Nike, that would make no difference to the consumer under K's theory, since it is enough that this association is there so that it can be used symbolically. In his example from his own life for instance: It isn't that everyone at the party thinks "all people who drink X drink are party girls, she brought X, she must be a party girl." It's rather something like "X is cheap and you can get drunk on it. This girl came in here with a whole case of it. She must be here to party." You see the difference? It isn't the bare association itself that is driving the thinking there. That is, this train of thought wasn't imposed on any of them from somewhere within their brain inaccessible to introspective awareness. Rather, an _inference_ is being made on the part of the party goers. The decision to buy would not be rational in the EIT account, since in that account, it never passes through anything like a decision on the part of the buyer, but rather operates covertly, influencing our decisions for no other reason than that this association exists (rather than, as in K's theory, that it facilitates a communicative act) . So if you ask someone why they bought some medication they will never say "well I saw an add once that showed really happy people next to this product so I just assume that people who take this medication must be really happy. In K's theory it's not like people go, "cool people drink bud light, i want to be cool so I will drink it too." It's more like "bud light is associated with cool, laid back working guys and I want to give off cool laid back working class guy vibes right now so I'll go with that."
"The notion that emotional theory should be everywhere if it were true makes no sense, because it would imply that every single kind of ad would be able to exert the same influence be equally capable of proposing an association to the consumer." This is in fact _exactly what EIT does think, and indeed, what it would have to claim. Notice that it is behaviorist in its essence. You can make a Pavlovian connection between any two stimuli under behaviorist theory. So long as the organism can become habituated to associate the two stimuli the stimulus response can be conditioned. There's no intrinsic connection between the sound of a bell and food. It's arbitrary. They could have chosen literally any other stimulus, the color red, the smell of gasoline, whatever. It is purely the repeated association between two stimuli that is needed for operant conditioning to occur. In the same way, in EIT it is the mere presence of a repeated association that creates a positive association in our minds and drives our purchasing decision covertly. And EIT would have to assume this even if that connection were not explicitly made, since it has no theory for why some associations work and others don't. In fact the whole point of the theory (or so it seems to me) is to explain a transition from the rational appeals of earlier advertisements to the completely tangential free association style commercials of the contemporary age. That's its appeal as a theory is that it seems to give a nice explanation of why advertisers make ads like that. And I think the reason it's so popular as a theory is because everyone has seen some completely bonkers commercial and thought "how is this a toothpaste commercial what the hell does that have to do with toothpaste???"
He lost me at some point. This feels like way over-examining the issues. Some things play on internal emotions because we associate things with feelings, that we do not care who else knows about, and somet things we do care if others know about. Some things, both. See a nice car, think of how smooth it is, how enjoyable it is to ride in, the new car smell, the nice sound system, the reliability, etc., and those are all internal, but also external, like "People will think I am smart and cool and successful for owning this car." We may share preconceptions about what kind of person i am for buying this car. Why do people always need a "theory" to understand things? I know it gives it a name you can use and share, but is it really so hard to say that advertisements use VARIOUS means by which to manipulate us and also communicate things to others?
@@phyllo8958 i thought of your argument as i was writing the answer, but it dismissed it since that would imply unstated premises. If there are no other premises (like the one you said, for example, "i am smart, everyone else is stupid"), that it should work for everyone else is predicated on it working for you, so if it doesn't work for you, there is no reason to assume that it should be working for everyone else.
I agree with you that purposeful social signaling plays a part in how advertising influences behavior, but I think conditioning is also important. There are numerous studies showing that vicarious conditioning is effective. Seeing someone else being rewarded for a behavior can reinforce that behavior nearly as strongly as a direct reward. This is why we have so many stories about a character being rewarded for doing something socially desirable; these stories are effective tools for shaping prosocial behaviors.
Good points. I can't say I understand what the video is trying to actually say. The argument for association in advertising is that on some level it must work really well considering the trillions of $$ spent on ads using it and the products it sells.
And definitely 'vicarious conditioning'. I can tell endless stories of being the guy who tells the drunk on the train, "This is the no smoking car, don't light that." Everyone else when the guy finally shuffles off applauds me. While I was talking to the guy, everyone else had their heads down. They would like to be the.... but they're afraid to. They capture some of the feeling by applauding. (If you want to be part of the band, it's not clapping, it's if you dance.)
Take the SUV/truck with the kayak on the roof. We've all seen this ad for at least 50 years. Kayaks don't cost nearly as much as the vehicles, but millions of vehicles are sold and very few kayaks.
I remember seeing beautiful two wooden kayaks on the roof of a truck on the low tide banks of the Russian River in California. Sunset, it was just like a well shot commercial. I knew immediately what they were, but had never actually thought about kayaks before.
Eventually I made a couple of kayaks, but more so I learned how to paddle them, how to be safe paddling out to sea solo. Potentially very dangerous. I was building a wooden kayak and learning about safety, and the huge potential dangers, before I'd actually paddled one. I also understood that I would have to go off the coast to fully experience and enjoy kayaking. I then did this for 15 years. It was even better than I thought it would be.
Whenever I see a car/truck commercial with a kayak on the roof my brain pings, "You don't want the vehicle, you want the kayak." Know what I see on the freeways of Los Angeles? Endless lines of SUVs, pickups, etc... none of which have kayaks on the roof, none of which are even muddy. (I'll bet Jeeps and Subarus go into the wilderness and none of the other sports vehicles ever do.) Know what I see off the coast of California, population 40 million? No other kayaks. Everyone wants the dream of the kayak, no one seems actually capable of making the effort to do it. The pay off is absolutely amazing, and there's no monthly car and insurance payment... and yet almost no one does it.
I now have a sailboat, very big, very comfortable. In the two years I've owned it, 5 other people have gone sailing on it. I thought it was a no brainer, free yacht sailing, Channel Islands, whales, sea lions, dolphins, amazing scenery.... my friends would love it. Nope. Almost everyone I know has an excuse why they won't, can't, etc... Of the 5, one did an overnight trip. She's got her own boat. Everyone else showed up with a reason they could only go out for the day.
A consumer is someone with dreams who instead of pursuing those dreams, buys a consumer product. The advertising business is all about associations sold to people with limited will power. The beer commercial is typical and never changes: Shlubby guy in a bar ordering the major brand beer and suddenly beautiful women appear.... It must work.
The reason that college girl showed up with that brand of cider was not, "I want to party," it was an offer of availability for sex. When you're young you need these signals.
I think what happens to most people is that they're tightly connected with family, friends, work/school and have given up thinking, 'I want to go camping, I'll ask my people, and if they say no... then I'll just go by myself.' Instead they thwart each other. In the store you can always buy the beer, at the dealership you can always buy the SUV.... You want sex and intimacy, you'd love to go sea kayaking... we all want to live an amazing life, instead we buy stuff.
💯
I was obvious in less than 2 minutes that this wasn't a video about how advertising does or does not work. That was thecIickbait ploy.
This is a video to get... _views._ People trying to analyze it have been hornswoggled.
@@WillN2Go1 This was an interesting read. Do you write elsewhere?
As long as these perceptual rewards are seen to be equitable and honestly - not nepotistically or otherwise corruptly - distributed. Much slippage that way and the product reputation incurs damage (small dents and gouges, missing pieces, can quickly and entirely negate the feelings a new purchase/reward brings) and why with promotion of brands you also at the same time have to have enduring quality and very good after transaction service (or what is loyalty when dealing with people).
I work in advertisement. There are people in the profession who theorize the way this gentlemen does, but it turns out their yields aren't any better than anyone else's.
We do consumer panels to test our ad concepts, and would it surprise you if I told you the dumbest ads get the best results? (very frustrating from a creative perspective of course)
Sorry Mr Kaplan, we don't sell dish soap the same way we sell a Rolex.
I have also noticed (as an American voter in Wisconsin) that obviously fear and anger-mongering political ads are very effective at turning out the vote for right-wing candidates. They tap into already existing racism, homophobia and other prejudices. They don't even have a product to sell, really -- many of these candidates get elected, people forget their names -- but they get large numbers of people to vote against Democrats.
You know... He actually does say that dish soap isn't advertised this way. He specifically singled out dish soap and bedsheets, so your comments suggests that you did not watch the whole thing.
@@farquoi Oh did I say dish soap? I meant cat food.
I think he is really pulling a rug pull on everyone by inception. He is trolling with bs theory he made up to defeat his other bs theory. But really he wants your email info to sell it and sell his book. He starts off with making you think luxury marketing tactics don’t work by subverting your thought of them. He subverting you he is intelligent and he is right and hoping your too stupid know better. Then pushes he has book and needs your email.
Then sends a shoutout to his fellow friends in on the joke. He is the dude in thrid level of dream. lol living rent free now when you get spam emails and think you got hacked.
His arguments don’t make sense in his own examples how the hell is he a phd teaching? You could never pass his class because his made up theories rule them all.
All of his students aren’t dumber thanks to him and wasted money when watching madmen would have been better education. He is making himself a target in academia as a PhD. It’s a joke or a rug pull to get your emails and prove his theory is true.
@@mururoa7024 If he were right, cat food would be advertised similarly to dish soap. Neither would be using association. I'm pretty sure the association ads are the ones promoting name recognition.
I understand what you're saying but advertising works on children. I am unsure if a child is trying to evoke to peers that they are happy when they want a happy meal at McDonald's. A parent may want to create an associate with themselves and happiness for a child but for situations where the child is requesting a product based on advertising, I am not sure if they are contemplating the construction of self from some sort of Lacaning other. I don't know.
I’d argue the social argument may be even more effective against children, as many don’t typically keep pragmatic affairs front of mind. An adult can reason away the desire for a purchase due to practical limitations, but a child is either given it or turned down, which, in the latter case, often exacerbates the underlying desire.
Does advertising work on children? I don't think children like McDonald's because they saw a commercial and people were happy in it. I think they like McDonald's exactly because their peers do, and their family does, and also because they like clowns and toys and playgrounds and all the stuff McDonald's has. I also find the Lacan reference funny given that Lacan does think this is what children do. The mirror stage for Lacan starts at like 6-18 months for Lacan or smth like that right?
I think it's fair to say that it's not the _only_ way advertising works - yours is a good example, like I would guess McDonald's goals are probably somewhere closer to "remind you of something you already know/like" or "catch you at the right moment when you're hungry." But I think this theory still applies for a lot of things we buy but don't *need*. Like sure a kid may ask for McDonald's just bc they're hungry but they also might ask for a certain toy just bc they want their friends at school to think they're cool. I think kids definitely are tuned into those sorts of things but just are influenced differently than most adults
@@Deantrey There are laws to protect children from advertising because children have a difficult time "knowing" that they are being advertised to. The tool of advertising has been shown to be effective regardless of social and family norms. The behavior of consumption for adults is more conscious but the evolution from a child's to an adult's relationship to advertising isn't discontinuous. I think both theories are valid based on the situation. Newton physics applies for some situations and quantum mechanics in others.
@@noshiko5398 The ability to communicate the abstract concept of "happiness" is expressed through the language of lacanian other for the child but that language is also used in advertising to adults. I still struggle with the lacanian concept of desire but he states that there is never the concept of need. The child will desire food but the desire for McDonald's is expressing a different desire from the "need" for food.
Emotional Inception theory and Social Connotation theory aren't really competing theories.
They're complimentary. They're two different but interrelated processes that build on each other, and advertisers use both in combination, not one to the exclusion of the other.
Emotional Inception is more complicated than Pavlovian conditioning, but basically serves as the initial pioneer process to get a product into the social and cultural scene.
Once that work is done, and the product has established cultural connotations to work with, _then_ Social Connotation can exploit this to sell it on those connotations.
"ComplEmentary" = combining in such a way as to enhance or emphasize the qualities of each other or another.
not "complImentary" = expressing a compliment; praising or approving or
given or supplied free of charge.
@@daydays12 yeah ok thanks
@@wasd____ You are welcome. 🙂
I'm sorry I got baited into watching this and I was duly disappointed....
Total strawman - there is actually no such thing as "emotional inception theory" so create something imaginary then rail against it. I know it's supposed to be a summary of everything learned from Madmen, but that doesn't make it right.
"The Emotional Inception Theory" - (which he just made up) - would use association for "all different types of products"? Why would this necessarily be the case? I suppose since he invented the concept, then it must do. But assuming he means that humans have a subconscious emotional response to events in our lives - then why would those have to conform equally to socks as to cars? If people buy things because of emotional connections I would not expect that to apply to q-tips.
If the argument is that in fact we make "rational choices" rather than "emotionally inceptional choices" - then we have another strawman. The point that observers of the marketing industry have been making for decades is that humans aren't often driven by conscious choices - they will buy things for reasons other than they say they buy them for , or profess to buy them for. Nobody says this is irrational. Irrationality is *not* the same as making decisions using subconscious reason. When people buy high status products like a car "because they like the sound system" when in fact it is a status symbol , is not an irrational choice.
Conspicuous consumption (Veblen) . Yes obviously people are driven by status - but conspicuous consumption is a specific form of consumerism that involves paying for things that are exclusively designed to serve as symbols of wealth. Not your friend buying Strongbow cider to get pissed (or ironically "Beano", "Hooley Hoo")
(minor point - the Madman episode is not called "The Carousel" is called "The Wheel")
TLDR = so yes of course Emotional Inception is a myth , because you literally just made it up. And the "Social Connotation Theory". And then "how to choose between these two competing theories". Advertising does work in the way we think it does
For those watching its a good lesson to know that just going to Cambridge University in the UK doesn't stop you from being an intellectual snake oil salesman, although it probably works on the undergrads. And this is how a lot of journal papers are written. A really good marketer to watch is Rory Sutherland, who is not only an expert on consumer behaviour, he has worked in the business for decades and has made huge amounts of money for his clients
Glad you understand what Veblen was really writing about. He died in 1929 so he missed the phenomenon of pickup trucks ... so many oversized pickup trucks owned by people who never need to haul anything big, but they will pay large fractions of their income (sometimes more than their total income) to own them.
I think the same. I have a degree in marketing and I doubt remember the terms and theories anymore.
Maybe he is pissed madmen teaches better marketing practices than his classes and needs to make sure his students quit using it as references in papers. I could totally be a student of his and write why madmen would be a better investment in time and education for marketing.
I might not pass an exam of his but i bet I could make better ads and campaigns than he can.
Almost every point he makes seems off and maybe he thinks he is being funny. His jokes are not funny and his defense for most of his points don’t make sense.
I also think strongbow story is missing the point. Seeing a girl bring in 20 bottles of alcohol means crunk despite the choice of drink. If she brought a bottle of wine I would think she thought it was a dinner party or she likes wine and knows everyone doesn’t like wine.
If she brings a lot to drink and no party was expected maybe she wanted to get you drunk and have sex but she hated him sober?
Idk I hate all of his opinions and his analysis even if he is making it up it doesn’t make sense.
But I will say like most ads the promise something that really lets you down after you experience it. I think the title was click bait or this is a joke that is too stupid or funny only to him and like 3 people he knows as a hoax.
And Beno and boo boa line I think he was trying to rip off goodwill hunting with George pimleton and be ironic with it? He is definitely putting his credibility on the line.
I’d rather learn from your comments than his lectures. Or watch madmen again.
Symbolism, validation and safety....
The conscious mind is new, prone to error, far less influential than the unconscious mind
@@jaymccormack6875 I've never watched a full episode of Mad Men, but judging from the bit in this video, the writers appear to understand human emotions vastly better than Jeffrey. I honestly worry that too many (male) undergrads today will fall for this sort of intellectual bilge water. By all means read J. Stuart Mill! -- he was a pioneer in political philosophy and way ahead of his time on women's rights -- and decide for yourself what he would think about UA-cam ads.
9:00 when I was a child, before ever having a girlfriend, I remember distinctly the emotions I felt about songs and movies and images that I had no real-world experience with. Here you say that humans, like dogs, *would require visceral experiential triggers to facilitate response mechanisms and I completely disagree. Humans have relativism, fantasy, symbolism and the like to connect dots (even when the dots aren't necessarily logical in a literal sense to do so).
Ill finish the video, but just found the argument at this point going down a road I don't find compelling so far.
Yes! This is why I still feel attached to Sonic the Hedgehog after all these years. I have never even met someone *pretending* to be Sonic but I bought a plush toy of him for $30 last year and I'll probably pay $15 or more to see the movie coming out this month.
When I was a child, I caught a fleeting glimpse out of the corner of my eye. I turned to look but it was gone.
A couple of points firstly living in the UK it could have been pretty much any alcohol not just cider. And secondly, there have been times when conspicuous consumption occurred before the industrial revolution such as ancient Rome and medieval England when the king and the aristos got upset the ordinary people were wearing fancy clothes so they made it illegal with the Sumptuary laws. Defined as: "Laws made for the purpose of restraining luxury or extravagance, particularly against inordinate expenditures for apparel, food, furniture, or shoes, etc."[2] Historically, they were intended to regulate and reinforce social hierarchies and morals through restrictions on clothing, food, and luxury expenditures, often depending on a person's social rank.
And the ban against anyone but royalty wearing purple.
(Can't remember when or wear that was.)
An excellent point.
@@JaneNewAuthor The use of purple dye for royalty's clothes goes back to the Phoenicians (3000 years or more). I have no doubt there were sumptuary laws in Tyre or other Phoenician city-states. It was very important politically for everybody to see who was part of the elite and who wasn't. Just like the red ties and other pieces of clothing are so important for MAGA today.
So, in summary, Advertisers don't implant emotional associations in your head to get you to buy things - That would be insanely hard and make us irrational - so instead, they implant emotional associations in the heads of ALL THE PEOPLE WE KNOW, so we RATIONALLY choose to buy the product, to avoid us getting judged and criticized (irrationally) by everyone else. Genius.
They don't implant emotional associations in everyone's mind, they implant rational associations. If you see me wearing a rolex, you might think that I'm very wealthy, because rolex watches are expensive - you and I know this rationally, and it might make me want to get a rolex in order to show off.
According to Kaplan's theory, advertisers do, in fact, implant emotional associations and ideas in your mind. Rather than irrationally believing that consuming the product will directly elicit an emotion, you rationally consume it as a way to communicate something about yourself to others-specifically, the cultural associations of the product shaped by advertising.
@@Loom.79I would figure the Rolex was a cheap knockoff 😅
That's a great summary. Thank you.
It's all emotional. All the associative stuff is is a desire for emotional belonging. The type of add you see has a limited ability to work based on the product itself. The product is the limiting factor. That is why "we" are increasingly the commodities being sold to ourselves. The pitch is to love yourself by consuming what is self actualizing.
Fully agree on this one
Yeah, signaling your identity based on arbitrary connections made up by advertisers isn't in any way a rational behavior. If we were rational beings we would see this farce for what it is, rather than continuing to play the game mindlessly.
i think this is the shortest and most simple explanation as to why WE are the product.
Except there doesn't need to be any association or emotion for advertising to work. Think about product placement. There's no association there, emotional or otherwise. It's just a product in front of your eyeballs. Companies spend millions on it because it works. Also, it's "ad", not "add".
@@ere4t4t4rrrrr4 game is always being played. advertising just jumping in the middle of it all. so people use it like a shorthand or an internet quote
1:09 Don't threaten me with a good time.
Best Comment Award.
For me anyway.
~8:30 quite the opposite, you have the concept flipped exactly backwards. They are not trying to generate a sense of adventure from use of their product they are attaching their product to a preexisting enjoyment of adventure and motorcycles. They don't want you to seek adventure when given their product, they want you to seek their product when considering adventure.
People aren't trained by advertisers to make associations, they're trained by culture. They make the product look like something in the culture.
Interesting point, but how is advertising distinct from culture? Isn’t it more accurate to describe advertising as a part of culture such that it can influence and regulate behaviour *but* isn’t by itself the sole way in which this happens? I don’t think advertising is shaped by culture, but rather that the former is a way in which the latter is manifest.
But also sometimes they're trained by advertisers.
DeBeers selling diamonds was essentially an association invented and installed into culture from whole cloth by a company advertising that its product should have a particular association.
Exactly. I didn't watch the whole video but it wouldn't surprise me if Jeffrey completely avoided the word "culture." It's really myopic to dance across all these disciplines and yet ignore anthropology.
@@thefuturist8864 Culture came from our nature. Where people lived determines features of our bodies to how they had to behave to survive. Culture develops from that. Advertising is just communication and persuasion. Any animal does that when they say, "You don't want this fight." Ads like their mating call as well.
The irony is that the whole theory of "common knowledge" simply projects emotional inception onto the target audience the consumer has intended to influence by their purchase.
This isn't directly on the topic of this video, but it is a question to Jeffrey Kaplan, or alternatively to anyone who knows either him, his works or his channel enough to answer.
Given that according to Russel and Goedel, we can't ever comprheseively reflect upon ourselves, without running into paradoxes. Given, that this insight has been around for at least a bunch of decades by now, there are off course a number of philosophers, that started to debate the question, well, if paradoxes are unavoidable, what do we then do with them. I found ideas to answer that in various writing. Niklas Luhmann basically says, we can't avoid paradoxes so we become religious. (Die Religion der Gesellschaft) Post-structuralist frenchies to my understanding make the case, we can't avoid paradoxes, so we use them to create horror stories and enjoy them (this is not an exact summary of the content of their works, but to my understanding a correct summary of the pragmatic result of their works.) Kafka and Monthy Python's said: we can't avoid Paradoxes, but we can make great and scary jokes about paradoxes.
My question now is: What do you Jeffrey Kaplan think is the best way to deal with the fact, that we can't avoid paradox? Is there anything you already published to that question, where I could look up the answer, or do you have any quick replies, that you can squeeze into a youtube-comment?
Awe, horror, sordid laughter.... is this an extensive list of possible reactions, or have I missed something? Any recommended texts, that I have missed so far? (I know about Thomas Kuhn, but he is only attempting to answer the question within specifically science)
While I greatly admire Gödel, what he basically shows is that you can't have self-referential logic (in a general way - it's possible if you constrain the system enough, in which case it would be "incomplete"). The best shorthand way to put it is that logic is only dependable if it's used as a hierarchy. The moment you self-reference, you break the hierarchy, which breaks the logic. The "paradox" is that if you add self-reference to your logical system, you necessarily create contradictions. That's a limit of logic/math, not a fundamental theory of reality.
We actually run into this a lot in computer programming. Once a system gets complicated enough, it can become very easy to create circular references, and every now and then we have to rewrite a large section of code to move the logic causing circular references outside of the entities trying to use it.
Nor is this a problem of consciousness, thought it might seem so. It's easy enough for us to think of computer code doing self-referential things, and even write code that essentially does that - for instance using recursion instead of explicit declarations. We tend to avoid recursion, however, because just a 100 iterations or so can cause the system to run out of memory/threads/etc.
Heck, we humans can even think of division by zero. We just can't stick that into a logical system. It works great in a "sarcastic system" though - it is possible to say things that are neither true nor false but contain meaningful ideas that lend understanding to the world. And gosh, it's wonderful that we can do that, otherwise we'd all start sounding like lawyers, as with every sentence we'd have to list all of the exceptions to every single generalization or joke.
Gödel's theorem shows that any formal system of sufficient complexity has certain truths, expressible in the grammar of the system, that are nonetheless unprovable from within that system. Gödel's theorem simply does not address human thought, as our thought processes are not based upon formal systems. The proof of Gödel's theorem is, indeed, evidence of that fact, as it is entirely based upon our ability to construct such a statement in any arbitrary formalism, that is both trivially easy to show to be true, while being unprovable from within that system.
The gist of the proof is:
In the grammar of any arbitrary formal system "[ x ]" that is sufficiently expressive to state and prove first-order logic, it is always possible to construct a statement such as "This statement is not provable using [ x ]." This statement is clearly true, as proving such a statement within the system would lead to contradiction.
And since Gödel provided a way to construct such a statement within any formalism, it provided proof that at a minimum, any formal system meeting the described requirements, is necessarily incomplete, or, much worse, inconsistent.
We do not think in formalisms, and therefore our thoughts are in no way bound by them.
An unconvincing argument. Emotional associations are not the same thing as conditioned (Pavlovian) responses. Pavlovian responses are subliminal, whereas emotional associations persuade the conscious mind by suggesting how we will feel if we use a certain product. Advertising during big sporting events is very expensive and so only very big and successful brands can afford to do it. It's simply not true that dishwashing liquid and tissues and soap and toothpaste advertisements don't use association techniques. Trying to signal things about yourself to other people by buying stuff is not rational (it's expensive and inefficient and only really works if everyone agrees on the meaning of a particular product - which they don't).
It's fairly rational if you assume that other people are far more like yourself than they are not like yourself.
@@RickJaeger Most advertising is trying to get you to choose one brand rather than another but, to use the apple cider example, any brand of cider is going to send the same 'let's get drunk' message. If all you are trying to do is communicate that message, how do you decide which brand of cider to buy?
Sort of irrelevant to what I said. We choose products that communicate messages about ourselves based on what we think those products communicate, based on contextual usage, just like words and symbols communicate meaning. It's about as rational as language, i.e. as rational to expect that words and symbols more or less mean the same kinds of things to everyone as they do to you, the one using them.
@@RickJaeger We can look up a dictionary to find out what words mean. A brand 's meaning is subjective and extremely malleable.
@@peterbreughel4440 A dictionary is just a compilation of what other people say words mean, and you believe them. You do the same with every other carrier of meaning, including shopping choices.
I can't find the words to properly describe how clearly the concepts in this video were communicated and how cogent the final argument was. The analogy to the Einstein/solar eclipse could not be more perfect. Every now and then you come across a video that changes the way you think about something forever. This is that video for me, and while advertising is a relatively nice subject in the grand scheme of life, there are deeper connections to social relationships and self reflection that can be mined as well. This was an absolute masterpiece.
Wow, what a lovely comment to read! Thanks for the kind words. Very glad this video is providing some value.
why is the eclipse analogy perfect? it could be substituted by an analogy in literally every area in which mutually exclusve theories capable of predictions exist.
@@shebaloso You're right - it wasn't perfect in terms on finding an apt analogy, because of how easily it could be substituted or applied to any number of other areas. But for me it was beautiful communication because of how it visually crystallizes where the argument gone so far and where it's going next.
@@shebalosoI disagree, it is actually a perfect analogy. I don't think any scientific theory has been as successful in predicting its very own convincing proof as general relativity. Many theories evolve and are modified over time in order to reconcile with new evidence. This is normal and is part of the scientific process.
However, general relativity is out of this this world. Concepts that are so abstract, so counter intuitive, that the only reason that we think it is true is because we have verified its predictions time and time again. And it basically started as a thought experiment, without the the necessity to reconcile inconsistencies in physics...
Newton's theory was reasonable, explained most observations and was more intuitive, but it could not predict phenomena which hadn't been observed before.
My point is this: while the commonly accepted theory of emotional inception theory seems more intuitive, it is unsuccessful in predicting its own proof. Conversely, social connotation theory appears much more successful in doing so, and it's derived from a thought experiment conceived 180 years ago, way before of modern advertising.
@@rokusvandendool4563 I propose cats are predators of mice, you propose that mice are predators of cats. If i am right, encounters between cat and mice lead to mice being dead, if you're right, they lead to cats being dead. We see that cats kill mice when they meet. Therefore my theory is right. How is this analogy any worse than newton vs einstein if what you're trying to convey is simply that theories can yield falsifiable predictions?
Edward Bernays, the guy who wrote the book on Propaganda and “Public Relations” and participated in many successful early advertising campaigns (Lucky Strike Cigarettes for example)
Advertising is commercial propaganda, and it works the same way, positive or negative reinforcement of behaviours by any means necessary.
Exactly.
Manipulation and deceit, by any means necessary.
I almost wonder if this video is designed to put people of the scent.
Yes exactly - I think he is not trying to put people "off the scent" exactly , but is trying to "be different" to get his publications out. Another great book is "The Hidden Persuaders" by Vance Packard. It's slight dated but really kick started the analysis of the ad industry
Why can't it be both? People who like coca cola enjoy drinking it by themselves too. People don't smoke different cigarettes when they are by themselves then when they are with friends. So clearly there is an element of advertising having an effect on how we feel about a product.
Also if its only rational and not emotional wouldn't we all recognise that the emotional explanation is incorrect? Because we ourselves would know that we choose to buy those products because we want to send that message to other people.
Also the idea that you can prove or disapprove an idea with one experiment i think is wrong in many cases. When things are complex you have to look at many aspects and many variables and make multiple tests and possibly multiple levels of tests. Im nkt saying we should do those tests because whos got time for all that. But im saying without them sometimes we should just say its complicated, or say it look like this is an element of whats going on.
Im also curious to what extent his experience with the apple cider made him take this path and thereby look to prove what he already believed to be true.
That's how I see it. My thesis advisor was careful to point out that I need to prove that my causal explanation wasn't actually an intervening process. Also I see no mention of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Also, when your career is contingent on developing "new" ideas, there's built in bias for positive results. This guy is taking something mundane and gesturing as if it's a Ted Talk. It's more of a TEDx talk.
@@catsupchutney Personally I think videos like this are good. It creates a discussion and I think its a good starting point. He has thought about is and is brining up intersting arguments. I dont think I could have made my comment with out something substative to comment on.
The book Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman does a good job showing how commercials works as myth and are not able to be argued with by propositions. I’d be curious how chapter 9 of that book sits with this theory in the video.
It’s a joke to prove his inception. He is inceptioning you to believe him if you’re dumb enough so he can get your email and sell it and prove his point. It’s a joke. Or he is the worst phd and making questionable life choices regarding his credibility as a professor.
It’s a joke to prove his inception. He is inceptioning you to believe him if you’re dumb enough so he can get your email and sell it and prove his point. It’s a joke. Or he is the worst phd and making questionable life choices regarding his credibility as a professor.
I think I remember reading some Neil Postman in my AP English class in high school. It would've been the only time my high school adequately prepared me for the MAGA apocalypse.
glad Jeffrey is back!
When you brought up "Pavlovian response" it made me feel all uncomfortable in my chair. Then i remembered the summer Pavlov spent with my family at the lakeside cottage, his bell, his belt.
I don't know, I am pretty sure I saw bedsheet and detergent adverts on tv and on the streets linking the products to lifestyles and celebrities... not sure why you are stating that this is non-existent... Very much undermines your point.
Anyone who wishes to run an ad campaign as a tax write-off should follow this instructive video. "Cider doesn't taste good but Ale does, " is something no one ever seriously said.
What about underwear ads?
An ad that everyone sees. For a product few will see you wear; which will likely lower your public image.
They get you to associate their brand with being physically attractive. While not a lot of people will see you wear it, some people still will such as when changing in public changing rooms or in private situations and some people would be affected by how they believe other people will perceive them for using this brand.
Excellent question. I my first thought is that few people see us in our underwear, but the few people who see us in our underwear form opinions about us that we care about a whole lot. People who spend the most time, money, and thought on their underwear are, I would imagine, single and anticipating romantic activity where they want to make a good impression.
@@profjeffreykaplan Yes! I wonder if someone smarter than me could develop an equation that accounted not just for the opinions of the people who see us consuming, but their number (fewer people see us in our underwear than our sneakers), and even their relative importance to us (a lover being more important than a neighbor) to measure a relative value of importance...
There must be non-intimate products that fit this question. The theory does not fall short, if psychology is added - the feeling of wanting to belong could be stronger than the logic that no one will see it. Just for yourself, as one says
@@profjeffreykaplan I would also say you're forgetting that we use consumer choices not only to communicate to others but to communicate to ourselves, to construct a self. Funny enough (and I am embarrassed to admit this) I switched from tighty whities to boxers for the social reason. Because I didn't want anyone at school to make fun of me I wanted to seem like was one of the cool kids you know, nerds wear tighty whities, but cool kids wear boxers. But I switched from boxers to briefs more for, well still the social reason but also a personal one. Well for one, I think I look better in them. And I am anticipating (as men tend to) sexual encounters. But also, I just feel like briefs give a more mature man vibe than boxers. You know what I'm saying like..? I know it's silly but I swear that was my real thought process.
As a fellow philosophy teacher, I appreciate how you build your arguments organically, pointing out what you take from each paper without losing track of the overall picture, leading to the core arguments without falling into tangents. This lecture got me thinking about Bourdieu's theory of aesthetic tastes in his Distinction, I'll be probably integrating aspects of your explanation of social connotative advertising into my class on Bourdieu. Until then, I'll keep recommending your channel to fellow teachers looking for an introduction on specific subjects.
The counter thesis presented in the video, that advertising only works through social connotation and not through emotional influence, is too rigid in its exclusivity. Advertising works on different levels and through different mechanisms that complement each other. Both emotional and rational, social and informational components come into play. The social signalling function of products is an important explanatory approach, but it cannot replace emotional conditioning, cognitive heuristics, mere exposure effects and other well-documented psychological factors.
The model presented by Mr Kaplan therefore underestimates the complexity of current research. A dialectically balanced view would recognise that 'emotional inception' is not an all-encompassing principle, but is certainly part of a broad repertoire of advertising effects. At the same time, the social signalling character of products and brands is an equally relevant component. Overall, it makes more sense to assume an interacting network of different psychological principles than to assume a monocausal explanation as the sole 'decoder of myths'.
Mr Kaplan argues rhetorically skilfully, but uses one-sided exaggerations and presents the opposing position in an extremely simplified way. He uses rationality as a yardstick to discredit the opposing theory, without admitting that irrational, implicit or semi-conscious behaviour is normal in consumer psychology. From a dialectical point of view, his argumentation seems more like a rhetorical manoeuvre: it is limited to a simplistic juxtaposition of two theories and attempts to present the other as superior by emphasising the implausibility of one theory, rather than conveying a more complex, integrated understanding of advertising impact.
On one point, however, I agree - the film 'Inception' has a very poorly written script.
Confirmation bias and dependency on groupthink for approval can cause otherwise logical minds to ignore your wise comment. These two phenomenon explain why Einstein's erroneous Relativity ideas can never be proven wrong, despite the fact that Einstein's work is overtly fallacious.
@@Chicken_Little_Syndrome Sometimes it is truly fascinating how comfortably we can settle into familiar ways of thinking. A little scepticism as a pruning shears can certainly do no harm in allowing new ideas to sprout from time to time. Thanks for the food for thought.
You seem to:
1. Put a lot of weight on the rationality evaluation of the decision.
You can’t isolate and evaluate the rationality of such decision in a vacuum, for all people, as the calculation what’s rational and what’s not rational, is entirely dependent on the person perceiving the situation at the moment, their frame of reference and what’s important to them.
People like to declare that their political decisions are rational, they often think they act rational, while being scammed or manipulated, etc.
2. You assume that people have to go through a conscious process of decision making, with some internal monologue.
That’s not true. Our brain can calculate the end result, and we don’t have to be the witness to this process.
I like the way this video ties into the philosophy of language lectures. It shows how flexible philosophy can be.
Basically, association ads try to sell you an identity.
Something that interests me is the contrast created by the distinction between information and association ads. When held up against the idea that association ads only really exist to motivate conspicuous consumption, information ads look like the desirable alternatives for shoppers interested in products for some reason other than conspicuous consumption. It's not a big deal that we don't get an exaustive list of all the advertising there is. It matters a little more if it's an expression of scientism. At the very least, I am left wondering, "Why isn't the most rational way to shop by a comprehensive spread sheet of everything on the market described in as perfect detail as possible?" It's not that I need convising that it isn't the best way to do things. It's that the reasons why not are interesting and insightful.
Why do we have 75 different types of toothpaste that are almost all the same only superficially different. But we don't have even 1 affordable apartment that has enough space.
This lecture is all over the place. Not concise and to the point. Didn’t close the sale.
No sale here either.
Maybe he would have been smarter to give us the results of his big thinking ,and work backwards to how he got there. Maybe in english?
He isnt a salesman and doesn't know anything about selling products to people. He might have wangled a couple of consultancies based on his professorship. Have you seen Rory Sutherland on youtube ? Excellent marketer and expert on consumer behaviour - plus he worked for Ogilvies with some huge clients. Great to watch and really engaging
Back in the 80's there WERE ads for bed sheets and dihahrhhea medicine and deuush! And every ad had a jingle! And everything was better. Though, perhaps, not in NYC. Unless you like getting stabbed in the subway.
Seriously, though, I've definitely noticed a shift in how ads have worked over the last few decades. 80's ads were usually a bit goofy, or laughably serious. Modern ads feel invasive somehow; intensely more manipulative and irritating as a result. This is, perhaps, a result of this modernistic, Inception method of advertising.
I was thinking the same thing.
Most of the advertisements I’ve seen in the last 10 years are just annoying
The advertisements don’t really tell you about the product. Instead, they seem to be mostly images of propaganda.
Perhaps this advertising theory of making associations in your mind without actually talking about the product or showing what it does has come from this theory.
What I know is that if these advertisements have the inverse effect
I am completely repulsed by advertisements to do this. And in fact, have disconnected from the television completely in recent years because of the combination of propaganda on shows and advertisements
I completely agree with both of you. How many times has coca cola told me that they'll make my family gatherings so special, my christmas so unforgettable, compared to pepsi which I dont think i've ever seen an ad for. Wich one do I buy? The one that's on a discount. I guess they've manipulated me to such an extent that I'm buying coke every day thinking that i'm getting water and just don't notice it anymore.
Yeah, disappearing for a months then randomly show up is a great advertising as well 😂
5 months! manufactured scarcity:)
Thank you professor Kaplan! I am currently a undergrad student in philosophy, and your video lectures always help me understand a topic or argument effectively and clearly. I hope one day I could explain things as clearly and entertainingly as you. Btw, best of luck to your new book! Me and my follow friends are very excited!
It's akin to people who wear underground music artists T-shirts. To people who know...there's an "in-crowd", in-the-know mentality and superior artistic taste feeling between the likeminded individuals.
It only makes advertising even more sinister.
I saw someone in a T-shirt that said "Pink" and informed her that it was black.
I speak in front of others in meeting and part of my job is to single handedly break down complex subjects to a wider audience. I’m in awe of how securely and solidly you placed all your arguments, the pace, the sequence aaarg, I’m so jealous but I’ll take the consolation prize that I live in a world where this content is just out there for free for me and others to enjoy. Thank you very much
You know you can make timestamp segments for your UA-cam video? This allows, your viewer to be able to see which area in the video Each point of presentation you’re trying to display. It’s really sophisticated stuff. You should try it.
Well, maybe some content creators should try it. Dunno about this guy.
Agree, there was a lot of what seemed to be waffle. I do realise that the creators need to keep us hanging on to make revenue though.
First off, i'd like to tell you how much of my life is indebted to you. When i was a freshman studying law, i couldn't fathom how much the course s*cked. Memorizing boring laws and shady concepts was not my groove. But, one day, a youtube thumbnail popped my atention. It was a playlist of lectures on 'Legal Positivism according to The Concept of Law'. The rest is pure magic. Those classes were clear yet highly interesting. After finishing the playlist i immediately ordered The Concept of Law and read it. But reading it prompted me to read The Province of Jurisprudence Determined, then The Pure Theory of Law, which prompted me to read General Theory of Law and State, which prompted me to read x, y, z and so on. After many books and countless essays, articles and papers (and some published works myself), i look back to those youtube videos and think where i would be if it were not for your unique way of teaching in an interesting way.
Going to the point: i am working on an essay about legal duties, legal rules and sanctions. I aim to prove that legal rules (even primary rules) need not a sanction, and that legal systems could be formed of secondary rules and primary rules of conduct without ever needing a sanction in the system. However, i'm an ex-Kelsenian of sorts, and though i now believe standards of conduct precede the sanctions applied when the standards are broken, there is still an exception which bugs me. How can we explain ex post facto laws? I've not read anything about those in either Hart, MacCormick or Raz, and they seem to be a challenge to our notion of primary rules. How can we explain a sanction being imposed for a person who commited a conduct which, at the time of the conduct, did not breach any rule? This is very easily explained by Kelsen's theory (much like sanctions being applied to the family or relatives of criminals), but i can't think of a Hartian explanation for this phenomenom. I've searched google scholar and a few databases but all i've found is Hart's Fable and Dworkin's criticism of Hart's notion of discretion. Maybe if you know a work on this you'd kindly let me know, since this is a major impediment on my essay's thesis? Many thanks in advance
The theory that advertisements link products to emotions is only as old as a 15-year old movie?
I disagree with many parts of this, but to be brief : Coca Cola advertises on TV during the Super Bowl, because they can afford it, and men buy Coke. The parent company of Palmolive can't, and men don't*.
*Exceptions, more other stuff. Assume I am not an idiot, please.
Even the bedsheets thing is wrong. White Sale ads, every year, regular as clockwork.
Tugging at emotional responses is the Slinky of advertising. You showed us how it moves down stairs. It was fun. Thanks.
I guess being un-social makes most of this irrelevant to some of us.
I never buy *anything* based on brand name recognition and hardly ever even based on the appearance of a thing -- unless it's a thing for which its appearance makes a difference to me. For example, I just bought pretty much the most generic car in existence based on comfort, maneuverability, utility, gas mileage, reliability and price. And I didn't look at a single advertisement in the process. (I hardly ever consume media where I see or hear any relevant ads.)
Brand strategist and agency CSO with 20 years experience here. This is a fairly classic distinction between “hedonic goods” and “positional goods” (read Spent: The Evolutionary Psychology of Consumer Behavior by Geoffrey Miller. Hedonic goods are like sheets and dish soap and can be marketed based on intrinsic benefits. Positional goods exist to telegraph personality traits, values, and social group allegiances in order to raise the status of a consumer to audiences they themselves are trying to gain favor with.
That’s why “being seen to be seen” by advertising on the Super Bowl is totally why it’s worth spending millions of dollars on the ad buy. (And it’s not just a great reach vehicle, but is itself a form of costly signaling or conspicuous waste like a peacock’s tail or a Rolex proving the fitness of the brand.)
Anywho. In my practice I identify rational (persuasion), behavioral (conditioning), and social (identity, meaning, and purpose) based levers for behavior change. Great vid for beginning to make those distinctions.
"She showed up with a 24 pack of alcohol because she wanted to communicate to us that she wanted to party."
I don't think so. She showed up with a 24 pack of alcohol simply because she wanted to party, and then you INFERRED that she wanted to party.
When my friend breaks his leg and buys a pair of crutches, he's not "trying to communicate to me that he's disabled," right?
But your friends decision to get crutches isn't exactly voluntary, is it? He has to get crutches because he broke his leg.
The female friend, I assume, brought the drinks because she wanted to bring the drinks, not because she had to?
@@MissWhiskers And also she didn't buy them for herself and drank them while hiding in the closet but presneted them to everyone.
excuse me what? are you saying she just wanted to party on her own and not necessarily communicate anything? because the girl is the one who showed up to his friends with alcohol, not the the other way around.
@@MissWhiskers The female friend did in fact have to bring the drinks, because she wanted to get crunk. She couldn't exactly show up with a bag of salad and get crunk.
ironically, "inference" is a major theme in semantics. 😂 before you can buy crutches, you have to know what they are. if you don't, and nobody tells you, then you might buy a wheelchair instead. that's actually a great example of what advertising does: "so, you're saying if I put sticks under my arms, I'll be able to get around easier? how would that even work? I don't know anyone who would suggest that, and I've never seen it, so you must be trying to scam me! next you'll be trying to sell me one of those 'vaccines' - but I know better!"
Advertising works as a language. Together, all advertising creates a world of connotations where each connotation reinforces the others. In this world, we, the targets of advertising, connote, therefore we are. While we may not buy particular products, we do conform to consumption patterns to a large degree to confirm the connotations that have been constructed for us and that on some level we find valuable.
Dr. Kaplan makes a video and I’m watching immediately.
Nope. The "Social Connotation Theory" is also an "Appeal to Emotion" not an "Appeal to logic". I realize it's hard to fully flesh out a concept like this in 20min, that said I find most academics to be long winded story tellers with little in way of real insight also ineffective in the real world. The comparison to the movie is pointless. A discussion about Advertising without mention of Edward Bernays is incomplete. Not convinced, in fact the opposite. I had a hard time watching this video because of the jump cuts, so I closed my eyes. You have only convinced me that people are irrational story tellers.
Wow, nice to know someone else is talking about Edward Bernays (I mean in a comment, like yours). I think this video was more about product advertisement, like in the show "Mad Men". I guess a small mention would've been nice but, this Bernays guy was more focused on actual propaganda and psychological warfare than on capitalist affairs like the advertising panorama in a free market, which, again, is what I would say this video was about.
Just saying, advertising exists outside of propagandistic interests, so maybe no need to mention "the godfather of propaganda" here. That said, no offense, but I think your comment is biased, and you affirmed this by saying "I find most academics to just be storytellers". Don't be so pessimistic, that is a BIG generalization! Also, think about it this way: this video promotes discourse in those areas that are of your interest, and I got to see your comment more or less because of that, which is good, because I can agree that this person could be of interest in this topic as well, but for the rest... I hope you gain a better outlook on others. I have trust issues too, though, I get it :P
Have a wonderful rest of your life, my fellow sufferer!
@@ritishify I appreciate your reply and even tone. I agree, I am biased but I also think we are all biased and it's part of being human, to see it otherwise is to ignore the operating system we humans function under. I can also agree I made a generalization. I don't think it's pessimistic, it just applies more to certain areas of study. I do not think advertising exists outside of propagandistic interests, it seems pretty clear to me the two are joined at the hip, engaging in intercourse at times. We have proof. If you are familiar with Bernays then you must be familiar with the story about getting women to smoke. Peace.
@@yanapostolides601 Well, I suppose there are some discrepancies in our views, but it's only mainly about definitions. Therefore, I have to say that what you say is very much fair enough!
I don't recall this story about getting women to smoke, but as I said, I understand why you say that these two concepts are basically the same. Again, fair enough, I guess, but still pessimistic outlook, in my view. I guess we could agree to disagree on these smaller observations, I would still suggest you revisit the idea of not generalizing so much, although I know, it might be justified in some instances, like when people say "ACAB" or that "all politicians are liars". Indeed, unfortunately, it is true in many cases.
But we can agree on the view that advertising is a very powerful tool. I do like to say that marketing must be one of the most "evil" businesses out there, hahah... Interesting time to be alive, this "information age". I don't think there's need to discuss the matter any further either. Just saying, don't be mad at such things. So yeah, peace, man✌ We'll see what the future awaits, just sit back and enjoy the shit show and this joke that is our reality...
@@ritishify Those chords do resonate with me. I think your observations are good and your advice sound, so I'll do my best and not be so hard on the academics. (When it comes to politicians the gloves are off! Kidding.) I'm lucky, I've known some pretty awesome police, who saved my life literally also with wisdom pointing me in the right direction. Thank you.
@@yanapostolides601 It's a pleasure :) The way I think makes me happy and I want others to feel the same, I just hope I'm right hehe only time will tell. Farewell✌
8:41 yes that's exactly how movies and entertainment works. we root for the hero even though he's not real. it's the same reason celebrities and sports stars are giant billboards for advertisers and why sports team and advertising go hand in hand.
11:29 this is just then flip side of the same coin.
advertising uses both. coco cola for one uses emotional inception theory. it uses childhood advertising nostalgia to cement it's position as the number one choice for adults. Disney the same
This guy is a great teacher...fascinating subject matter...brilliantly explained...we need more professors/teachers like him. Awesome stuff!!!
25:20 If I’m not mistaken, Saito ends up in the fourth level because he dies in the third; dying under sedation in Inception drops you into Limbo.
I think it’s more confusing that there are three implicit levels, and that hooking into the dream machine on level 3 automatically takes you to Limbo.
Why do association ads for menstruation pads exist?
Do they? From what I've seen, all such ads show blue ink being poured on said pad. I'd have classified them as "factual" ads-ads that give you hard facts about the product and expect to convince you logically and rationally-rather than as aspirational.
On a possibly related note, of the hundreds of varieties of nearly-identical children's toothpaste at a Walmart Superstore, my niece wanted the exact same brand that Peppa Pig uses. (I didn't know which brand that was, so I bought her the cheapest one and lied to her.)
@nHans Hey! Thanks for your reply!
In Poland where I live, ads for menstrual products are definitely association ads. They often show women in extreme sports, women that are strong and independent and not at all bothered by their period. They sell you a feeling, a feeling of security.
So in my opinion, professor Kaplan's conclusion that association ads are only present in advertising of products that others see us use is wrong. I believe that emotional inception theory must be at least sometimes right!
Anyone who thinks there are no connotations in regards to laundry detergents or dish soaps hasn't heard a bunch of moms talking while waiting for their kids (sports practice, dance classes, etc.). It's ridiculous, but it's there.
The solution to advertising is to live by the following rule: NEVER BUY A PRODUCT YOU HAVE SEEN ADVERTIZED. Ever.
(To address comments below: The criterion for 'advertising' is whether you sought out the information, as in googling for a product, or going to a store and browsing, or whether it was pushed on you against your will)
Even putting out your product on display in a store, or a description in a online store is a sort of advertisement, so good luck finding anything to buy..
I usually do this. The exception is, if you need to buy a car, it's impossible to buy a make that you have never seen advertised, unless you live in the US and buy a Lada or something.
@@jn1mrgn It is quite possible to buy an electric bicycle, or a smart-car, or a used Volkswagen.
@@annaclarafenyo8185 Yes, my philosophy is that anything worth buying, doesn't need advertising.
I try to live this but I admit it's actually difficult in some cases. Let's say you want to buy tooth paste and are facing a huge wall of dozens of products. What is your choice? Chances are that you have a slight lean towards that one brand you are familiar with. You heard it somewhere. It has a small edge vs. all the other nameless alternatives. Not saying it's going to result in 100% hit rate but there is definitely an effect. You have to consciously not buy it.
TL;DR: ads also make you familiar with brands or products you when a buying decision comes up the have a small edge vs the other choices, maybe a little but more trust simply because they look more familiar.
Yes, I have seen ads for bedsheets, and LOADS of ads for pillows. I suppose the theory in some form could still apply as luxurious home goods are things we can brag about to our friends to indicate how well we're doing financially. Still, I think we buy quite a few things based on "the feels" through entities like Amazon where no one will see us make the purchase and no one outside our home will ever know what we purchased.
Also: Einstein's General Theory of Relativity doesn't conflict with Newton's law of gravitation. It explains the thing. In fact, you can derive Newton's law from Einstein's theory. You just need to account for some facts we've discovered about the relationship between space and time.
Yep!
And not the only example of BS in this video either.
I wasn't sure I was going to like this video, but I'm impressed that you went against the prevailing theory of advertising with a much more intelligent and rational view. Although I have to take exception that the advertiser's job is "easy". They can't just say that this product will be cool among your friends and peers--they have to *convince you* that that's the case. And you kind of recognize it when you say that lots of people need to hold the same idea that the ad presents. The idea needs to become a social meme of sorts that many people know about, in order for people to believe the idea presented in the ad.
Another point is that your Social Connotation theory only applies to certain types of ads, and not all ads. Almost everyone seems to forget the most basic and important function of advertising: to let the consumer know that the product or that particular brand of the product exists to be purchased. Why would you even want to buy say, a doorcam or a Minions plushy toy if you don't even know about them? Sure you might accidentally stumble across them at the store, but that's not a reliable way to run a business. Sure, there's word of mouth, but somebody somewhere has to find out about it in some way before they can tell others about it.
So can we now assume that association between your book and non-zero attention span is common knowledge and can be used for social signaling?
Books do have that association in our society now. There exist articles, blogs, and social media accounts that tell you what books are trendy to carry around.
The Newtonian Dynamics vs Relativistic Dynamics dichotomy is misguided. Einstein would never have claimed Newton was wrong, and in fact when one launches a satellite, builds a building, calculates the trajectory of a projectile, or the flight dynamics of an aircraft, they use Newtonian dynamics. The difference between Newton and Einstein is the range of applicability. Newtonian dynamics are perfectly fine when velocities are small compared to the speed of light (v
Great videos! Thank you.
I'm not a physicist, but I seemed to remember that in Newtonian physics light would bend as well. Just not as much. So I asked Llama 3.2
Sometimes these large language models make stuff up or otherwise don't get stuff right, so it might be worthwhile talking to a physicist just to check.
I think light bends in both theories
But the extent to which it bends differs.
Take it away, Llama 3.2:
In Newtonian physics, massive gravitational bodies can indeed bend the path of light. Since light has energy and momentum, it is affected by gravity, just like massive objects.
However, the Newtonian prediction for the bending of light differs from the predictions of general relativity. According to Newtonian physics, the bending of light is half the value predicted by general relativity.
General relativity, introduced by Albert Einstein in 1915, revolutionized our understanding of gravity and its effects on spacetime. The theory predicts that massive objects warp spacetime, causing nearby objects, including light, to follow curved trajectories.
While Newtonian physics can account for the bending of light, general relativity provides a more accurate and comprehensive explanation of this phenomenon, known as gravitational lensing.
You fixed Pavlovian Advertisement theory (which I was taught in college) in less than half an hour and made it entertaining. Thank you! Great video.
28 minits for a 1 minute idea - dude you realy are a philosopher
I agree he is a philosopher but not a marketing guy
there was no idea
I think ads for products like laundry detergent and Q-Tips contain tons of emotional association. Perhaps you've just never watched these sort of ads that show on cable in the middle of the day? Lots of products show cartoon teddy bears or smiling babies to link those warm, fuzzy feelings to the brand iconography. Speaking of icons and such, how did you manage to make this entire video without once using the word 'semiotic'? Was that deliberate?
Still, a pretty good video overall, I thought. I'm especially impressed by the quality of this comments section, tho. It's like virtually nothing I've ever seen on YT before. All these erudite motherf&ckers and sh&t. Wtf? I love it. ;%)
And then, there was the Jaguar add campaign.
It connotes the driver's voting habits
I don't think this necessarily holds true for a similar situation as with Pavlov. For example, food advertising. People have a lot of choices when it comes to satisfying hunger. Advertisers help people associate their hunger and its satisfaction with particular food products. I don't think people eat things all the time to be associated with others, but often do so for pleasure and satisfaction of their own. If you see a juicy hamburger on tv, and you are hungry, then you might be more likely to purchase the hamburger. And if you are more likely to purchase the burger once, for the first time, you will be more likely to purchase again when you are hungry again.
I notice a lot of pizza ads during football games -- the ads show a cheesy slice being pulled from the rest of the pie, and it looks incredibly delicious. The ads accentuate my hunger drive, and then quickly offer the solution: buy the pizza that is tempting you. Has nothing to do with Peyton Manning or any other high status celebrity egging me on.
You say conspicuous consumption. I say obvious tuberculosis.
When I think of John Stuart Mill, I think of his marketplace of ideas. The marketplace of ideas being a metaphor for free expression and civic engagement in a democracy. He used it to argue against censorship. The metaphor compares the competition of ideas in a free market to the process by which the truth emerges. It assumes that when the public can freely debate issues, the best ideas will be heard and spread. The marketplace of ideas holds that the truth will emerge from the competition of ideas in free, transparent public discourse and concludes that ideas and ideologies will be culled according to their superiority or inferiority and widespread acceptance among the population. The concept suggests that just as goods and services compete in a market, ideas should also compete for acceptance and validation among the public. But truth be told, the marketplace of ideas in the political arena, could also lead to the rise of a Hitler. The marketplace idea would suggest that people would see through a Hitler, because by acting rationally, they should see the flaws in the hateful rhetoric he espouses. Critics argue the opposite: that this approach can be problematic when dealing with manipulative or hateful rhetoric that can easily sway certain audiences, potentially undermining the "marketplace" concept in practice. And on UA-cam currently, there is a rise of people using AI to produce English-translations of Hitler's speeches in his own voice, and these translations are rising in popularity, as some viewers are starting to claim Hitler made sense and suggest that the public was being kept from hearing his "wonderful" ideas for years. Which suggests that decisional choice rationality gives way to emotions powered by insecurity, fears, and groupthink, in which groups put unanimous agreements ahead of problem solving. Thus instead of being rational, people choose an already suggested course of action, and then rationalize it after the fact.
"In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles; all that was directly lived has become mere representation."
A great many psychological events in the real world have multiple causes. Some ads might work by emotional inception, some might work by social identification, some might work by simple brand awareness, and most ads likely work by employing all three effects at the same time. The independent variable in a laboratory experiment is carefully designed to try to isolate only a single psychological effect (often with questionable success). People wanting to use psychological phenomena in the real world, like advertisers, don't have to limit themselves to a single one.
Sorry. It takes you too long to get to the point
The philosophy in this video was excellent as always, well structured and argued. I do think it suffered for a lack of a dedicated section on the different types of advertising and how they work. This has led to confusion in the comments section.
Emotional suggestibility does play a large role in a wide variety of advertisements. Everything from the colour palette, the fonts used, background music, the choice of actors, the choice of the accent of actors etc., all can play the dual roles of communicating information AND conditioning the potential customer on a more subconscious level.
I do agree with the thesis of the video that the former is more powerful. For example, an advert for bedding (they do exist!) may use classical music, a soft relaxing voice over, muted or warm colours to invoke comfort, luxury. Attractive actors in expensive houses enjoying their new bedding. Multiple things are happening in this advert, all the individual choices made by the advertisers contribute to the effect. The advertisement induces a mood where the viewer will consider how much they value a comfortable night's sleep, while also communicating the idea that this is a luxury brand that can be relied upon to provide a high quality product. Companies are always yapping on about their "brand" and their "values". The purpose of much advertising is to communicate to the viewer that this company cares about these things, and their product can be expected to reflect that.
I'd argue that this type of advertising is better understood under the same paradigm lefthand Social Connotation Theory. Which is to say, looking at the relationship between the advertiser and the customer as chiefly operating under assumptions of rationality as opposed to pure emotion. In reality, any ad will utilise a combination of both. Irrational association may prime us, it may make us more suggestable in the moment, but for most advertising this is the set up for a rational communication of information (true or false) that the target of the ad is expected to act upon.
If the video had one flaw I'd say it was in focusing on too few examples of advertising and thereby lacking a broader context of a theory of advertising in which to couch the two competing theories explored.
this dude was telling me about this conversation he had with his grandson, but i swear i heard it before, point for point, word for word, then i heard it again on morning radio. it was an ad. i don't even think my friend was lying. he just subconsciously recreated it with his gson who may have also heard and mostly forgot it. this is knowledge, kinda common, but neither are aware that even they know yet alone the other. a lot of stuff slips into our minds without us paying attention. if you never heard something, it sounds so foriegn your mind cannot process it, but you hear something many times before it even makes your radar. sometimes it seems to come to you all at once as your own idea, so you think. this also doesn't contradict any theory presented here. it is another layer of nuance. once you do become aware of the idea it seems to be everywhere. the more you hear something conciously you may not fully accept at first, the more true it styarts to seem. that's how the neocons did it, and they won. they're fascists now, because they did so well, they ain't even gotta fool us nmo more, just kick us in the heads
Youve missed the main technique of successful advertising. It is presenting a solution to a "problem". The problem may be not even be known by the subject, hence you get educative advertising...teaching the audience about the "problem" they have. There are levels of this process, ultimately arriving at a version of the ad that says, "you know what the problem is, you know where the solutions are, here's why ours is best". The last bit of this last step is where you often find the emotional association bit.
I saw one video of this guy (the mathematics paradox one) and I instantly subscribed to the channel. Now I’m watching the second one (this one) and I’m enabling all notifications! Good job! 👍
12:00 this theory makes total sense
Both miss something qualitative. If an ad promotes a specific image and I decide it's ridiculous, it means I've evaluated it qualitatively. It works the same way if I like the image. Whatever I want to signal to others, first, I have to decide that I agree with the conclusion of the ad. With that, the signaling part is no longer essential because I have to deal with the ad on its own merit either way. I do believe that signaling boosts it, though.
I'm not fully convinced people are rational beings. We just *like* to think we are. Zoe Bee has an amazing video on how facts in fact do care about our feelings. We make judgements and decisions based on instincts and emotions, then rationalize them. So the appeal to that idea of our rationality could be considered emotional manipulation. This is not meant to be a callout, just finding it funny and ironic that you're appealing to that idea while saying "oh no, don't worry, advertising doesn't emotionally manipulate us"!
The problem with using the social connotation theory to explain our response to advertising as rational behavior, is that, if that was the case, there would be no need to explain it. We would all know fully well, and alternative theories wouldn't even exist. So, the social connotation theory may be correct, but it may not mean that our responses are rational.
Also, there's a very good chance that we're more emotional about how we are seen, and more rational about private and practical matters. That would pretty much wipe out the difference between the two theories.
Worthwhile reading, Vance Packard's books from the late '50s and early '60s. As long as conspicuous consumption is on the table, Packard's "The Waste makers", The Status Seekers", "The Pyramid Climbers" and "The Hidden Persuaders" offer insights from the inception of Madison Avenue and the Corporatocracy.
As a real estate guy, I can verify that people spend large amounts of money in order to buy too much house, but with higher status.
19:40 That prediction is not plausible at all. When you look at an ad at the top of search results, you're paying attention and looking for the kind of information you get from a good search result. That's the kind of circumstance where inception is least likely to be effective. Just because (by hypothesis) association ads work by inception, it doesn't follow that everyone is always open to inception. Inception (if it happens at all) happens best when we've left the brain door standing open and unguarded. That ain't when we're actively searching for specific information about the product in question.
Likewise, emotional inception (given, by hypothesis, that it's successfully injected) isn't going to be equally effective at motivating sales of all products. No one is particularly emotional about Q-tips, and when they are it's anxiety about discomfort or whatever: not a useful emotion to implant some of as a way of priming the pump.
Appreciate the new video, and would suggest looking into the work of marketing researchers like Byron Sharp and educators / practitioners including Mark Ritson, Tom Roach, Karen Nelson- Field, Jenni Romanuk and others. Their work has been vetted by extensive studies and is worth examining in light of the arguments presented here.
I think that red bull advertises with extreme sports because it reaches their target demographic of probably 16 to 32 year olds less expensively than television advertising, so they are just picking something that their target demographic already watches and then paying the event organizers/"atheletes" in order to have their target markets eyes on their product. It's not more complicated than that. Individuals may imagine that buying a red bull associates themselves with extreme sports but I always bought red bull at nigh clubs or grocery stores simply for the taste, and I liked the picture on the can, although I might be reminded of it based on a commercial and then that way I might buy more product than I would if I had not been reminded. It also depends on the product if it is a food that is much different than a status symbol type purchase such as a car. If it is a status symbol I think it follows the "Status Symbol" theory which is basically similar to your "connotation" theory. Actually I think food can also be a status symbol purchase, but ultimately your "social connotation theory" is just rewording STATUS SYMBOL. Also you shouldn't base your theories off of TV shows and movies because those things only seem realistic to children.
Strongbow is just cheap, mate. It doesn’t mean “wild partying” in itself, it means the purchaser is poorer than you and can’t afford bottles of cask conditioned ale by the crate. _All_ large crates of alcohol means “wild partying”. Nothing to do with whether it’s Strongbow or Abbott Ale.
I'd say preach, but... your username 😅
@ 🙂
But with Facebook and other social media, we can now tell a whole bunch of people about our bedsheets experience. Which means we are able to let them "see" us using those sheets. This can apply to nearly all the stuff we buy. Think of taking selfies or the idiotic practice of taking pictures of the food we order at a restaurant. I think many people have turned themselves into ads.
You left out an essential factor of successful advertising. One of the first lessons in sales is that people don't buy what they need, they buy what they want. Therefore, the object of an advertising campaign is to get the target to believe the lie, "It is solely my idea that I want that product enough to spend my money on it." I call it a lie, because the wanting of it was generated by the advertising.
The advertiser must push the target into the right brain where our feelings live in order to accomplish this. The left brain is where logic and delayed gratification live; it cannot tell or believe a lie, because lies do not make sense. The right brain will willingly tell or believe a lie so long as it brings instant gratification.
To do this, various propaganda devices are used. When my children were small, I taught them to recognize the most widely used propaganda devices. When they watched tv ads aimed at children, they would gleefully yell out the devises being used rather than be taken in by them. Those ads failed to influence them into wanting the sugary cereals or the silly toys. When they did want something, that wanting was self-generated.
If elementary schools taught children to recognize those manipulative devises, perhaps they would all grow up to be critical thinkers, and we'd all be better off. Matilda Paxton: Author, How To Peace, Out Of The Frying Pan: Into The Meadow, and 1=0.
Where's the beef?
Okay then.
Burger joints sell burgers yet the question suddenly becomes, 'Do they?'
No.
That doesn't work. The ad must have referred to quantity. The quantity that hits one right between the buns.
We're not talking quarterly stock holder meetings so get your mind out of the gutter!
I remember telling my friend in the fall of 1994 while on his sailboat, he was excited about his digital Satelite dish and the plethora of channels, I said, in the future, less channels will far more preferable, suited your individual tastes, where programs are like candies in a bag. The kicker though that will make thar possible will be the custom tailored ads. The results of which will involve any number of shoppers in the same aisle at once, spying for laundry detergent. These shoppers may only share one basic yet obvious, thing in common, but what is unknown to each is the fact that the ads they watched varied considerably. Proctor and Gamble had tailored their ads to the point that brand loyalty was a foregone conclusion.
Each shopper followed their natural impulse, Tide may just been something so innocuous, so simple, but so too was the insights employed by the advertising folk.
Shotguns vs the subtle cues that allowed one to almost feel 'known'.
Sound familiar?
Then I said, now imagine that at every angle. Everyone would feel appreciated and just maybe, right with the world.
He looked at me and said, Man...!
When did you get so deep?
Before watching, generally advertisements are more about keeping a product in your forbrain. There is no need for Coca-Cola to get new customers, when you're standing in front of a case full of 40 different drinks you are FAMILIAR with cola. You either don't want to drink something you've not had before or you have a hard time deciding and go with what you perceive as the most popular.
If you like 2 things, the one you know better will be safer. You can't be forced to feel emotion but you can be forced to connect a lot of your life's visual input to the product.
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Afterwards: it only got touched on a couple times but it easily folds into the connotation theory. Recency bias wouldn't be as powerful as it is if the advertisement has to create an emotional connection while Coca-Cola has positioned themselves as being everywhere and "the old reliable" even though almost all other soft drinks have recipes that are measured by the thousands of pounds making thme just as stable a choice. Some ads that just remind you of the product existing and are informative give off the recency bias vibe.
I disagree with a lot of this because I do not see the distinction between the two theories. They seem like exactly the same theory to me, merely expressed in slightly different ways. From the video, it seems like the distinction is "common knowledge", but "common knowledge"...isn't. Instead, "common knowledge" is the *assumption/perception* of common knowledge. There is no real distinction between the super bowl ad example and the pop up ad example; in either case, I do not know for sure if the other person/people I'm modeling for have seen the ad. And so, in either case, I can proceed as though everyone has seen it, or proceed as though no one has seen it. But a fundamental issue, here, is that people also self-model. That is: they do things in a certain way to perceive themselves in a certain way, despite knowing that they're doing it (e.g. manifesting). In the case of "Emotional Inception Theory", this would be "monkey see monkey do"; i.e. imagining yourself as the person riding the motorbike. In the case of "Social Connotation Theory", this would imply that there is always common knowledge in any interaction between me and myself.
Three rules to business success:
1. Create a need ... then fill it.
2. Sell the sizzle ... not the steak.
3. Customers will find many reasons not to make a purchase. What you need to do, is crush 'every single' objection they have. Then they have no choice ... they have to buy.
re: gravity transfer between dreams. diegetic mechanisms may be misunderstood or described incompletely by characters. [if interpreted this way, it makes the potential for worldbuilding much more interesting.] for example, it could be that gravity is additive past a certain threshold. of course, it could just be for the sake of narrative convenience and technical feasibility; if we said that movies had to both 1) be cool and 2) completely internally consistent, we would get many fewer cool movies. nolan has a lot of things hiding under the surface in his films; eg, love as a physical constant in interstellar is r-worded, but 2 possibilities are that 1) diegetically is actually is a mechanism of physical law and 2) it's a metafictional premise (eg, communicating that melodrama and traditional hollywood tropes are ridiculous and stupid), rather than diegetically sensical. after all, matt damon's astronaut character talks about the conflict between the imperative of preserving the self, vs the goal of preservation of the collective; and that love is commonly used as a narrative reason to optimize for the family at the cost of fucking society/the world (eg fast and furious). the man goes out of his way to make the sound mixing in his movies terrible, juxtaposed with the brilliant technicality in the rest of his productions. also, leo might only have had access to the dream equipment via the large corporation. (i don't know if this is accurate.)
Counter argument: Menstrual pad ads. They are rerely informational, and often focus on how it feels. That is not the kind of ad that would be explained by signaling. I argue that advertisement can create emotions, but not the kind of emotions that association ads would be attempting to inspire according to emotional inception. I also argue that drawing the line at rational vs irrational is not correct. And I think the commentary about the plot of the movie is for engagement farming. Note: I have completed the video when I write this comment.
No, you're completely wrong here. After seeing Don's ad, I DO want to buy a projector! You may have a point about an additional way to manipulate people, and that MAY be effective. But that doesn't negate the first way that was presented. There is no rational reason to think its one OR the other. Both can be true. Why even imagine the one negates the other? That's irrational.
Search ads are always perfectly rational because the user is looking for something which ideally matches the search keywords. If the search ad is more interesting to the user than anything else on the screen before they start scrolling down and to possibly next pages, then it gets clicked on, Google gets paid, and the advertiser gets to pitch to their potential customer. Never emotional, never conditioning; always connected from the idea expressed by the search terms to the product described in the ad's call to action.
As a former EA to the Chief Creative Officer at a top NYC ad agency, I get you and appreciate your pov. That being said, I gotta know - do you write backwards or just flip the video in editing?
That was a fun ride ... the relativity reference was pretty shallow and altogether unnecessary, but inception blast was a bullseye. Good points and made well about ads, I'm convinced ... although I wasn't aware there was some sort of academic argument about advertising theory. Seems pretty obvious what an ad is trying to do to you most of the time if you just watch it. What's funny is how often association ads get the tone wrong and just look like they're co-opting something that was subculture 2 years ago, or something like that. I don't know if other people think about this shit while watching ads, but I'm no genius and it's clear as day to me...
DiCaprio’s character required his team to have access to the person while he or she was sleeping. They couldn’t just pick and choose anyone they please and plant ideas in their heads to stop wars or have him pardoned at will.
Also, you present the way people think advertising works in the worst kind of way. I don’t think anyone believes advertising causes a Pavlovian response to mindlessly do something without any choice in the matter.
You have good videos with solid arguments but sadly this is an exception.
Right. And maybe destroying one big corporate conglomerate by a psyop is a more efficient use of that team's resources than stopping the latest war in Syria ... I sense that Mr Kaplan wants us to believe it is USELESS TO RESIST corporate power.
Counterpoint: Consumers are making these social connotations for emotional reasons: feeling included, projecting an image of themselves that feels good on different levels, a feeling of respect, peak experiences, etc. There is a false dichotomy being presented here, when both are right, and not mutually exclusive. It's a dialectic thing, where the synthesis allows both strategies to create a more effective gestalt.
15:54 As a being that always chooses things other people don't know, I know the lack of information the other being has is just as powerful as what you describe. The more odd my pick is (without being crazy) the more engagement I get. If I show up to a party with a drink nobody knows everybody will question my pick and will want to try it if offered. It is the power of the unknown.
This video ends with an ad showing some sincere and comfortable collegiate looking dude in a book-lined room with something to sell. Associative indeed !
Yes! I'm so glad someone else has noticed, he broke down advertising to advertise his book !
Jeff, you are very good teacher, at least in regards to your lectures. It is always a delight to hear you clearly and briefly describe these concepts.
Is there something to be said with your Pavlovian perspective where advertisers ARE giving you something?
With the dogs example, the dogs get satiated with the food correlated to the bell, but the food brings excitement and that (along with the need to eat) may be a driver of the behavior.
A thought I had is that humans can get the excitement, happiness, or feeling of belongingness through ads without being given something physical, the story and emotional connection of the ad may be enough to drive the decision to buy.
Just a thought, it may be flawed but curious to see what response anyone has :)
A model/theory doesn't exist in vacuum, it's contextual.
Newton's gravity theory works in 99% of the observable universe, in everyday life. Einstein's model of gravity works in that other 1% of the observable universe, where Newton's theory is less precise. But both theories fail trying to predict behavior of things at quantum level (there is a growing body of data and observations that validate this). So it doesn't mean that Einstein theory works and Newton doesn't. They are "correct" theories in their specific contexts. (just as the higher-spin theory is "more correct" in the context of quantum physics, where Newton's and/or Einstein's theories would appear "wrong", lees correct)
Whenever a theory attempts to make predictions about human behavior, but takes into account only one perspective (rational or emotional), it fails. The classic example is "game theory", has been widely used in many areas. It works well in many situations, but it cannot predict all human interactions