Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id RAA21909 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 10 May 2000 17:01:45 +0100 Message-ID: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D31CEB177@inchna.stir.ac.uk> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: a memetic experiment- an eIe opener Date: Wed, 10 May 2000 16:59:52 +0100 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Chuck, you say:
>Yes - my point was that there is a lot of flim flam in advertising
precisely
>because no one could do the kind of research necessary to prove cause and
effect
>- it would be too expensive.
If it's too expensive to prove it works, then why do companies spend so much
money on something they don't know for certain works? That reminds me of
that Dudley Moore film where he plays an advertising executive who decides
to tell the truth, and posits one slogan for an airline as 'Most of our
people get there alive!'. Imagine an airline that genuinely used planes
that fell out of the sky repeatedly....
This is a genuine question for the persuasive industries. For example, a
basic question in academic research into PR at the moment is PR evaluation.
Unlike advertising or marketing, the results of PR aren't as clear cut as
product sales or market share increasing. It's a question for the PR
profession because of concerns about unscrupulous 'consultants' making lots
of money without ever actually demonstrating they've made some kind of
difference to their client's position. One of the problems is, how do you
evaluate PR 'success'? There are some answers, but one of the problems is
that clients expect results straight away, and there is little practical
time for evaluation in the workplace, so the problem continues.
> ----------
> From: Chuck Palson
> Reply To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Sent: Wednesday, May 10, 2000 9:16 am
> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Subject: Re: a memetic experiment- an eIe opener
>
>
>
> Vincent Campbell wrote:
>
> > Actually Chuck, such research makes no sense.
> >
> > If people don't remember or mis-remember advertising then how did it
> make
> > them buy the product? The point I was making is about simple ideas of
> > causality. Advertising researchers are only interested in whether or
> not
> > their specific adverts work on specific people, and they fundamentally
> and
> > persistently ignore context. If they say that people don't remember or
> > mis-remember advertising messages but buy the product anyway, they still
> > assume it's because of the advertising. Even the statistical studies
> > demonstrate time and time again factors other than exposure to
> advertising
> > impacts on what products people buy.
>
> As I said in my other reply, you don't have to know how to say it to
> remember it
> enough to buy the product. So, yes, you are right. The interesting thing
> that
> this illustrates is how modularized the brain is. Pinker hypothesizes that
> it is
> modularized to prevent reducency - like procedures in a computer program
> that
> many other mudules can use. I find it quite fascinating how
> psycholinguistics
> can infer the different modules from the structure of speech.
>
> >
> >
> > The problem for companies employing advertisers, marketing and PR
> > consultants is that somebody somewhere buys the product (or votes for
> the
> > party), and those people can be deemd to have been successfully
> persuaded by
> > the campaign just because they bought the product.
>
> Yes - my point was that there is a lot of flim flam in advertising
> precisely
> because no one could do the kind of research necessary to prove cause and
> effect
> - it would be too expensive.
>
> > Even basic factors, such
> > as product utility, are ignored.
> >
>
> Not really. That's only true in a mature market where only brand name
> differentiates. But the vast majority of products are not in mature
> markets. You
> only think so because the mature products are almost by definition the
> most
> visible.Vincent
>
> >
> > > ----------
> > > From: Chuck Palson
> > > Reply To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> > > Sent: Tuesday, May 9, 2000 2:49 pm
> > > To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> > > Subject: Re: a memetic experiment- an eIe opener
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Vincent Campbell wrote:
> > >
> > > > With respect, this idea ignores 75 or more years of media studies
> that
> > > have
> > > > been trying to identify the pecularities of media effects.
> > > >
> > > > I believe memetics may offer a perspective on this, but there's no
> way
> > > in
> > > > which your proposal would work because the uptake of memes is
> > > > context-sensitive, both in the sense of the environment in which a
> meme
> > > > emerges, and second in terms of the people who are exposed to the
> meme.
> > > > This is exactly why most theories of advertising and marketing etc.
> are
> > > so
> > > > flawed because they assume that if you construct a message with
> > > > characteristic 'a' and disseminate it to audience member 'b' you
> will
> > > get
> > > > the desired effect 'c'. But it obviously doesn't work like that.
> There
> > > is
> > > > little evidence that there is something inherent in any media text
> which
> > > > makes it more or less likely to succeed in general terms, mainly
> because
> > > the
> > > > audience is not an amorphous mass of automatons, but people with
> both
> > > > overlapping and contradictory attitudes, knowledge, etc. etc.
> > > >
> > > > Vincent
> > > >
> > >
> > > I heartily agree. I want to add something that all of you might find
> very
> > > interesting in regards to the above. The media industry took several
> to
> > > complete
> > > a study that studied the effect of advertising by actually following
> > > people
> > > around after they had been exposed to real advertising in their real
> > > lives.
> > > Here's what they found: there is very little correlation between what
> > > people say
> > > they remember of products with what they actually do in regards to
> that
> > > product. In other words, while they may not be able to SAY that they
> > > remember
> > > product X, they will nevertheless be more prone to buy that product if
> > > they have
> > > seen the advertising.
> > >
> > > That, of course, is how all research on the effect of advertising
> should
> > > be
> > > done, but it's too expensive. So what do they do instead? They still
> quote
> > > figures on how many people remember!
> > >
> > > That's a real story that indicates just how hard it is to study the
> > > effects of
> > > media. The advertising industry may say they study such effects, but
> it's
> > > really
> > > flim flam.
> > >
> > >
> > > ===============================================================
> > > This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> > > Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
> > > For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
> > > see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
> > >
> >
> > ===============================================================
> > This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> > Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
> > For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
> > see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
>
>
> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
> For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
> see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
>
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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