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Re: [ProgSoc] Drying up, hands or money



On Mon, 2007-08-13 at 18:24 +1000, Nicholas FitzRoy-Dale wrote:

> You only experience this improvement "just by 'pissing'" if you don't
> buy the product. Obviously if everyone followed your advice there would
> be no ads. Therefore you are relying on people to subsidise you. Your
> quality of life improvement is paid for disproportionately by those that do.

This ("there would be no ads") is actually not true.

The "Great Lie" of [untracked] mass-media advertising (that it works, or
at least that it is a worthwhile investment) can now be so conclusively
disproven by tracked media (think Google Adwords) that it can be said
with some confidence that the vast majority of untracked advertising
continues to be sold for the same reason that it always was:

- media sales people are good at persuading advertising purchasers that
they need to buy this unquantifiable thing (a) just in case or (b)
because their competitors are

and

- buying such advertising has become status quo; failure to do so is to
risk being blamed for other failures.

That is to say, untracked mass-media advertising occurs for the same
reason that it is necessary to get a formal risk-assessment performed
before replacing a washer on a leaky tap in said bathrooms; someone
somewhere is avoiding getting fired. That's really all. Whether you
choose to purchase the advertised products, or not, to publically
advocate them or diss them, or neither, is entirely irrelevant.

The relevant question is about what level of amenity, and at what cost,
the university's administration seeks to provide. When someone says
"we'll take over the provision and maintenance costs of your
hand-dryers, and pay you for the privilege, in return for the right to
diplay [appropriate, lawful] adertisments only on the surface of said
hand-dryers (vs., say, on the sides of university buildings)", the
relevant administrator would be crazy to say no, unless there were an
aesthetic policy discouraging or prohbiting such deals in the first
place.

Is such a policy desirable? Which outcomes that the university pursues
would justify such a policy? Should taxpayers be compelled to keep
university toilets advertising-free?

- Raz


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