"Fake-Out" Commercials rot your brain

[Paelos]

Is anyone else finding this new fad in advertising really really stupid. I see tons of these commercials where they are trying to fake out real people on camera to prove a point about their product. Some of them just annoy me, like the Microsoft Mojave thing, the Coke v. Coke Zero lawyer adds, and the Hardees restaurant burger ads.

One recently actually made me have a WTF moment. Pizza Hut runs these dumbass ads where they serve food in a "high-end" restaurant and then reveal it to be Pizza Hut. I'm sure you've seen them if you ever watch TV without DVR. The most recent one is them serving lasagna to actual Italians in Italy, and they all love it. WHAT?!?! I didn't really ever believe the commercials were real before, but that's just taking the concept from unlikely to just ridiculous. These people have access to the most fabulous pasta in the world, and they rave about Pizza Hut mass produced lasagna? Would they love Stouffer's as well, because it's about the same. One guy even compares it to his mother's. No, just no. If his mother actually saw the ad, she would declare vendetta on her own son for the insult.

I know advertisers think we are stupid, but this is laughable.

[HaemishM]

Advertisers don't think you're stupid. They have concrete proof, based on copious amounts of research, that you, me and everyone in America is clincally and terminally stupid.

[Paelos]

Advertisers don't think you're stupid. They have concrete proof, based on copious amounts of research, that you, me and everyone in America is clincally and terminally stupid.

And yet, even in our moronic state of barely being able to put our pants on and feed ourselves with utensils, I still don't think we believe they convinced a bunch of real Italians that Pizza Hut lasagna doesn't taste like processed garbage.

[HaemishM]

And yet the stuff sells. Both myself and my wife like it, and she's a real Italian who cooks damn well.

Of course ad men don't think EVERYONE will buy it. They don't even have to convince you they are being genuine. They just want to get you to consider Pizza Hut pasta when you are hungry and want something delivered.

[Paelos]

Yes, but you don't think that if people question that they are probably full of shit that the sale pitch won't work? Wouldn't a campaign that's less out there, ie-Italians living abroad not being pissed off that they just praised Pizza Hut, be more effective.

Hell, I like food ads. Taco Bell owns me when they come out with something new. Still, I never actively questioned a Taco Bell ad because they are supposed to be stupid. This is fake stupid mascarading as reality stupid.

[Sky]

Yes, but you don't think that if people question that they are probably full of shit that the sale pitch won't work?

So....hard...to.....stay.....good....

[SnakeCharmer]

Thing is, these commercials have evidently stuck with you, and have you talking about it.  Now, you've put the idea of Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Coke, Microsoft, Hardees, and Stouffers into X number of heads to be discussed further.

So, honestly, it did it's job.

[HaemishM]

Also, you just upped those brands Google rankings.

Welcome to the machine, monkey boy.

[MrHat]

Eh, if Italians like it, I might as well try it.

[Yegolev]

Yes, but you don't think that if people question that they are probably full of shit that the sale pitch won't work?

So....hard...to.....stay.....good....

Shush.

[Teleku]

Your talking about them.  Thats aaaaaaaallllllll they wanted.  You've just brought up the topic of Pizza Hut Lasagna to a bunch of other people, who are now discussing it.  The absolute only point of advertising is to get you to remember the product/brand name.  Any method they can use to achieve that goal is OK.

[Azazel]

[apocrypha]

Huh? You watch adverts on TV? Why? That's what remote controls were invented for.

I haven't watched a TV advert for about 20 years now I think, no joke. Mind you we have about 1/4 the amount of ads on UK ad-supported channels that you do in the US and we have several license-funded channels (i.e. only have adverts for themselves on). Oh and I don't actually watch broadcast TV at all any more, but even so.

There's just no reason at all to watch ads any more and I'm sorry to say I have no sympathy for your annoyance with shitty ads when you could so easily just not watch the fucking things.

[Merusk]

Ad breaks are on pretty consistent schedules in the states.  Even with a remote you find you're just flipping from ad to ad more often than not. 

[apocrypha]

Then get up and go and do something else for the 5-10 mins of the ad breaks. Walk up & down the stairs, do your bit to stave off the heart attack/bad back/etc. Make a cup of tea. Have a piss. Talk to your pets, whatever.

ALL adverts are bad for you! Seriously, once I decided that I didn't want to see them any more cos I hated them it was so easy to do. And I#m sure someone will chip in any inute now about how I'm stealing but watching stuff without adverts. I say fuck off. I buy plenty of dvd's and cd's. Suck my cock advertisers. Actually if they started doing that I'd start watching ads again tbfh. 

[Yegolev]

I zip past ads on TV.  The most time I spent enduring an ad recently was the XPS ads in FEAR.

[WindupAtheist]

Doesn't anybody remember that Penn & Teller's Bullshit episode where they were serving people in a fancy restaurant gourmet water, and the people were saying how good it was and commenting on the different qualities of different kinds of waters?

Meanwhile it was all coming out of the exact same garden hose in back?

People will rave about anything if you stick a camera in their face, and the Italians who went "Thisa pasta, it isa shit! Geta out of my country witha your disgusting food, Americans!" probably didn't make it into the commerical anyway.

[apocrypha]

It's an aspect of the placebo effect if you think about it.

It's been well demonstrated that certain drugs (e.g. painkillers) *are* more effective if the recipient thinks they're more expensive. It's been shown that the more procedures and paraphernalia associated with a treatment then the more effective it is. There was one study that possibly showed that an anti-ulcer drug became less effective after a new, and supposedly better, drug was released, despite neither the ulcers nor the formulation of the original drug having changed.

Placebo effects are a fascinating area that really needs more quality research, and it's the basis of a LOT of marketing.

[schild]

People will rave about anything if you stick a camera in their face, and the Italians who went "Thisa pasta, it isa shit! Geta out of my country witha your disgusting food, Americans!" probably didn't make it into the commerical anyway.

There is so much fat and butter and butter in that fucking Pizza Hut shit that it probably tastes like a million dollars.



Even the fattest of bastards shouldn't be eating this shit. You're better off wolfing down 4 bowls of fried tofu ramen and a 2 liter of Hawaiian Punch.

To note: I have eaten pizza ONCE since my diet over a year ago, the day I moved into Austin because I was sick of driving. I've eaten pasta ONCE because it was a lamb thing I just couldn't pass up. Also, what's new? Commercials have been like this forever.

[Merusk]

570 calories for 1/4 an order?  Shiiiiiiiiit.  Now I'm tempted to go one lunch hour just to see how many people order and eat a whole lasagna themselves.

[schild]

570 calories for 1/4 an order?  Shiiiiiiiiit.  Now I'm tempted to go one lunch hour just to see how many people order and eat a whole lasagna themselves.

When I was doing all sorts of research after my dieting, I found that the best way to cut calories out of any meal (say, a hamburger) is to just not get cheese. The bun is better than the cheese anyway and has about the same number of calories. I'm still haven't gained weight out of the bracket I wanted to stay in 225-235 but I'm always somewhere near the middle (for the record, after I got healthy after my surgery, I was about 229). I'll exercise more after I get my shit back together, but yea, food is easy if you're not a goddamn idiot. And anything from Pizza Hut, Domino's or Papa John's is basically built for damned idiots. >_<

[Venkman]

Ad breaks are on pretty consistent schedules in the states.  Even with a remote you find you're just flipping from ad to ad more often than not. 

I don't start watching anything until 20 minutes in, if I'm watching TV at all. That way you just fast-forward through the commercials.

Personally though, I really haven't found anything sitting on the couch for other than the Wii, and even that's rare. Nowadays if I can't fast-forward through something in a browser window, I'm probably not interested in the series anyway.

[UnSub]

It's an aspect of the placebo effect if you think about it.

It's been well demonstrated that certain drugs (e.g. painkillers) *are* more effective if the recipient thinks they're more expensive. It's been shown that the more procedures and paraphernalia associated with a treatment then the more effective it is. There was one study that possibly showed that an anti-ulcer drug became less effective after a new, and supposedly better, drug was released, despite neither the ulcers nor the formulation of the original drug having changed.

Placebo effects are a fascinating area that really needs more quality research, and it's the basis of a LOT of marketing.

It's called sensation transference. People transfer the aesthetics to the actual quality of the product / service being consumed.

Easiest way to show it in action is to buy a whole range of beers of a similar type, from the cheap junk to the most expensive import. Get someone else to poor them into unmarked glasses. Try to tell the difference without being able to see the can / bottle they came in. With the exception of beers with distinct attributes in the category (e.g. a honey beer where the rest are all lagers, for instance), you probably won't be able to differentiate that well.  

If you are an expert in a field, you are probably more immune to sensation transference since you have greater experience in differentiating things based on consumption. However, most people aren't experts.

[Paelos]

You can do the same thing with wine. We had a wine tasting over Christmas with the family. The top ranked bottle was about $30. The $100+ bottle came in 5th out of 12 on a blind test.

Still, the $10 bottle of red did come in last. There are just some things you can't cover up.

[NowhereMan]

My friend's dad made a game out of that for his family. Any time they had wine (most of the time) the label was covered and they had to guess country, region and grape. They're all fairly good at wine tasting needless to say.

[apocrypha]

I remember an episode of the Food & Drink programme (UK general food TV show) some years ago where they got the poncy wine aficionado presenters to blind-taste wines ranging from £3 to £100+ per bottle.

To their credit they didn't gloss over the fact that there was pretty much zero correlation between their taste ratings and the wine costs, despite them all defending the ridiculous prices of some of the wines.

[Paelos]

The funny thing about wine is that beyond a low end threshold of say, $20 a bottle for red & $10 for white, it's all about drinking what you like. For example, some people consider a high priced Bordeaux to be awesome, while I personally wouldn't pay money for any Bordeaux, top end or not.

The prices aren't really set by their taste at all. It's set by supply, time involved in the process, the region, the taxes, the vintage year, the growing conditions, and the vineyard's prestige. None of it is really about taste, other than the link between taste and prestige.

[MahrinSkel]

If you are an expert in a field, you are probably more immune to sensation transference since you have greater experience in differentiating things based on consumption. However, most people aren't experts.

Does the phrase "New wine in old bottles" ring any bells?  Somehow, when put to the test, "connoisseurs" of just about anything that are robbed of the cues, or given misleading ones, consistently turn out to be completely full of shit.  Whether it is pronouncing a 20 year old wine in 80 year old bottles to be far superior to the more modern vintages, or not being able to tell the difference between high-end A/V cables costing hundreds of dollars and lamp wire from Home Depot, if you run a double-blind test, they fail miserably.

There are maybe a handful of people with the taste buds (or eardrums, or visual acuity, or whatever) to actually perceive the differences.  Maybe.  And a whole fucking bunch of over-educated poseurs desperately hoping to be accepted as one of those mutants.

--Dave

[UnSub]

Malcolm Gladwell's Blink deals with how experts can instinctively see things that other people can't, even if they can't explain it. It starts with a story of a major art purchase that had passed a lot of tests before one expert took one look and said, "Something isn't right".

But yes, a lot of "experts" might know a lot about the presentation of something but little through its actual consumption or when seeing it at work.

[Fabricated]

If you are an expert in a field, you are probably more immune to sensation transference since you have greater experience in differentiating things based on consumption. However, most people aren't experts.

Does the phrase "New wine in old bottles" ring any bells?  Somehow, when put to the test, "connoisseurs" of just about anything that are robbed of the cues, or given misleading ones, consistently turn out to be completely full of shit.  Whether it is pronouncing a 20 year old wine in 80 year old bottles to be far superior to the more modern vintages, or not being able to tell the difference between high-end A/V cables costing hundreds of dollars and lamp wire from Home Depot, if you run a double-blind test, they fail miserably.

There are maybe a handful of people with the taste buds (or eardrums, or visual acuity, or whatever) to actually perceive the differences.  Maybe.  And a whole fucking bunch of over-educated poseurs desperately hoping to be accepted as one of those mutants.

--Dave

I was about ready to point out that $7,000 or whatever speaker wire thing that was so awful that the Randi Foundation put up a bounty on it, but you effectively already did.

What just hit me is that I'm actually seeing all of this shit from my business and marketing classes being put into use with the latest wave of commercials. I still consider 99% of it retarded however.

If you can't compete on price against other 'brand competitors' you have to find a way to differentiate your product and one of those ways is to do taste testing and the like. Also, who forgot to mention the WhopperVirgins thing?

[NiX]

570 calories for 1/4 an order?  Shiiiiiiiiit.  Now I'm tempted to go one lunch hour just to see how many people order and eat a whole lasagna themselves.

Fuck that, look at the sodium! That's deadly amounts right there. Jesus Christ no wonder obesity is becoming such a problem.

I've been to a Pizza Hut once in my life and I had a sundae. Most disgusting looking pizza I've ever seen.

[Sky]

The top ranked bottle was about $30. The $100+ bottle came in 5th out of 12 on a blind test.

"So why would anyone want the $100 bottle of wine?"

"Some people want to spend $100 on a bottle of wine."

My fiancee likes Pizza Hut now and again, I find it completely revolting. The flavor is awful and it's drenched in some horrid grease. Except for rising time on the dough, you can make pizza in less time than getting it delivered.

[Bunk]

I'll admit, I ordered a pan of the Marinara pasta from Pizza Hut to eat while watching the game. Wasn't that bad, and was convenient to have delivered, but next time I have the urge I'll just make it myself.

And yes, I ordered it despite being annoyed by the commercial where they serve it in a fancy restaurant.

[Merusk]

The top ranked bottle was about $30. The $100+ bottle came in 5th out of 12 on a blind test.

"So why would anyone want the $100 bottle of wine?"

"Some people want to spend $100 on a bottle of wine."

My fiancee likes Pizza Hut now and again, I find it completely revolting. The flavor is awful and it's drenched in some horrid grease. Except for rising time on the dough, you can make pizza in less time than getting it delivered.

Pizza Hut covers the bottoms of their pans in a layer of oil so its surface is fried dough, which is why the bottom is so fucking oily. Dough is what makes or breaks a good pizza, anyway, so I guess if you're into the whole cheeseburger-bacon-donut thing you'll love Pizza Hut.  Pappa Murphy's isn't too bad around here, but there's several local joints that are pretty damn good, too.  None can make dough like my parents used to, though, and I long for it.

[Yegolev]

The grease is why Pizza Hut is so awesome.