[scroblart]

It is doing the great and worthy work of connecting consumers with the products they desire.

[_bxg1]

The problem is with global brands that continue to advertise anyway. You can make the "discovery" argument for upstarts and niche businesses, but when Coke or Exxon are advertising to me, there is no pretense of giving me information I didn't already have. At some point it's purely about associating one's product with vaguely positive imagery and embedding it just a little bit deeper into everyone's consiousness. No end-consumers benefit from that.

[drongoking]

I think this statement satisfies a working definition of irony: about half the audience is in on the joke, and the other half earnestly believes it. I guess that's also true of trolling. Kudos, I suppose.

[edflsafoiewq]

There is probably some component of that in advertising, but most of it is about selling people Thneeds.

[na85]

That's neither great nor worthy.

A truly good product sells itself. All advertising is just manipulation.

[OmarShehata]

"A truly great product sells itself" is one of the most persistent myths engineers believe.

I don't understand how people can still believe this when it's so obviously false. It's a nice story, that if you make something great you'll get what you deserve. That sounds fair, but there's no reason to believe the market works this way.

A "truly great product" that no one (or not enough people) know about will go out of business and disappear.

Good advertising is just communication.

[mindcrime]

A truly good product sells itself.

That's completely absurd. How can a product "sell itself" if nobody knows it exists, or knows how great it is? How do they find out those things? Well, in part, by advertising.

I heartily agree that some advertising is manipulative and anti-social... but I can't buy this "all advertising is just manipulation" stuff.