<story><title>As lockdowns lift, media firms brace for an “attention recession”</title><url>https://www.economist.com/international/2021/07/01/as-lockdowns-lift-media-firms-brace-for-an-attention-recession</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>citizenpaul</author><text>&amp;gt; amazed that companies haven&amp;#x27;t figured out that advertisements are far less effective than they claim to be&lt;p&gt;I was once asked to do some stats on the marketing effectiveness of a company I was at.  Not my job but I really hated a couple of the people in the marketing dept so I went at the task anyway. I had long had suspicious that the advertising was mostly smoke and mirrors so I was glad to find out that I was right.  There was basically no correlation to sales and marketing spending, campaigns or anything they were doing. Except for a couple of basic common sense ad placements.  They were wasting millions a year.&lt;p&gt;What do you think happened?  Surprise happy ending. At the end of the year they shut down the marketing dept and outsourced the basic ad placements for a fixed fee.</text></item><item><author>grae_QED</author><text>Good. I hope they all go out of business. Their predatory practices are the reason why social media is so toxic. I&amp;#x27;m honestly amazed that companies haven&amp;#x27;t figured out that advertisements are far less effective than they claim to be and they are probably over spending on them [1].&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.kellogg.northwestern.edu&amp;#x2F;faculty&amp;#x2F;research&amp;#x2F;researchdetail?guid=ea2451f1-08f0-11e7-9872-0050569b3e41&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.kellogg.northwestern.edu&amp;#x2F;faculty&amp;#x2F;research&amp;#x2F;resear...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>spaetzleesser</author><text>On the other hand a good marketing person is worth gold. In one company I contracted at they had a marketing person who was super proactive and really worked social media , the press and other channels. She pretty much singlehandedly made the company into a known player in their field. Same probably goes for good salespeople. But there aren’t too many people of that caliber. Most just go through the motions.</text></comment>
<story><title>As lockdowns lift, media firms brace for an “attention recession”</title><url>https://www.economist.com/international/2021/07/01/as-lockdowns-lift-media-firms-brace-for-an-attention-recession</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>citizenpaul</author><text>&amp;gt; amazed that companies haven&amp;#x27;t figured out that advertisements are far less effective than they claim to be&lt;p&gt;I was once asked to do some stats on the marketing effectiveness of a company I was at.  Not my job but I really hated a couple of the people in the marketing dept so I went at the task anyway. I had long had suspicious that the advertising was mostly smoke and mirrors so I was glad to find out that I was right.  There was basically no correlation to sales and marketing spending, campaigns or anything they were doing. Except for a couple of basic common sense ad placements.  They were wasting millions a year.&lt;p&gt;What do you think happened?  Surprise happy ending. At the end of the year they shut down the marketing dept and outsourced the basic ad placements for a fixed fee.</text></item><item><author>grae_QED</author><text>Good. I hope they all go out of business. Their predatory practices are the reason why social media is so toxic. I&amp;#x27;m honestly amazed that companies haven&amp;#x27;t figured out that advertisements are far less effective than they claim to be and they are probably over spending on them [1].&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.kellogg.northwestern.edu&amp;#x2F;faculty&amp;#x2F;research&amp;#x2F;researchdetail?guid=ea2451f1-08f0-11e7-9872-0050569b3e41&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.kellogg.northwestern.edu&amp;#x2F;faculty&amp;#x2F;research&amp;#x2F;resear...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>grawprog</author><text>At my old shop we had a &amp;#x27;marketing&amp;#x27; person for a bit. She was supposed to run the social media profiles, keep the website updated, post ads and stuff.&lt;p&gt;Pretty sure she did literally actually nothing the entire time she was there until they started having her double up on reception duties on Saturdays.&lt;p&gt;She ended up leaving because she moved away somewhere. Needless to say, they did not hire another marketing person.</text></comment>