I keep a low effort fuzzy mental list of things that advertise themselves in ways I find unpleasant. They are the first thing I think of when I go to buy something, but the last thing I'll ever buy.
An example: The North Face edited wikipedia to change the photos of famous hikes/outdoorsy locations with people wearing North Face jackets with the logos visible.
Wow, I hadn’t heard of this before but it’s actually disgusting and despite this happening some time ago they just got added to my shit list of companies I won’t buy from.
“North Face Brazil’s CEO said in a statement. “With the ‘Top of Images’ project, we achieved our positioning and placed our products in a fully contextualised manner as items that go hand in hand with these destinations.””
5/2019: The North Face, in a campaign with advertising agency Leo Burnett Tailor Made, hatched a scheme to get its products to the top of Google Images by replacing Wikipedia photos with its own product placement shots.
In the promotional video, the company notes how all trips begin with an initial Google search, and often the first image that shows up is from a Wikipedia article about the destination. ...
The video brags about how North Face cleverly hacked the results to get its products to the top of Google search, “paying absolutely nothing just by collaborating with Wikipedia.” Only, it wasn’t a collaboration at all; it was a violation of Wikipedia’s terms of service for paid advocacy. ...
> An example: The North Face edited wikipedia to change the photos of famous hikes/outdoorsy locations with people wearing North Face jackets with the logos visible.
I hadn't heard of this but it is beyond sleazy in my book. Though, to the company's credit, I cannot fault for the actions of likely one or a small group of marketing people. Though I don't know, maybe, that type of idea had visibility all the way to the top.
It's not because I want something that I actually need something. I've wanted to build a UPS with lithium batteries for a while, my ads are all BMS, lithium cells, etc... This is definitely good for advertiser, but as one of the "people", all I see are hard-to-resist ads.
AliExpress is especially good at this for maker gear, I'll look at a reflow station and they will spend the next 6 months showing me reflow station ads until I cave and buy it, even though it is a purely frivolous purchase.
Personalized ads are extremely effective when your profile is good, but that does not mean that I don't see it as a bad thing.
I think personalized ads are way worse, because they entice you to buy products you actually want. Buying things is usually a bad idea, so personalized ads make this problem worse.
