Side Deal Ads/ Banners / whatever

“I’m older than you and have better insurance.”

@Kidsandliz @werehatrack I think the one redeeming thing about Progressive ads is they make so many different ads and cover so many different situations/people/topics that they are an equal-opportunity mocker. And they usually don’t replay the same stupid ad several times an hour for months at a time like the prevalent insipid annoying ads (eek, just listening to a big Pharma ad now because I was typing instead of hitting the mute button. Think that ad has been out for 2 years already)

@Kidsandliz @pmarin @werehatrack
Well, in a few months we’ll be longing to return to the usual aggravating ads when we’re getting beaten into numbness by the incessant ultra-dramatic and bombastic political drek that’s coming soon.

@Kidsandliz That particular series of ads has been irritating me since day one. Glad I’m not alone.

@werehatrack

… the world we would like this to become

Unfortunately we can’t even agree on what that looks like, much less what humor should look like.

@brainmist As a former Mad Man (assistant) - it’s always a gamble. Ad companies get revenue based on reach, not conversion rates. Ads that hit 1000 people, get maybe 50 clicks, and 3 buys; but those 3 are what pay for the ad. So something like an ad campaign during (a 2 hour) sports show that is seen by (a million pairs of eyeballs), that hopefully scales to (50,000 engagements every ½ hour), which means about 3,000 sales. Say that a “sale” was a pair of 6-packs of New Beer+ ($15 total cost), the fuzzy math is: 3000 sales means $45,000 every ½ hour for 2 hours ($180,000 total sales). Let’s also say, of the $15 spent on 12 cans of New Beer+, only $3 (20%) go towards taxes, manufacturing, and distribution; that’s a remaining profit of $144,000. As an ad sales agent for New Beer+, I’d be offering $100,000 to the TV station, pocketing $10,000 commission, and still have $34,000 directly going to New Beer+ company coffers.

… But consumers? Paying for ads sounds silly.

@phendrick Skin shouldn’t be thick, people should stop insulting others.

@callow @phendrick Just my opinion, but I think too many people having too thin a skin is leading to many of the serious issues surfacing in the US today. It may be an unpopular opinion, but we have become way too soft and as a result some have never learned their limits and self control during their formative years, so we’re seeing way more instances of people going from 0 to 200% and willing to turn something like a simple insult into an assault. We can’t and never will be able to control how others treat us, but we can certainly control how we react to them.

KuoH

@callow @kuoh @phendrick Not sure if that’s thin skin or hair trigger; some people out there are just itching for a fight (be it justifiable or not).

@callow @kuoh @pakopako @phendrick

We can’t and never will be able to control how others treat us,

But companies should try not to deliberately insult a group of people using stereotypes.

@Kidsandliz

But companies should try not to deliberately insult a group of people using stereotypes

If they intend to reach a broad audience.
Anyone remember the Yo quiero Taco Bell ads?

@chienfou @Kidsandliz Re “Yo quiero Taco Bell”. I thought those ads were quite clever and should have not been offensive. They kept the Taco Bell name in front of me. I often thought to myself that I wanted a Taco Bell takeout, but usually quoted the Spanish.
But I also empathize with those who didn’t care for the “Frito Bandito” campaign.

@chienfou @Kidsandliz @phendrick My dual-citizen and green-card friends from Mexico all report that they looked on that Tcao Bell ad campaign favorably, even if they didn’t particularly care for Taco Bell’s food.

@chienfou @Kidsandliz @phendrick Honestly these days the only way for a corporation not to offend anyone is to say nothing at all. Even certain long standing names and images gets them criticized or cancelled. Aunt Jemima, Land O Lakes and numerous sports teams and mascots are just a few recent examples. I’m surprised Uncle Ben’s and Panda Express haven’t already been taken down.

KuoH

@Kidsandliz @kuoh @phendrick
That’s my point. All it takes is someone/anyone to get their panties in a wad. Ever read any of the Skippyjon Jones books? They were fantastic but got cancelled

@callow @kuoh @phendrick (Possible) hot take: if you’re calling it an insult, simple or not, it was lobbed at someone with intent to upset or offend them. An insult is an insult is an insult, and they’re never okay.

@callow @phendrick @PooltoyWolf Guess I should’ve phrased it better, but I meant too many people today are perceiving something as an insult, which might have been an accident or misunderstanding and are more than willing to retaliate immediately with an assault. Insults are going to happen in life, whether it’s just a passing snide remark or full on being called out to your face, if you’ve been sheltered all your life and have never learned to process and control your own emotional responses, then the results could be way worse than having learned through some experiences when you were younger. I’m far more concerned about being able to keep my self control than pointing my finger at the other person and telling them, hey you shouldn’t do that, which in some countries could be considered an insult in itself, especially if you’re not their parent or of some direct relation.

Kids learn good behaviors from watching, listening and if necessary, being disciplined by their parents while growing up. If you didn’t learn when you were young, it’s not likely to miraculously happen after you become an adult. “Back in my days” of growing up in the Carter, Reagan and Bush eras, there was way less of the outsourced pampered parenting and schooling that we see raising the recent generations, in which insulting behaviors would be the least of their problems. Now what were we talking about again…oh yeah,

TLDR If it’s just talk, walk away and grow thicker skin.

KuoH

@kuoh @phendrick @PooltoyWolf
If everyone just walked away then women would still be barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen. Minority races would paid slave wages if not actual slaves. No one has the right to insult others with impunity and no one should have to suffer insults in silence. Just because you don’t think it’s insulting doesn’t mean it isn’t. It cost nothing to respect the feelings of others.
Of course, assault is not an appropriate response.
“Back in your days” police, politicians, and other authoritative figures were blatantly racist, sexist, and bigoted.
Thank your favorite deity for thin skinned people who spoke up!

@callow @phendrick @PooltoyWolf It is the age old problem of balance and interpretation. Your right not to feel insulted ends at my right to say something, anything that may or may not actually be an insult, which is why the there are laws that impose collectively reasonable limits rather than just decree thou shalt hurl no insults what so ever. The world isn’t perfect and likely never will be, but the problem now is that the needle is tipping over way too far for the few, even at the detriment of all others in the long run. Many of those that spoke up back then understood how to reach their goal while preserving as much balance as possible and that favorable results take time, because good ideals must start young, not just with an appeal to deity. I dare say that ticktock and probably most of social media are not platforms for the dissemination of good ideals to the young, so should we ban all of it? There are certainly plenty on display there which could easily be construed as insults or insulting behaviors to say the least but who’s more to blame, the businesses or the parents who permit and facilitate access without guidance? /ComputingNextTangent

KuoH

@kuoh Not ban, call out. Like @Cerridwyn did with this post. And look what happened! A civilized discussion then the ad was changed.

@callow @Cerridwyn @kuoh One seldom improves the situation by becoming excessively hostile immediately. It’s a variation on the old maxim that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. I have a business associate who has developed a tendency to send me to negotiate with local hierarchies about things that he finds irritating because I don’t piss them off in the process.

@chienfou @Kidsandliz In my experience, there were two groups of people who were offended by the “Yo queiro Taco Bell” ads. One was the group that thinks that nobody in the United States should speak a language other than American English, and the other was the group that automatically takes offense at anything that they can construe as being derogatory to some group. The latter I consider to be the ones who are obsessed with being thin-skinned by proxy. They are often wrong. They were extremely wrong about the Taco Bell ads, which my ethnically Mexican friends all found very funny.

@mediocrebot
That’s cool that it depicted a female!

@chienfou @medz And with normal looking hands. The revolution is near!

@pmarin The propagandization and grooming of girls to accept the marginalization mandated as part of the patriarchal status quo has long been embedded, enshrined and enforced in our culture to such a degree that even today, much of our society still perpetuates those attitudes. They were even worse overall when I was young, but in certain segments, they have not yet changed at all. But I don’t need to tell you that. I just needed to say it because one does not change things by remaining silent. And even shifting one grain of sand on the beach is an action.

@pmarin @werehatrack In this country we seem to encourage only boys to go into science. This can be reversed. I was part of a group that did a study for a science enrichment program (at an electron beam accelerator facility). It was, during the school year, for 6th grade girls to try to stop the decline in the interest in science that ran all school year (we succeeded). They were there every day, all day for 1 week. We also ran, multiple times over the summer, summer sleep over programs for high school students that were 3 weeks long (this also succeeded) to encourage them to continue their interest in science and have a career in it (also succeeded). I ran the classes and activities, collected the data and did the stats (I did not design the program). The program involved a fair bit of physics, math, some biology and some chemistry, and for the high school students some programming. What they did was age dependent. The program was very successful at both levels.

@Kidsandliz
That’s really cool.
I don’t suppose anyone did a follow-up program to see how many of those sixth graders actually went to college for STEM careers? That would be interesting. I think the needle is shifting towards more females in STEM, though maybe not as fast as we’d like.

@dave thank you