No marketing team would willingly do this and it's insane to think otherwise.

▲ shakna 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Cambridge Analytica was an experiment run by a marketing team. I wouldn't say marketing will always side on ethics.

Propaganda is, and always has been, a subset of marketing aimed at shifting public perception. It would be wild to assume it never happens.

▲ JumpCrisscross 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> Cambridge Analytica was an experiment run by a marketing team. I wouldn't say marketing will always side on ethics

The argument isn't against ethics. It's about self interest. Amazon bought the Super Bowl ad to sell Nest units.

"Unwitting" is correct. There are no lizard people coordinating our march towards dystopia. Just individual people who will–like me–read this article, think we should do more, and then probably do nothing.

(If you want a realistic conspiracy, Amazon may have greenlit the spot with an eye towards an audience of one or two in D.C.)

	▲	shakna 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I do not see the difference, between influencing policy by targetting "one or two", or a greater mass of people. Both serve the same goals, in a different manner. Both require the same choices by marketing - active and with conscience aforethought.
	▲	areoform 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		`There are no lizard people coordinating our march towards dystopia. Just individual people who will–like me–read this article, think we should do more, and then probably do nothing.` There doesn't have to be an explicit conspiracy for a conspiracy to emerge. Conspiracies can be spontaneous, organic emergent behavior. For example, the killing of Ken McElroy; an entire community decided to spontaneously kill someone and then decided to cover up the crime collectively (and - also - spontaneously) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_McElroy It's very much possible for people to brand the surveillance state as cute; and for consent for a surveillance state to spontaneously emerge / be generated from the attempts of marketers trying to make the Ring dystopia cute.

▲ whycome 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Insane is a bit hyperbolic. The history of marketing is full of grand mistakes that seem absurd in hindsight.

	▲	parineum 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		OP was suggesting this wasn't a mistake. They are suggesting it's a win for Amazon, even with the backlash, because it frames the technology the way they want to.

▲ V__ 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Of course, they would. If the administration asked Bezos, and he gets a benefit out of it. He will task his marketing team to come up with something which tries to frame it in a positive light. Knowing that even if a few people make a stink this will blow over eventually and when it rolls out, he can always say it is just about puppies and neighborhood security. Nobody cares.

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JumpCrisscross 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> If the administration asked Bezos, and he gets a benefit out of it. He will task his marketing team

On what planet would the ask be marketing copy versus straight access?

	▲	V__ 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I meant that the admin would ask Bezoz for the surveillance, and he would tell his marketing team to find a frame which makes the surveillance look good.

▲ Forgeties79 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

And yet this went up. I understand it’s easy to just say “marketing teams don’t understand anything,“ but I have worked with many and they are incredibly sensitive to negative feelings/reactions. They get it wrong but they tend to air on the side of caution which means the vast majority of the time they avoid situations like this incredibly intentionally.

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Intermernet 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>they tend to air on the side of caution

Completely off topic, and for future reference, it's "err" not "air".

Completely fine mistake, stupid homophones and all. Just thought you'd like to know.

Also, these things happen to me all the time if I use voice dictation. I don't trust it because of edge cases like this.

	▲	Forgeties79 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Voice to text, should’ve proofread better

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JumpCrisscross 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> they get it wrong but they tend to air on the side of caution

Then this guy [1] walks into the room and says no, be bold, who could possibly object to my life's work, and he gets his way because he's signing the cheque.

[1] https://x.com/pavandavuluri/status/1987942909635854336

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staticassertion 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Marketing teams are constantly out of touch with the message they want to convey vs the message that gets conveyed. The creative team is usually not even talking to the other teams that would drive decisions like this - they almost exclusively are an isolated team (purposefully, like how engineers are often isolated from customers) that talks to a separate marketing team that then manages things like legal/compliance, which then bubbles up to other orgs etc.

The people creating ads are just organizationally isolated in most cases.

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Forgeties79 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I worked in that world for a solid decade as a “creative” (video production) and when it comes to the big dogs, that is absolutely not true. They are incredibly top down and have to review everything. We have to pitch our ideas even when we’re in the door. They have strict brand bibles we have to adhere to. Ones that gave us free rein were the exception, not the rule.

Sometimes it was for no other reason than a bunch of people in house felt they needed to justify their existence, but regardless that’s how it was 90% of the time.

	▲	staticassertion 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I feel like what you're saying is compatible. I'm not suggesting that things aren't top down or that you wouldn't have brand guidelines, that's actually exactly what I'm suggesting. I just mean that there is organizational isolation between creative teams and other teams, just as there is organizational isolation between engineering and other teams. So it is unsurprising to me that a creative team might have been given brand guidelines and a goal, like "hey we want to sell this, we want people happy with this" (much more concretely, obviously) and that could lead to this sort of ad, and I think that's probably more plausible than the team going "we're going to psyop everyone into surveillance statehood".
	▲	esafak 35 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Are any of these brand bibles public?

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throwawayqqq11 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> on the side of caution which means the vast majority of the time they avoid situations like this

They'll avoid negative perception because this is their job, the message is still arbitrary.

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tw04 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> I have worked with many and they are incredibly sensitive to negative feelings/reactions.

And yet there are countless examples that show the exact opposite.

This made it through one of the largest marketing budgets in the world…

https://youtu.be/uwvAgDCOdU4

	▲	Forgeties79 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		All of y'all keep saying variations of this yet the whole point is it’s the exception to the rule. The vast majority of ads aren’t controversial. That’s why it’s such a big deal when one is. It’s newsworthy and everyone has an opinion on that one ad.