I bet that if you have an iPhone or a Samsung or whatever else it might be – I don’t really care which brand we’re talking about here – you don’t use all the facilities that that phone can provide to you.
OK.
Advertising that tells us that if we do not have this latest phone or car or garment or whatever else it might be, then we will be an inadequate person.
OK.
Richard Murphy says:
June 1 2024 at 9:46 am
I only have updates because of the cameras – which I do use
At which point two possible explanations.
1) Spud is an inadequate fooled by advertising into constant purchases.
2) It’s another example of the antinomianism. You don’t need an iPhone but I, the Lord High Tax Denouncer, do. So there.
Given that this is Spud we can also embrace the power of “and”.
“I bet that … you don’t use all the facilities that that phone can provide to you”. No shit, Sherlock.
Not using all 4 sides of a cheese grater or every blade in a Swiss army knife doesn’t automatically mean you’ve been duped by the evil marketing overlords. Phones these days can do so much that I doubt that anyone uses every facility and that means nothing at all.
A year or so ago the Steve Jobs of Ely spent £1000s that he raised from his buy me a coffee hustle on the full suite of apple tech. Just so he looked the part of the cool professor while bashing out garbage words and taking pictures of ducks.
Does someone sleep in all the bedrooms in his underwhelming end of terrace house in Ely. If not has her been duped?
In all seriousness the cost saving of not including some of the features would be almost zero when offet against the efficiencies made in the standardisation process in their manufacturing. I believe all new Teslas can do the self driving thing, you just have to pay more for them to turn it on. Having two production lines, one with the self driving kit and one without, is less efficient than just bundling it in to all vehicles.
Another thing. Apple is well known to be one of the biggest tax “avoiders” out there.
How is the Murphy-cvnt able to square holding his tax grasping campaigner stance while buying their products?
I suppose he’s a special one, like Jose Mourinho.
I only have updates because of the cameras – which I do use
To take the selfies pollute his self-promoting material?
Back before the I left the UK – before the advent of smartfones – I asked some advice from a photographer pal did a lot of work for the Mail about what he’d recommend for a digital camera. The one I’d been using for work related shots was getting a bit long in the tooth. He recommended a 3Mp cost me about £70 would do all I needed. It had 2.5x telephoto expandable to 5x electronically. Still got it somewhere. He was, at the time, using a 14Mp back the Mail had had bought him at the cost of several grand. He reckoned the definition it produced was better than BW roll film. Quite capable of doing the magazine cover work he also did.
The camera in my current 150€ Motorola is 50Mp. Cameras in fones have long been far beyond the specifications any normal user needs. 10 y/o iPhones have image stablisation etc. If you do have the requirements you buy a proper camera. So yep, Spud’s been caught in the cvnt filter Apple spreads wide to catch tossers like him, whist sensible people pass through it without noticing.
He constantly writes articles like this. Amusing, because he’s one of the biggest victims of advertising around. Being clueless is the prime qualification.
@Isit
Yeah, I’ve little doubt he’s bought that ghastly box on its “executive” development because he believes it confers on him the status he seeks. I’m surprised he doesn’t keep a leased BMW on the driveway. Perhaps his credit record precludes it.
Epson famously produced a dot matrix printer, the MX80 if memory recalls, in a fast (for the early 1980s) business version and a slow, cheaper, consumer version.
The consumer version was the business version with the chip told to slow down the printing rate.
Phones these days (like many other things) are just computers, and pretty powerful ones at that, if a computer can do it then your phone can — if someone pleases to program it.
@BiGiP
That was common enough. Back then washing machines were sold with higher spin speed models costing more than those with slower spins. Being analogue the motor speed control circuit board had a variable resistor setting the speed. The only functional difference between the models was how far clockwise the variable resistor was turned.
“From each according to his abilities. To each according to a bitter misanthrope in Ely.”
As my phone is a Samsung builders phone from about 15 years ago, do I beat Spud in the reverse phone top trumps game, and thereby become Ruler of the Universe?
“Advertising that tells us that if we do not have this latest phone or car or garment or whatever else it might be, then we will be an inadequate person.”
It really doesn’t.
I’ve been an advertising copywriter for nearly 40 years ago, working in top agencies such as JWT and the Saatchi Group, and I’ve never written an ad that stated, or even implied, that people were stupid or inadequate if they didn’t buy whatever I was trying to sell. This is a straw man argument advanced by leftists who resent their social inferiors having choice and being able to spend their money on whatever they choose.
On the contrary, good advertising simply presents a product to its best advantage and suggests reasons why people might be interested in it. It’s generally not that difficult. If a product is extremely highly priced, you can go on the factory tour and talk about the manufacturing processes that make it so special. If it’s rather shoddy it will almost certainly be cheap, and you can promote it as the choice of the canny consumer who doesn’t want to waste money.
I’ve only ever once been completely stumped by a product – a washing machine brand called Zerowatt. It was the most expensive brand on the market, at a similar price point to Miele, and it had become notorious for flooding people’s kitchens. As such, the factory tour was out – I certainly wasn’t going to imply that it was superbly engineered when I knew it had serious failings. On top of all its other drawbacks, it also had a silly name.
Finally, after weeks of wrestling with the problem, I discovered in a piece of sales literature that it was the only washing machine on the market at that time with a curved fascia. The campaign focused on curves and promoted it as the washing machine for people who like curvy things.
The gist seems to be that modern consumerism is going to incinerate the planet. Why pick on smart phones though? Modern phones allow us to do more with less, to an insane degree. I don’t have to buy a phone, a desktop computer, a camera, a music player, dictaphone, ansaphone or all kinds of other gadgets because the one device just does everything. My phone is fairly new but the one that I had before was ancient.
Isn’t the 80-20 rule still a thing ? 80% of users use 20% of the features.
He won’t let me post, but the point I made was: the whole point of general purpose multiple use devices is that they are general purpose multiple use devices. That means they have a single body plan which makes them cheaper to make, cheaper to use, cheaper to maintain.
I don’t use SkySportsChannel on my television, so the argument is that there should be a different television made to watch SkySportsChannel, a different television made to watch TurnerMovies, a different television made to watch News24.
Bloke in Spain,
I recently bought a Moto Edge phone for about £250 and I just don’t want a better phone. It does everything I need. And I only paid that over a Moto G because of waterproofing.
I know there are some people who are using iPhones for filmmaking, and taking advantage of the pro features (Steven Soderbergh has shot a couple of movies with iPhones), but there aren’t that many. The Potato’s stuff could be filmed with a Moto G.
Stonyground, for the same reason that flying, which is a less than 2% rounding error in anthropogenic carbon emissions, is picked on as the bogeyperson of global climate disrupfumucationalism.
Jealousy, compounded by the fact that it is one less thing by which the worthy may differentiate themselves from the masses.
Do we want more iPhones or would we like more from the NHS?
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more absurd statement, and when it comes to Murphy I have seen a few. He’s had an issue with advertising , which he sees as inherently wasteful, for decades. Oddly it only extends to private sector
Advertising. The state must continually message the good that it does.
As it happens I would like fewer IPhones and considerably less political bullshit from the NHS- so abolition of all DIE, environmentalist and trans nonsense across all trusts. Is that an option??
Now that might sound like an odd opening to a video, but it’s a really important question because well, I bet that if you have an iPhone or a Samsung or whatever else it might be – I don’t really care which brand we’re talking about here – you don’t use all the facilities that that phone can provide to you.
For example, the vast majority of people do not use the cameras on their phones to the limit of their ability. Most, in fact, only use the forward-facing camera and not the backward one, which is the really good one. And I could go on and on and on about the ridiculous quality of these phones in comparison to what use we make of them.
I mean I expect rank stupidity but are we going to basically have the state take over the distribution of phones? How does anyone know what phone a person ‘needs’? Are they going to be audited and if they don’t use all their apps then their phone will be confiscated? Will it be a criminal offence to have too grand a phone?
I am a veteran of following the pronouncements of the Regime in Pyongyang and I genuinely don’t think I have ever heard anything as stupid as that from there. The man is a fucking lunatic.
Speaking as someone whose NHS hearing aids were both useless and unusable, but whose life and confidence have been transformed by the eyeHear dictation app on the iPhone, I know which one I’ve found to be a better use of my money.
Strange post from Iliam Dhone if he really has worked in the ad industry. The key to selling fashion products and a lot of consumer electronics are essentially fashion products, is convince the consumer if you don’t buy then you’re yesterday’s people & early uptake puts you on the leading edge. That’s how you sell a phone with constantly new features that hardly any who buy them use. It’s the way you get a woman to throw away a perfects serviceable pair of shoes to buy a new pair. Why designer labels. Why football clubs change their kit every few months. It’s one of the most powerful tools in marketing.
@WB The current Moto G battery doesn’t seem to last as long as the one they were doing 4 years ago. Which is why I bought that one. And I’ve noticed the current one’s battery life seems to have abruptly dipped after the latest Android update. But I’m still trying to permanently turn off the “features” Android insists are invaluable & are no doubt burning up the juice. It’s like whack-a-mole. They keep coming back. I’m going to try & get the old G to run on Linux, so maybe I’ll go back to it.
“How does anyone know what phone a person ‘needs’?”
Ever since he was bitten by a radioactive potato he has gained the fantastic power of spud-o-vision. This allows him to instantly determine what everybody should get. It also allows him to build strawmen higher than the tallest building. He stands ready to fight the evil forces of neoliberalism everywhere they manifest (in his own mind).
OT but advertising connected.
Netflix has just appraised me of the plotline to a film it’s streaming.
In order to save Paris from an international bloodbath, a grieving scientist is forced to face her tragic past when a giant shark appears in the Seine.
Yer what! Have to be a very small giant shark. The Seine’s mostly about 8 ft deep through Paris. Maybe it gets out & walks.
My phone offers
1. Phone calls.
2. Various flavors of texting.
3. Camera.
4. Data storage.
5. General computing power.
I use all of those things.
And no one is convinced they need a new phone every year. Indeed, phone makers spend a lot of money trying to convince people of that but the data show people still buy one every 2-3 years.
Finally, there *is* obsolescence in phones because the battery wears out. There’s a whole ‘right to repair’ issue around that but a phone really starts to be sluggish in the third year and beyond.
Incredibly that isn’t the nadir of the post:
And in that there’s a particularly important point. We massively over consume material items that we don’t really need that then go to waste in our current economy.
So we’ve now moved from assessing phones to assessing the entirety of a person’s
Consumption. I don’t even think the Chinese ‘Social Credit’ system is that ambitious
Why do we do that? Because we’re incentivised to do so by advertising. Advertising that tells us that if we do not have this latest phone or car or garment or whatever else it might be, then we will be an inadequate person. And, therefore we must go out of our way, and quite possibly go into debt, to secure whatever it is that is being advertised towards us.
So because there are people who are unable to resist temptation all advertising of things deemed to be ‘not useful’ is to be barred?? Interesting logic.
!And the point is, if we don’t need those things but are spending money on it, there is a very high possibility that something that we do need, but are not spending on, is not provided instead.
So every aspect of production and resources is the province of the state?? All income and expenditure has to be accounted for.:.
And what am I talking about? Well, look, we all know we’re not getting adequate health care at present.
The NHS needs even more money?? How surprising
We all know that young people are not being educated properly in the UK at present.
I think the last thing I’d spend money on was U.K. higher education – as the author shows
We all know that we have not got proper police forces, nor do we have a proper judicial system if ever they catch a criminal.
Perhaps if they stopped arresting people for ‘crimes’ like misgendering they might have more time??
We all know that there are inadequate prisons. !
An interesting politics slogan – you can’t have an IPhone because we need the money for prisoners. A big vote winner.
We all know that we’re not spending enough on the environment.
Perhaps if we abolished the COP Meetings we could redirect that money??
We all know so many other services that are failing – social care, the NHS, you name it – they’re all going wrong.
I’d actually agree here – but the idea that more money when taxation and expenditure are at their highest for five decades and the highest ever seems fanciful to say the least. Massive cuts and making people realise you have an obligation to take responsibility rather than simply claim ‘rights’ might be a start.
Why are they going wrong? Because politicians have decided, in the interest of big business, that there is a limit to the size of the state.
‘There is no limit to the size of the state’ – and yet people still question whether he is the embodiment of pure evil?
?However much we need the things that the state can supply, and which no one else can deliver to us in a cost-effective way, they’re saying, “No, we need iPhones, or Samsungs, or whatever else, or giant cars”, and my point here is, we’ve got to make a choice at some time.
I think the last time I saw a straw construction this large was ‘The Wicker Man’. As Bravefart said – this is significantly more ‘out there’ than Alex Jones or David Icke. Certainly the Higher education watchdog should remove his employers right to award degrees across the board.
He’s not wrong in a sense, V_P. People buy things they don’t need. Even the people who buy them would agree with that. But that’s people. They’ve always done it since people stopped actually starving. People didn’t need rocking great cathedrals in the C12th. The only way you’re going to stop people doing it is making them too dirt poor to afford it. Which does seem to be his plan.
What Spud really needs is a different public since this one’s so clearly failed him. I’d suggest he tries Mercury, just on the edge of the dawn line.
BiS
I’d agree with that. However, often there’s legit reasons for that. For example my ex- wife often used the ‘automatic order’ feature on Ocado without thinking so we ended up with 6 of the same sauce or 5 bottles of Ribena. Does this imply that you’d have an army of people assessing your ‘needs’ and assigning what food and other goods you need on a weekly basis?
In fairness this is the vision of Agenda 2049 but I doubt Murphy has enough brain to grasp that
@bloke in spain
As I stated, I’ve been a copywriter since 1986. I’m not sure why you’re implying I might be making that up – what would be the point?
The argument you’re putting forward is slightly different from the one I’m making.
In some cases. consumer electronics can indeed be marketed on the basis that you’re offering the newest and best solution. That isn’t quite the same as Mr Murphy’s original claim that “Advertising that tells us that if we do not have this latest phone or car or garment or whatever else it might be, then we will be an inadequate person”. I’ve never written an ad that implied, let alone overtly stated, anything like that, as good advertising is persuasive rather than manipulative.
As a case in point, when I worked on the Bang & Olufsen account I discovered that the metal for their speakers is polished using diamonds and the aluminium panels they reject for their televisions are used to form the bodywork of Audis. Those sorts of facts are much more persuasive in communicating the premium nature of the brand – and justifying the prices – than a generic campaign implying that you need to own B&O to have credibility as a person.
The problem with that list that V_P fisked so well is that there can never be enough money spent on them and so the left can always accuse the Tories, or even Labour of not spending enough.
Its almost a bidding war amongst the left to demand the NHS/education/social services etc needs more money and they will never define an amount that will satisfy them, which is why they should be at be challenged or ignored.
“However much we need the things that the state can supply, and which no one else can deliver to us in a cost-effective way, they’re saying, “No, we need iPhones, or Samsungs, or whatever else, or giant cars”, and my point here is, we’ve got to make a choice at some time.”
But his whole point is that “we” have chosen wrongly, so instead of “we’ve got to make a choice”, Murphy is going to make the choice for all of us.
Isn’t this just the tech version of Eoin Clarke’s ridiculous coffee rant, where he wanted to decide what type of coffee we all drink?
“ We all know so many other services that are failing – social care, the NHS, you name it – they’re all going wrong.”
Hmm, wonder what the common factor is that links all these failing services?
I own a B&O product, albeit inherited. It was bought my father. Who was as clueless about electronic equipment as a person could get. It was used for playing his Music For Pleasure Russ Conway album. He also bought their top of the range TV & video tape combo the price of a small car. The one had a motor drive would swivel it round. Despite my mother & him always occupying the same chairs & him never relinquishing his grip on the remote. He bought it precisely because it was a status product with B&O’s name on.. He also had a current year S model Merc to go to Sainsburys. I use the music player with its no longer sliding glass door, supposed to operate when approached, as an adjunct to my sound system since amplifier still kicks out.
I spend a lot of time with the top end smartphone’s target market. They buy them for status. The features attract them are an unmistakable “latest model” look & that it watermarks the model number in the corner of their selfies. (Same as Shakira’s got !!!) They haven’t a clue about any of the other’s. In fact one can assess their intelligence level by the fact that they’ve bought the phone. With some of the Apple/Samsung ranges it’s down with the more primitive invertebrates.
And if you believe that schlock about the aluminium panels you’ve never bought metal stock. I sharpen our kitchen knives with diamonds. So what? They’re dirt cheap. These are B&O advertising pitches?
To be fair, what % of potential B&O customers regularly go out and buy metal stock? Industrial diamond use is pretty much ubiquitous but it would have been no good Lada playing on the fact they used them as a sales pitch, would it? It wouldn’t be, in the consumer’s eyes, congruent with their brand. It would be congruent with B&O’s. Yes it relies on the public’s lack of basic knowledge, but how many people really understand how stuff gets made anymore? What % of people have even stepped inside a factory? So it sounds like a perfectly viable sales pitch to me. Just needs to sound impressive enough to the people you’re trying to sell to. “No one in this world, so far as I know, … has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people” as Mencken actually wrote.
B&O like Apple products are Veblen goods. It’s their high price that makes them exclusive and therefore desirable.
All the marketing twaddle does is to massage the ego of people so they feel happy about being ripped off.
There’s little an iPhone can do that a ‘droid phone can’t for half the price, or that an Apple iMac can do vs. Windows.
It’s rampant in the Hi-Fi world where they rave about £2000 interconnects as if the copper is any different from a £20 cable. (digital too!)
Just had a moment of contemplation over my comment. Specifically about exclusivity.
Apple is actually one of the most successful companies ever, worth literally a trillion dollars. They’ve done this by selling an immense amount of product.
So in reality, they’ve played a blinder with their marketing, convincing everyone who buys into their product, how awesome and special and elite they are.
Just like everyone else.
This is a perfectly reasonable comment. I also upgrade my iPhone for the camera. The other bits are OK, but the camera is the real value. Upgrading every three years costs me less than I used to spend on film and processing and has the added benefit in the last couple of generations of producing outstanding video as well. Between the camera and music, I’d probably buy one even if you couldn’t make phone calls with it.
bis,
I spend a lot of time with the top end smartphone’s target market. They buy them for status. The features attract them are an unmistakable “latest model” look & that it watermarks the model number in the corner of their selfies. (Same as Shakira’s got !!!) They haven’t a clue about any of the other’s. In fact one can assess their intelligence level by the fact that they’ve bought the phone. With some of the Apple/Samsung ranges it’s down with the more primitive invertebrates.
Advertising to this segment isn’t about convincing them need a better/faster widget, they’re going to buy the latest phone come what may, its about convincing them they’ll look cooler being seen with your phone rather than your competitors because thy are trend setters for a larger segment.
The more people in those 2 segments the better as far as I’m concerned because I buy 2 to 3 year old models when the time comes to buy.
BlokeinBrum,
Apple’s real skill was making their early product really easy for non techies like my wife. I was forever doing tech support on her Windows laptops but once she switched to a MacBook everything just worked and the same for her iPhone. It really isn’t worth the effort moving her on to a new OS and I’ll admit I can’t be bothered switching from Apple phones and tablets because of the effort of finding and installing all the apps, including the ones I’ve paid for. I also like all the feature like app and data sharing.
You’ve just described Sharktopus! https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1619880/
I’ve used Android and iPhone over the last couple of decades. I’m currently using iPhone because my last Android phone (a Google model with no extra OEM crap applied) was incredibly unreliable. It’s part of why I believe all the decent programmers have left Google in the last 6 or 7 years, and their replacements have been head-hunted from Microsoft: the quality of their products has nose-dived into the ground. Or maybe it wasn’t Microsoft, maybe they recruited from Boeing.
I use Linux and Mac, I refuse to allow Windows to connect to my network. One thing that Windows can do well that a Mac can’t is BSOD, but I don’t need that anyway.
I hung on to my Amiga for a long time before moving on to a PC. I loath windows and all it stands for with the intensity of a thousand suns. Sadly by hook or by crook, Microsoft won the pc wars, and now there’s little choice.
I’m old enough to remember when America had the opportunity to break up Microsoft’s monopoly but chickened out. Could have been $$$ which swayed them at the time, but more likely that it suited the NSA and American intelligence that every business on the planet was using an OS that they had access to.
Similar situation with Android,
I would prefer a diverse OS landscape, but with the likes of Nokia, Psion, Blackberry consigned to the dustbin of history, that chance has passed too.
Early Apple started out targeting the DTP crowd then spread out to become the PC of choice for ‘creatives’, largely thanks to Steve Jobs prescient strategic vision. I understand why people use Macs & iPhones, but it necessitates buying in to the Apple way of doing things. For people like me who have our own ideas of how things ought to be, Apple is too much of a straightjacket.
After seeing what Microsoft’s next OS is like though, I think I will be jumping ship to Linux for my next pc.
@BlokeInGermanyInPortugal: indeed, and IBM used to sell (for a LOT) an “upgrade” to the S/38 (showing my age now!) which consisted of removing the jumper that made it run slower.
True story.
Given the extent of government snooping and corporate overreach, and how much libertarians dislike it, bit surprised more people on here aren’t adopting OpenBSD or at least FreeBSD. Or GhostBSD for the ease-of-use lovers. Linux is in the process of getting Microsoft-ized by Red Hat (and Canonical if you use Ubuntu). The situation on phones is worse still, of course. And even once you’ve sorted an operating system out, there’s the software and the “services” that want you to outsource their data to them. It’s a bugger isn’t it?
Didn’t Bernie Sanders similarly make a point about “Too many brands of deodorant, there should be just one”. Not sure how the “but I’m allergic to x” crowd would go with that one.
But isn’t that the whole point of the exercise?
Spud sees himself as a member of the elect (bar the unelected bit), but with the repeal of Sumptuary Laws he has no means of differentiating himself from the hoi poloi or (god forbid), those in trade.
Thus his desire to impoverish us all through taxation with his Spudliciousness as Lord High Tax Denouncer, a roll for which the full Apple suite is absolutely essential.
Sharks & lions (with or without lasers) are too good for him.
Feet first into a potato peeler.
IBM used to sell (for a LOT) an “upgrade” to the S/38 (showing my age now!) which consisted of removing the jumper that made it run slower
This was true of most ‘mainframe’ computer lines (and not just IBM, either). Manufacturers would offer a range of (say) 8 machines of varying levels of power, but they were actually two physically different models fitted with a couple of dipswitches that ‘slugged’ them to varying degrees. This offered several advantages – the manufacturer only had two different models to produce rather than 8, and on-site upgrades were swift, easy and painless (and highly profitable).
In those days. an engineer came in from the manufacturer once a week to carry out ‘preventive maintenance’, which included a lengthy test suite covering all possible instructions against all memory locations. Naturally, the engineers knew they could run the test suite much more quickly by setting the machine to its fastest speed and then ‘slugging’ it back when they’d finished. It didn’t take our computer operations staff long to spot where the ‘hidden’ switches were, which proved very useful when a long weekend’s workload could be compressed into half a day.
The iPhone has a lot of features because most people don’t like to peruse enormous lists of features checking off “I want this and this but not that” when they but something.
They also don’t like to think “Oh, if I’d spent a bit more I could have that feature, that I didn’t know existed but now I would use it if I had it.”
It’s like cable TV unbundling (back when cable was a thing). People said they wanted it, but they didn’t really – they just wanted something cheaper.
Streaming seemed to unbundle things. There’s a lot of streaming services out there. Who’s actually making money streaming? Netflix, and only Netflix. Maybe.
Or for that matter, look at the automobiles with addons that you subscribe to. Those are massively unpopular. Admittedly mostly because the hardware’s already there – but people buy lots of software where it’s all in one download and the only difference is the software key.