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On Jan 21, 7:05 pm, "Ed Huntress" wrote:



Well, pard', the Supreme Court made it official today: Businesses and
unions
can spend as much as they want to for political campaigns, advertising,
and
so on. Any Congressman who makes a deal with them now can write his own
ticket.

We're for sale! How much money ya' got? We're not cheap, but the view is
great. You can see Russia from here!

--
Ed Huntress

Ye of little faith. Corporations can spend as much money on
advertising for products as they want . Yet somehow people manage to
think for themselves and don't blindly buy things because a company
spent a bunch of money advertising. The same applies to politics.
Advertising is not a magic potion. It does make people aware of
things, but it does not control their minds.

Dan, for around 15 years I lived with the LAP (McGraw-Hill), CARR (Cahner's)
and PIM (MIT/Harvard) advertising reports. You want to know how market share
relates to advertising expenditures? On the whole, it's a rising curve that
starts as a parabola, then straightens out, and finally tops out with a
plateau and then a sharp curve downward. Mostly it's a straight line, within
normal limits of expenditure. The correlation coefficient is over 0.7. In
some product categories, the plateau is reached at around $100 million/year.
And there's amazing consistency across product categories.

That's why US ad spending in 2007 was $279.6 Billion -- 2% of the US GDP.

It is called a "free market place of ideas". The good ideas will prevail.

Thanks. Were you a civics teacher? g It's called a propaganda machine; the
ideas pressed with the most money win.

Look at the last election. Hillary had all the money in the beginning,
but did not get the votes. Obama got elected, but will only get re-elected
if he does well.

As I said, the CC is over 0.7. If you want something meaningful, look at the
advertising spending of the winners versus the losers in a large number of
elections over a few election years.

--
Ed Huntress