It Pays to Advertise

There is reason to believe that most dollars spent on advertising are wasted. Even so, if you can do the advertising inexpensively or free, it helps you succeed in whatever market you are in.

It is 1977. I take a shot at playing no limit lowball poker at a card room near my school. An experienced player shows a busted draw fairly early on. Not long later, he scoops a large pot with a good hand, and quips, “It pays to advertise.” He received more action with the good hand because he had been caught bluffing earlier.

It is 2022. Everywhere we do business seems to want us to join their membership program, collect points, and “earn” discounts of various kinds. They may mail or email coupons that will soon expire, or offer “cash” usable only at their store. Either way, we have to spend more money with them or lose the benefit. All the MBAs who cook up these programs attended class the day they covered the study that showed that humans are more motivated to avoid loss than they are by potential gain. I have friends who seem obsessed with collecting points and miles. To me, they are more trouble than they are worth. They still rope me in though, by requiring at least my phone number in order to get the advertised price.

It has often been noted that its hard to profit from the idea of eating whole food, plant-based. You can’t patent broccoli, sweet potatoes, or lentils. Monsanto has patented their brand of RoundUp ready corn, but that is another topic altogether. Instead, people write books, create immersive retreats, and even market packaged, processed meals. Absent a patent, they create a brand, even if the brand has little to offer. They shoot YouTube videos or promote a blog, hoping for advertising revenue. Bisquick is a brand of pancake mix we had in my childhood home. It saved the busy mother from having to mix flour with baking powder, salt, and sugar. People pay a premium for that. Nowadays, there is even a “paleo” pancake mix. Did Neanderthals eat pancakes? I prefer my homemade fluffy pancakes.

Dr. Mark Hyman has invented, wrote a book about, and promotes a hybrid buzzword. He says it is the best of paleo diet and vegan diet. One guess what he calls it. I see no reason for it, except to sell his book. If you want to be “veganish” but still eat some meat, do you really need a book to justify it?

Brands, books, and programs become part of the noise, competing with the full spectrum of weight-loss, diet, nutrition, and fitness offerings in our free market economy, from genuine value to complete scam. It’s hard for the besieged consumer to separate the whole wheat from the gluten-free chaff. I was so curious about a weight loss program that I signed up for just so see what it was.

If you need revenue, it pays to advertise, but most of your ad spend may be wasted. Google and Facebook have noticed my interest in plant-based eating, so they bombard me with ads for things their algorithms judge to be related. Some of them are hilariously opposite to what I might be interested in. For example, I get ads from “doctors” promoting their brand of bone broth, or their book recommending against eating beans. These amount to free entertainment, and demonstrate the lameness of the pattern matching that chose to show them to me. When programs like Noom post an ad and FaceBook deems it worthy to show to me, that creates an opportunity for me to experiment. I comment with a link back to this blog. Sure enough, people who weren’t looking for it see it there, and some of them click the link and read the page. I do this only when the page is a valid comment, in my estimation.

Fortunately for us both, I have nothing to sell you. I’m not particularly interested in building the readership of this blog, but I hope you find it interesting, even enough so to share. I don’t take ads, and I’m not a leader, so there is no pressure to collect followers. I suspect we are not far from a future in which automation and leveraging of machines will make it possible to meet basic needs by exerting much less individual effort than it did throughout my life so far. Most people will have much more leisure time. We will spend it producing content of various kinds to entertain and educate each other. There is so much talent out there! If one wants to garner exceptional wealth in that way, it will be more possible than ever. And it will require creating a personal brand. It pays to advertise.

I’m not on a deadline. There is no requirement for me to come up with something to say on schedule. There are plenty of vegan blogs that give you reasons to should stop eating animals, and offer recipes you may find intriguing. This is not one like that. Since it is commonplace to joke about how annoying vegans are, and since I am not a vegan, this blog is for me to record my own experiences and takes on events, that I think are pretty different from yours, while still being relatable. Eating whole-food, plant-based is one way I am not like most Americans, but there are others. We all eat everyday, so it’s a good lens to view life through. If I ever lose my memory or have curious grandchildren, these posts will come in handy.