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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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Coke isn't taking anything out of society, coke isn't making "society" drink 6 cans of coke in a day

This is exactly what advertising is; their billion-dollar marketing team would be very disappointed to hear that they're all, what, playing make-believe? The entirety of marketing and advertising is just a big ineffective scam, and no-one has ever noticed?

Coke might not be "making" people do something by putting a gun to their head, but it spends over a billion dollars to get a certain social outcome, and then every year that outcome happens. I don't know what else you'd call that, David Hume

Advertising is to make you drink Coke over Pepsi or {insert soda brand} that X'th time you drink soda, or the more galaxy brained take is that for the reason we are mentioning Coke and not Pepsi [mind share].

It has little to do with making you drink it 6 times or 7 times or 5 times or 0 times.

Choice to drink is decided by you, choice on WHAT to drink is somewhat decided by the advertiser. At least to a much larger degree and is the entire point of advertising.

For sure the main focus in a market as saturated as that for soft drinks in the US is more focused on expanding a slice than growing the pie, but both effects are there.

Coke still spends $x to shift y units of Coke; it's largely immaterial to them whether those concumers would otherwise drink Dr Brown or nothing.

If there were no advertising for soft drinks in the US, what do you think the effect on overall consumption would be?