Comments on: The Limits to Shill

By: Valerie

Valerie — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 02:32:10 +0000

You write:

What you really learn by doing sentiment analysis (by computer or the better human-brain-reading-things way) is, ??Don??t do whatever the hell it is that is pissing people off if you really can??t afford to piss them off??.

Amen. This is why promotion, the passing out of free samples of a new product is so risky. If your product isn’t good, people will find that out FASTER if you give it away.

Years ago, my sis did advertising for McDonald’s. For a time, McDonald’s biscuit product was being left in the dust by Hardee’s biscuit product. So the ad firm did the research and found that the issue was pretty much that the Hardee’s product tasted better in taste tests. There was not a damned thing advertising could do to change the perception of people who had tasted both and decided they preferred the other product. The McDonald’s franchisees were NOT happy with this finding. Weirdly, instead of pressuring McD’s to come up with a better recipe, they wanted the ad firm to come up with a better campaign.

Truth is powerful stuff. But only if you pay attention to it.

By: nord

nord — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 05:05:40 +0000

Keep saying WalMarts labor policies are bad and enough people will link the two phrases. Walmart has a few tools to change the terms of debate and eventually sentiment … one is anecdote. Stories are much more powerful than statistics regarding labor law violations. A few local stories of single women moving up from checkout lines to regional management are remembered. The outcome of the large class action lawsuit against Walmart is not. The second is shifting the terms of the debate … “live better” is the current slogan, but there are other versions of the same message. Walmart isn’t above buying off the environmentalists either – you’ll be seeing a lot more solar cells on the roof and windmills in the parking lot of your local Walmart in the future.

But holding aside their response, we all know that the Walmart and labor conditions are all about the UFCW protecting their turf as walmart is taking a lot of market share from their unionized stores, right? I have not seen evidence that Walmart is worse than other non-unionized employers in terms of labor practices – they are just more effective at killing off union companies … The UAW has been trying to create that same sentiment with the non-unionized transplants. I can’t tell whether they have failed because too many elites would rather drive a prius than a buick or because the public can see their naked self-interest…

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 11:38:48 +0000

No, the point is precisely what you say: Wal-Mart has no intention of fixing those policies. So sentiment analysis is just another of those tools that institutions buy to tell them something they already know, or tell them something that they don’t want to know in a form that they’d prefer to know it in. E.g., in some cases, it’s just another form of opening up sheep to peer at entrails so that you can deliver some performance art that pleases the powerful.

By: evangoer

evangoer — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 01:58:12 +0000

Wal-Mart’s labor policies are bad, Wal-Mart knows that its labor policies are bad, and Wal-Mart has no intention of fixing its labor policies.

But this has nothing to do with sentiment analysis… or focus groups, polls, usability testing, eye-tracking studies, A/B bucket testing, or necromancy. Is there something specific about sentiment analysis that you think is much, much worse than any of these other tools?

By: Doug

Doug — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 12:25:08 +0000

“The vast space of the Borders [between Poland and Russia] is a well-known fact, which every general must first accept then ignore; a strategist who treated the expanse of the Borders with due respect would never fight at all.” – Norman Davies in White Eagle, Red Star

Though of course top-level decisions are often taken for reasons separate from the conditions in a particular area.