Star Wars Thread

[Golden Phoenix]

I've always wondered why Coke, who is known for their advertising (we had to study some of their campaigns at uni) still spends millions when by now, it's basically known the world over. Just boils down to if they don't, it can only fall out of the limelight. Still, the amount they must spend just to maintain relevance (arguably not getting any new customers from it) is extraordinary!

If you don't advertise, your rivals will. Sometimes companies will buy advertising space and use it purely so rival companies can't. They don't need to, but they'd rather spend the money than let their rivals advertise in a good spot.

[griffin]

I've heard that too, about advertising to make sure a rival doesn't fill up that space instead.

It's also necessary for publicly listed mega-multi-national corporations that answer to share-holders, to not just make profit, but make more profit than last year.
With small businesses, it's great to make more money each year, but as long as you make money, that's still great. But with big business that has shareholders, it's not enough to actually make a profit anymore, because most corporations on the sharemarket will end up with a drop in their share price if they don't earn more than they did last year/quarter, or meet their projected target of increased profit... regardless of how much they actually still made as a profit.

It's often why the workers get screwed when cost-cutting is the last resort to meeting profit targets (after expenses), just to please the share-holders who don't even invest into the business to make it grow (or just for the personal benefit of the the CEO making the cuts, who often has a healthy amount of shares and/or profit bonuses).
Imagine if one of our big four banks or Telstra reported $2 Billion profit for the year. You might think that's a great result, and think that the shareholders will get a healthy dividend... but with each of them racking up $8-10 Billion annually in profit in recent years, a drop to just a quarter of that would send the sharemarket into a nosedive, because of the kneejerk reaction of share traders pulling their money out of the market assuming the worst, when in fact, the business is still very healthy (too healthy with all the fees the banks charge and still want more each year), and that sort of shock to the market would result in a devaluing of the business (and other businesses on the stock exchange), despite it still making a lot of money.
Our society is too addicted to the share market, which is such a fragile element of the financial world... and with most of our super funds heavily invested in share markets, governments will do anything to keep them afloat (which benefits the rich, while the working classes have to pay more in taxes and bank fees to cover bailouts or new financial regulations/requirements - eg. Westpac raising interest rates).
(end of rant)

[GoktimusPrime]

Saturday Night Live Star Wars Action Figures; this is a parody commercial which brilliantly pokes fun at adult toy collectors.

[griffin]

This is why ROTJ was more popular to the teenage crowd of raging hormones...


Although, the sexy photo of her being held by Darth Vader is kinda wrong when you find out later from the actual movie that it's her dad.
(I guess no more wrong than the full on tongue-down-the-throat kiss she gave her brother in Ep4.... hmmm, that family sure does have issues... )

[GoktimusPrime]

Although, the sexy photo of her being held by Darth Vader is kinda wrong when you find out later from the actual movie that it's her dad.

I didn't see it that way at all. I saw it just a loving hug between father and daughter.

[Autocon]

If you don't advertise, your rivals will. Sometimes companies will buy advertising space and use it purely so rival companies can't. They don't need to, but they'd rather spend the money than let their rivals advertise in a good spot.

They spoke about this on the Gruen Transfer