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Except it's not this straightforward, for two reasons. First, try proving that these decisions are actually hurting the bottom line. As the old quote attributed to various famous businessmen goes: "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." Advertising is anything but an exact science, and business outcomes are subject to many hard-to-disentangle factors. So how would one convince bosses or coworkers that this isn't the way to get more business?
Secondly, the interests and incentives of an institution are not the interests and incentives of the people within it. As I've seen it put elsewhere (particularly in discussions of the police, but also other fields), the first and highest job duty of any employee is not what it says on their job description, it's to make the boss happy. Of course, the usual way one does so is by performing the specific tasks for which one was hired, but those are ultimately just means to that end. If your boss insists on something being done a particular way, a particular way that's stupid and costs the business money, and instead you do it a different way that saves the business money, how do you suppose it will impact your continued employment if the boss finds out?
I've seen multiple people point out with respect to the whole Bud Light thing, that while going with Mulvaney may not have been a good choice for the business as a whole, it was probably the best choice for the advertising people who originally recommended that course with regards to their future employment opportunities elsewhere within the advertising industry, particularly as compared to the opposite strategy. "Nobody gets fired for buying IBM" and all that.
So nobody need actually go "I'm doing this no matter how much money it costs me!" They need only have uncertainty as to what will or won't cost the business more customers, combined with a solid understanding of what best suits their own personal, long-term job interests independent of a particular company's interests.
Advertising is a subject , which, like nutrition advice, no one really seems to know any anything, or nothing is definitive or set in stone. Why does McDonald's advertise so much when everyone is already aware it exists? But Facebook never does? I dunno. Companies advertise to create demand and awareness for the product. this seems obvious. but also to send a message, which can explain ads which lack any sort of call to action or product.
Yeah, that was my point #1. Since you can't prove which ads cause what, it makes the whole industry somewhat insulated from immediate "hard contact with reality" feedback, leading to field-wide dominance of "vibes" and the primary incentives being personal rather than institutional.
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