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When does an advert become deceptive?


Orwar
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   It's been a long-time peeve of a lot of people, with those Daz-rendered adverts that are so popular these days - and it's just reinforcing the tantra to demo, demo, demo; to see the item in-world before buying it.

   Skin merchants are another such case, where the ads are frequently quite obviously photoshopped onto real people's faces.

   Today I found a facial tattoo that was very clumsily slapped onto a real life picture of a person, along with some SL eyes (uncanny valley express!). There is no demo.

   Whilst I am generally inclined to think that it's up to the market to regulate itself, and for customers to vote with their wallets for what practices that should be supported, and promoting being discerning consumers, it feels like there ought to be a limit.

   .. Then again, where I'm from, you can't legally call it 'milk' if you have added lactase to break down the lactose, so my views of what would be deceptive might be a little skewed.

   Thoughts?

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Anything done in Daz I just scroll on by now and don't even bother with the demo.. I look at them as no better than morph adds..

They must be paying off though because I keep seeing more and more switching to them..

That'll just cut my shopping time down is all..

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1 hour ago, Orwar said:

   It's been a long-time peeve of a lot of people, with those Daz-rendered adverts that are so popular these days - and it's just reinforcing the tantra to demo, demo, demo; to see the item in-world before buying it.

   Skin merchants are another such case, where the ads are frequently quite obviously photoshopped onto real people's faces.

   Today I found a facial tattoo that was very clumsily slapped onto a real life picture of a person, along with some SL eyes (uncanny valley express!). There is no demo.

   Whilst I am generally inclined to think that it's up to the market to regulate itself, and for customers to vote with their wallets for what practices that should be supported, and promoting being discerning consumers, it feels like there ought to be a limit.

   .. Then again, where I'm from, you can't legally call it 'milk' if you have added lactase to break down the lactose, so my views of what would be deceptive might be a little skewed.

   Thoughts?

I've actually started dropping notecards to creators who don't have demos available telling them they may have lost a potential sale.  I don't know how much good it does but hey, can't hurt.  Perhaps if more people did the same and with doctored photos too, they'd stop doing it.

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2 hours ago, Orwar said:

There is no demo.

This is what matters really more than anything - there is no demo.  I like to look at shapes and skins myself and even use Google Images or FLICKR to pull up a whole lot of skins at once and I don't come across DAZ stuff too much but when I do I do not care for it.  I also don't look at tattoos because I make my own BOM tattoos very easily and it's fun, so those photos I haven't seen much of.  But, if it has a demo and you think it's something you may enjoy, I'd over-look the morphed face.  IMO, the morphed faces are unpleasant because I am here in SL to enjoy avatar art not something that isn't an avatar and morphing detracts from that experience and really how an item might look on a SL avatar.  But, I was just thinking this morning how some things are one person's cup of tea while not another.  It's just the way life is.  

Edited by FairreLilette
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I don’t mind the Daz renders for clothing, as long as the item looks like it does in SL. That’s because I understand lighting. It’s no different than buying a cheeseburger from McDonald’s. I know I’m not going to get a cheeseburger that looks like it does in the ad, yet...it’s a cheeseburger. It’s just jazzed up with some different lighting and a different rendering engine. The ad did it’s job, it caught my eye, now it’s up to me to demo it and decide whether I truly like it or not.

Now skins and tattoos? Totally different story. There are some brands that use morphs...I’m guessing the skin is photo sourced from real life models and celebrities. Yeah....no. Not buying it. I just....know there’s zero chance it’s going to look like a morph in world. The majority of the time, the creator that uses a morph doesn’t even include a shape with the skin, so there’s even less of a chance that skin is going to look like the ad. And just slapping a tattoo on a real life picture? Just lazy.

There’s a reason I’m harder on skins than objects. I know with an object chances are pretty good that they simply exported the object into Daz and did a render. So you still need the object to do that. A skin? Chances are....it’s not going to because skins look different on different heads. If you can’t even show me what it looks like on real SL head...then it probably doesn’t look like the ad on any head. That’s false advertising.

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29 minutes ago, Janet Voxel said:

I don’t mind the Daz renders for clothing, as long as the item looks like it does in SL. That’s because I understand lighting. It’s no different than buying a cheeseburger from McDonald’s. I know I’m not going to get a cheeseburger that looks like it does in the ad, yet...it’s a cheeseburger. It’s just jazzed up with some different lighting and a different rendering engine. The ad did it’s job, it caught my eye, now it’s up to me to demo it and decide whether I truly like it or not.

Now skins and tattoos? Totally different story. There are some brands that use morphs...I’m guessing the skin is photo sourced from real life models and celebrities. Yeah....no. Not buying it. I just....know there’s zero chance it’s going to look like a morph in world. The majority of the time, the creator that uses a morph doesn’t even include a shape with the skin, so there’s even less of a chance that skin is going to look like the ad. And just slapping a tattoo on a real life picture? Just lazy.

There’s a reason I’m harder on skins than objects. I know with an object chances are pretty good that they simply exported the object into Daz and did a render. So you still need the object to do that. A skin? Chances are....it’s not going to because skins look different on different heads. If you can’t even show me what it looks like on real SL head...then it probably doesn’t look like the ad on any head. That’s false advertising.

I'd disagree with the cheeseburger thing since a cheeseburger is mostly about taste. If it visually matches the ad doesn't matter as long as it tastes as expected. Things in SL are purely about looks, though, so ideally I personally want pictures taken in SL and not photoshopped for things I buy.

That's not to say it's necessarily false advertising if a photo is taken elsewhere or spruced up, but it makes me suspect it is, which makes me more critical.

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Pictures on the marketplace are ads.
No professional advertiser will skip the enhancements of photos used in their ads.
So full time merchants, who want to live RL (partly) from their SL income, will try to do the same.

Most important are the demo's available or the possibility to check inworld for certain goods, like avatar parts (skins, clothing etc), furniture (especially the ones with animations) and houses.
If there is no possibility to check those items upfront it is simple: no sale.

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8 minutes ago, Cinos Field said:

I'd disagree with the cheeseburger thing since a cheeseburger is mostly about taste. If it visually matches the ad doesn't matter as long as it tastes as expected. Things in SL are purely about looks, though, so ideally I personally want pictures taken in SL and not photoshopped for things I buy.

That's not to say it's necessarily false advertising if a photo is taken elsewhere or spruced up, but it makes me suspect it is, which makes me more critical.

How do you figure its mostly about the taste? When you're walking down the street and you see a sign for a cheeseburger, you don't say "Oh that tastes good!" You say "Oh! That looks good!" And let's be clear, this is just an analogy. The purpose of an ad is to entice you with how something looks, that's including food and that's why corporations spend money on people whose job is to literally touch up food products to make them look good.

Generally, when you see an ad that's done in Daz, it does look exactly like it does in the render. The details are there, all of the buttons are in the same place because it is the same object. Looking at an ad and saying "Oh, it was done in Daz, not buying it!" for the same reason walking down the street and seeing a cheeseburger ad and saying "Oh, a food artist touched that up, not buying it!" is silly. You already know its not going to look like exactly like that, but in general it does. It's not like you aren't getting the same object.

It is literally the same object. You could do a render of clothing in blender and make it look like a Daz ad, it's still going to look different in SL because it's rendered differently in Blender as well. When we buy something, you inherently know the item is presented in a certain way to make it look as good as possible. I don't know why people log into SL and forget that and you still have the added benefit of being able to demo the item in SL.

Let's not pretend that an inworld snapshot is inherently better either because they aren't.

 

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2 minutes ago, Janet Voxel said:

How do you figure its mostly about the taste? When you're walking down the street and you see a sign for a cheeseburger, you don't say "Oh that tastes good!" You say "Oh! That looks good!" And let's be clear, this is just an analogy. The purpose of an ad is to entice you with how something looks, that's including food and that's why corporations spend money on people whose job is to literally touch up food products to make them look good.

Generally, when you see an ad that's done in Daz, it does look exactly like it does in the render. The details are there, all of the buttons are in the same place because it is the same object. Looking at an ad and saying "Oh, it was done in Daz, not buying it!" for the same reason walking down the street and seeing a cheeseburger ad and saying "Oh, a food artist touched that up, not buying it!" is silly. You already know its not going to look like exactly like that, but in general it does. It's not like you aren't getting the same object.

It is literally the same object. You could do a render of clothing in blender and make it look like a Daz ad, it's still going to look different in SL because it's rendered differently in Blender as well. When we buy something, you inherently know the item is presented in a certain way to make it look as good as possible. I don't know why people log into SL and forget that and you still have the added benefit of being able to demo the item in SL.

Let's not pretend that an inworld snapshot is inherently better either because they aren't.

 

If I walk down a street and see a cheeseburger ad, I say "oh, one of those would taste good". They're selling that taste, not a picture-perfect burger, and I know that.

As for photos taken in SL, well, at least then I know I can make it look like that on me given the world I'm purchasing it in. That's the difference, it's more representative.

 

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1 minute ago, Cinos Field said:

If I walk down a street and see a cheeseburger ad, I say "oh, one of those would taste good". They're selling that taste, not a picture-perfect burger, and I know that.

As for photos taken in SL, well, at least then I know I can make it look like that on me given the world I'm purchasing it in. That's the difference, it's more representative.

 

It's really not though. You seem to be arguing that you know you're going to get what you see in an inworld snap shot and you're not if its a render and that's simply not true.

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Just now, Janet Voxel said:

It's really not though. You seem to be arguing that you know you're going to get what you see in an inworld snap shot and you're not if its a render and that's simply not true.

All I can really say is our experiences on that appear to be entirely different? Oh well, varying mileages and all that.

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Ideally speaking, the product page should always have screenshots from in-world. I don't care if the main image is edited or a render. The whole point of it is to be as eye-catching as possible, and you can't buy a product without going to the product page.

In reality, though, a lot of products don't have more than the main product image, and an annoyingly low-res one at that. In-world stores don't generally do it any better, either. You tend to get only that main image because of space-restrictions.

I don't know what kind of solution LL could do that would encompass Marketplace and inworld stores, or (serious question) do we only care about Marketplace products? It can also be pretty hard to enforce the rules if people (specifically the LL staff resolving reports) can't tell whether something is edited or out-of-SL render.

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I really dislike adverts of products that clearly were not rendered in SL.  If there is a demo, I may still demo it but I am always wary that there could be a quality problem with the product that the vendor wishes to hide.  If there isn't a demo available or it doesn't allow me to clearly see what I would be getting then I simply don't buy it, ever.

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Going in world to grab a demo, tells me they need traffic,  MAYBE...   but if they have no demo at all, which I find people are doing,  than their whole store is a big no buy,  if you offer mesh clothing, it needs a demo, plain and simple,  certain people might need a translation to understand that point too.

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I almost exclusively buy in world these days, unless I know the creator's work. Partly this is to avoid the overly prepared images. I'm not talking some Photoshop of a second life screenshot (you can and should use an image manipulation tool to do things like blur backgrounds or fix lighting) but I do my best to avoid the clearly not rendered in SL screenshots. 

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7 hours ago, Rowan Amore said:

I've actually started dropping notecards to creators who don't have demos available telling them they may have lost a potential sale.  I don't know how much good it does but hey, can't hurt.  Perhaps if more people did the same and with doctored photos too, they'd stop doing it.

I actually did that awhile and a couple told me not to tell then how to run their shop and another put me on their island's ban list. Sad.

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I hate those morphed ads.  It doesn't feel like a ringing endorsement of their product if they think SL avatars aren't good enough to model for them.  Are they embarrassed to have an avatar not of the uncanny valley wearing their stuff or something?

If a morphed ad makes me what to sealion the creator about their model's "skin applier" instead of compelling me to buy, then I won't even bother with the demo.

As for skin products? HAHAHAHAHA..... no.

 

Edited by Eddy Vortex
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Any creator that uses morphs to me that says their products can't be any good, if they were they'd be showing off what they looked like in SL on an SL head/body. When i see such ad's on the various sales i scroll right past. if i was in the market for skins/cosmetics i'd avoid all the places that use morphs

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My philosophy is to never mind the ad image and get the demo. A good looking demo is probably the best advertisement a store can have. I don't know why some creators make demos difficult to get to. Another thing is demos shouldn't have a timer and they should allow me to get a good look at how the product looks on myself. Some have these transparent textures that force you to move the camera because you can't get a good view of the item. Another thing, obscure ads. Sometimes I look at an add for several seconds and wonder what is being sold. Oh and one more, animated ads. I just see a big moving blob of pixels that takes forever to load.

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In SL it's more important to show a product as it will be received and used than in RL simply because it isn't the real world and in SL we have limitations on how good things can look and work.  Morphs, out-of-SL renders, images that show a partial product deliberately to hide problem areas, basically anything that makes it hard or impossible to know what you are getting - they're all suspicious in my book.

Most good RL products look very close to the real thing on the adverts even if they are actually 3D modeled, that's the point.  The models are just to allow them to create the whole advert on a computer and manipulate the product easily in a variety of ways.

Spoilables like food are a little different in my opinion because no company is going to show you how the millionth cheeseburger from a sloppy minimum wage worker is really going to look and I think that is understood by most people.  Though I have to say from the docos I have watched, the things marketing firms do to food to make those adverts look appetising is actually really gross.

Edited by Gabriele Graves
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It's an interesting question to me. Mostly because in my understanding, what's sold in an advertisement is an "identity" or feeling first and the product second. An advertisement becomes deceptive to me if that sold identity does not match the product. For example: Identity and feel sell a glamourous ball gown. In world it's a potato dress.

That feeling of mismatch is entirely subjective and often a gut feeling. Still, an ad to me can be incredibly dolled up and barely looking like Second Life anymore, as long as it still conveys the feel and identity of the product. This is obviously excluding tech issues like mismatched textures or strangely stretched meshes. If the ad intentionally hides these, it's deceptive advertising to me.

So all in all probably not too helpful of an answer but it's a gut feeling thing for me.

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18 minutes ago, Anna Nova said:

What is DAZ?  Never even heard of it before reading this thread.

People who buy things without a demo are called imbeciles.

P.s. What's a morph?

Morphing is sticking your SL face on a RL body for a truly creepy picture.

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