5 ms·

Marketing associate emotions to products. For perfume ads it is a feeling of being attractive. For products marketed to geeks it is a feeling of being smarter a

by goto11 5y ago

Marketing associate emotions to products. For perfume ads it is a feeling of being attractive. For products marketed to geeks it is a feeling of being smarter and mentally superior to others. Notice how successful geek marketing talks about the type of person who use the product rather than just about the merits of the products itself. "The BingWiz languages are used by true 10x geeks who are are tired of group-think and corporate bullshit and don't want to be tied down by mediocrity. Mediocre corporate drones uses FlopFlup because their feeble minds are unable to comprehend the true power of BingWiz."

inter_netuser 5y ago
I've spent gobs of money to buy products, very nerdy products. It was always to reduce headaches and friction. Better workflows for dev teams. Fewer production outages. Reduce/mitigate security incidents, etc. I think the only ads I get is either product placement or sponsored search results, I don't read any spam or unsolicited ads/emails/messages. However, I do not recall any purchasing decision that was not driven by some need/headache to solve and involved some peer-review/references by others to make sure I don't have blindspots. Is this unusual in commercial/B2B context? I don't think there was all that much emotion, unless you call pain-relief an emotion. Couldn't care less what it looked like, branding, or anything like that, all I wanted is to solve my immediate challenge and forget about it.
- goto11 5y ago
  Obviously geeks always think their product choices are driven by rational thinking. This is why marketing to geeks are like "you are more smart and rational if you buy this product". Marketing is used because it works. Of course your decisions might be purely rational, if such a thing is possible, but in general marketing have an effect. I fact the article seem to be itself a clever piece of marketing, and the minds of HN is eating it up because it confirms what they want to believe about themselves ("we are too smart to fall for marketing.").
  - inter_netuser 5y ago
    Rational is a big word. I don't believe anything is ever 100% rational. Is making good decisions based on implicit learning (which is entirely subconscious) rational? to be precise, marketing is just a way to engage with the target audience and potentially start a conversation/relationship. It's not that hard to reach or even meet "geek" decision makers face to face. Just go to any tech conference. send something insighful to the mailing list with non-intrusive link in the signature. hit them up on linkedin/other interest groups. I'm totally OK with vendors get into bidding wars over SEO keywords so I can find what I need this minute much quicker. Ads, however, likely do not work on non-neurotypicals as well as on normies. Some of studies on that (probably worthless fwiw): https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0956797617694867 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09567976176948... Why would anyone want to have someone shitting into their brains anyway? There is reason ad-blockers and such are so popular. Geeks just tend confuse marketing and ads, not sure why. maybe most of them never tried to market/sell anything? Of course, ads do work on everyone, to the extent they manage to capture your attention. When was the last time you bought anything because you saw an ad? All of them are pure cringe. Placed content/paid editorials? Just as cringe. True to form, I've also duly ignored the article and dived straight into comment, to avoid any marketing potentially influencing me directly.
  - denton-scratch 5y ago
    > Marketing is used because it works. This is an oft-repeated meme. Advertisers will produce statistics to prove that their kind of marketing "works". But how could one prove such a thing? It would involve peering into people's minds. Also: advertising != marketing. Marketing includes product design, pricing, channel development, and a load of other activities that are basically useful. Like, there's no point in developing a product that has no market; a marketer will warn you if that's what you're trying to do (just before he resigns). An advertiser will tell you that everything's groovy, your campaign is going great, and by the way, here's your invoice for the last quarter.
    - antonfire 5y ago
      > Advertisers will produce statistics to prove that their kind of marketing "works". But how could one prove such a thing? It would involve peering into people's minds. Or, say, running an A-B test and measuring whether people in the control group buy more of the product or feel more positively about the brand than the exposed group.
tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
> Notice how successful geek marketing talks about the type of person who use the product Is that really successful marketing? I find it extremely cringy and a sign that this is a product to avoid, especially if it's a tool for work and not purely a gadget for entertainment purposes.

by goto11 5y ago

inter_netuser 5y ago

I've spent gobs of money to buy products, very nerdy products. It was always to reduce headaches and friction. Better workflows for dev teams. Fewer production outages. Reduce/mitigate security incidents, etc. I think the only ads I get is either product placement or sponsored search results, I don't read any spam or unsolicited ads/emails/messages. However, I do not recall any purchasing decision that was not driven by some need/headache to solve and involved some peer-review/references by others to make sure I don't have blindspots. Is this unusual in commercial/B2B context? I don't think there was all that much emotion, unless you call pain-relief an emotion. Couldn't care less what it looked like, branding, or anything like that, all I wanted is to solve my immediate challenge and forget about it.

goto11 5y ago
Obviously geeks always think their product choices are driven by rational thinking. This is why marketing to geeks are like "you are more smart and rational if you buy this product". Marketing is used because it works. Of course your decisions might be purely rational, if such a thing is possible, but in general marketing have an effect. I fact the article seem to be itself a clever piece of marketing, and the minds of HN is eating it up because it confirms what they want to believe about themselves ("we are too smart to fall for marketing.").
- inter_netuser 5y ago
  Rational is a big word. I don't believe anything is ever 100% rational. Is making good decisions based on implicit learning (which is entirely subconscious) rational? to be precise, marketing is just a way to engage with the target audience and potentially start a conversation/relationship. It's not that hard to reach or even meet "geek" decision makers face to face. Just go to any tech conference. send something insighful to the mailing list with non-intrusive link in the signature. hit them up on linkedin/other interest groups. I'm totally OK with vendors get into bidding wars over SEO keywords so I can find what I need this minute much quicker. Ads, however, likely do not work on non-neurotypicals as well as on normies. Some of studies on that (probably worthless fwiw): https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0956797617694867 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09567976176948... Why would anyone want to have someone shitting into their brains anyway? There is reason ad-blockers and such are so popular. Geeks just tend confuse marketing and ads, not sure why. maybe most of them never tried to market/sell anything? Of course, ads do work on everyone, to the extent they manage to capture your attention. When was the last time you bought anything because you saw an ad? All of them are pure cringe. Placed content/paid editorials? Just as cringe. True to form, I've also duly ignored the article and dived straight into comment, to avoid any marketing potentially influencing me directly.
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  > Marketing is used because it works. This is an oft-repeated meme. Advertisers will produce statistics to prove that their kind of marketing "works". But how could one prove such a thing? It would involve peering into people's minds. Also: advertising != marketing. Marketing includes product design, pricing, channel development, and a load of other activities that are basically useful. Like, there's no point in developing a product that has no market; a marketer will warn you if that's what you're trying to do (just before he resigns). An advertiser will tell you that everything's groovy, your campaign is going great, and by the way, here's your invoice for the last quarter.
  - antonfire 5y ago
    > Advertisers will produce statistics to prove that their kind of marketing "works". But how could one prove such a thing? It would involve peering into people's minds. Or, say, running an A-B test and measuring whether people in the control group buy more of the product or feel more positively about the brand than the exposed group.

tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago

> Notice how successful geek marketing talks about the type of person who use the product Is that really successful marketing? I find it extremely cringy and a sign that this is a product to avoid, especially if it's a tool for work and not purely a gadget for entertainment purposes.