4 ms·

This made me cringe. The article may be revealing a simple truth, but it makes me profoundly uncomfortable to think that this is what modern marketing is based

by aarghh 17y ago

This made me cringe. The article may be revealing a simple truth, but it makes me profoundly uncomfortable to think that this is what modern marketing is based on. I would hope effective marketing communicates the value that a product has - if not, you're making a sale, but do you have a real customer?

mahmud 17y ago
Marketing itself is not immune to marketing; they go through waves of "methods" and "best practices" fads, usually initiated by a handful few industry gurus. In the mid to late 90s, marketing became all about identifying with the customer's "core values" and "identity", they started making ads that neither told you what the product was, nor what it did, instead, they tried to make a brand "tribe", based on some weird interpretation of post-industrial anthropology, they tried to create a market segment where the brand was the central shared value of the "village", something more ideological than material. Marketing then became brand evangelism and market research was boiled down to studies of primitive emotions, love, fear, anxiety, comfort, family bonds, etc. They swung back once again, and the new fad became humor, every ad had to make you laugh to create a private shared moment between customer and brand, so the next time you were at the store, you knew Frosted Flakes, Bud Light and Gillette Mach II were your buddies. Then it's been about personalization and customization. Ads stopped telling you what the product was for, and instead, told you you could use it any way you wish. Sometimes the ad would emphasize an sweepstakes prize over the quality of the actual product itself; you will be shown an image of you and your buddies rolling down Vegas Blvd on a topless '65 Camaro, smoking cigars and casino lights reflecting off of your Aviators as you stopped to grab a few ladies outside the Venetian and headed to a roof-top pool party where some sick tunes were being sliced by an underground dance DJ duo from Dusseldorf. Cut back to an image of four buddies on their couch in a frat pad, game controllers in hand, when one of them pops a bottle of Miller Light open and finds he won a free trip to Vegas for four. You probably wont buy Miller to win the trip, but next time you're heading to downtown Cleveland in your buddy's 2004 Elantra, you will be stopping by 7/11 to grab a six pack and you will cruise down to the party, with the lights of chainstores and fast-food joints reflecting off of your Aviators. You will be associating Miller with "fun", "High Life". At least the people who the marketers study do. What matters is not that you find the imagery supperficial, yes, it's out of your reach and nigh near impossible to get there, but that you identify with the four dorm-room slackers in the end; "Oh, I too sit on my couch and play video games, Miller gets me". Back in 2001 Smirnoff probably sponsored a local Baltimore rapper to sing about their product. Before then, Smirnoff has been a girly drink; a pre-mixed bottled drink of vodka, water and colored sweets. As soon as the song became a local hit in the D.C/Baltimore area, you saw all the hiphop guys started drinking Smirnoff. It caught like wildfire and people said they were "getting their noff on" .. street cred in 3 months! At the time, Budweiser was sponsoring basketball games, block parties and entire evening programming of radio shows. Smirnoff got more out of $10-50k out of that sponsorship than Bud.

by aarghh 17y ago

mahmud 17y ago

Marketing itself is not immune to marketing; they go through waves of "methods" and "best practices" fads, usually initiated by a handful few industry gurus. In the mid to late 90s, marketing became all about identifying with the customer's "core values" and "identity", they started making ads that neither told you what the product was, nor what it did, instead, they tried to make a brand "tribe", based on some weird interpretation of post-industrial anthropology, they tried to create a market segment where the brand was the central shared value of the "village", something more ideological than material. Marketing then became brand evangelism and market research was boiled down to studies of primitive emotions, love, fear, anxiety, comfort, family bonds, etc. They swung back once again, and the new fad became humor, every ad had to make you laugh to create a private shared moment between customer and brand, so the next time you were at the store, you knew Frosted Flakes, Bud Light and Gillette Mach II were your buddies. Then it's been about personalization and customization. Ads stopped telling you what the product was for, and instead, told you you could use it any way you wish. Sometimes the ad would emphasize an sweepstakes prize over the quality of the actual product itself; you will be shown an image of you and your buddies rolling down Vegas Blvd on a topless '65 Camaro, smoking cigars and casino lights reflecting off of your Aviators as you stopped to grab a few ladies outside the Venetian and headed to a roof-top pool party where some sick tunes were being sliced by an underground dance DJ duo from Dusseldorf. Cut back to an image of four buddies on their couch in a frat pad, game controllers in hand, when one of them pops a bottle of Miller Light open and finds he won a free trip to Vegas for four. You probably wont buy Miller to win the trip, but next time you're heading to downtown Cleveland in your buddy's 2004 Elantra, you will be stopping by 7/11 to grab a six pack and you will cruise down to the party, with the lights of chainstores and fast-food joints reflecting off of your Aviators. You will be associating Miller with "fun", "High Life". At least the people who the marketers study do. What matters is not that you find the imagery supperficial, yes, it's out of your reach and nigh near impossible to get there, but that you identify with the four dorm-room slackers in the end; "Oh, I too sit on my couch and play video games, Miller gets me". Back in 2001 Smirnoff probably sponsored a local Baltimore rapper to sing about their product. Before then, Smirnoff has been a girly drink; a pre-mixed bottled drink of vodka, water and colored sweets. As soon as the song became a local hit in the D.C/Baltimore area, you saw all the hiphop guys started drinking Smirnoff. It caught like wildfire and people said they were "getting their noff on" .. street cred in 3 months! At the time, Budweiser was sponsoring basketball games, block parties and entire evening programming of radio shows. Smirnoff got more out of $10-50k out of that sponsorship than Bud.