Marketing Myths I
Yo, having completed a marketing degree I thought I'd tackle some of the misconceptions out there as generally marketers get treated like evil, conniving arseholes that sell you shit you don't want. Whilst kids are pretty simple minded and can be marketed to easily and that's pretty straightforward to and you probably could sell them a shit sandwhich if you tried marketers cannot and never will be able to sell shit sandwhiches to the mass market. Marketing is erroniously viewed as a process of creating wants, which is just plain plain wrong. Marketing is just a delivery system for value. It's trying to make sure you're happy with the shit you buy. Markes become saturated becuse people are stupid. The person who invented perfume probably found it sold out with no promotion whatsoever and found it sold out. It was only when you have 500 different brands of perfume that marketing becomes necessary and demand is there because people want it.
Economists are the ones who if anyone create want's because it's a fairly loose theory on what to do with resources and at the moment we are obsessed with growth. The pursuit of the vague 'Economic Growth' isn't evil just irresponsible. When you bitch and moan to marketing students about consumerism just remember it's your boss and every other boss and the government trying to push more products out onto the market, of course your going to be a consumer that's your whole life. Adam Smith said when he practically founded economics 'We must be mindful of the pursuit of growth, we must identify what growth, where and for whom before pursuing economic growth.' or something to that effect.
What marketers do do is make you understand the benifits of what your buying. That's all because engineers design something called ABS and then in engineering driven car companies you get ads talking about ABS and unless you're into cars you have no fucking idea what that means. So a company pays marketers to tell people 'Anti-Lock Brakes mean your wheels don't lock when you go into a skid and it's safer because you can still steer around objects when you're breaking in an emergency' that's it. They don't make you want the product if you get upset because you saw an add for a pair of hipsters by just jeans and you get them and you hate them it's just because the pursuit of economic growth (and a good sustainable growth industry is fashion) is meaningless. I bet if you sat down and tried to figure out how many tangible objects you need to buy until you're satisfied you couldn't. Unless you're a blues brother you can't buy one outfit you'll happily wear for the rest of your life. You just want shiny baubles and funky pants because your a human being.
A poigniant example of marketing not being able to make people want things came to me in this weeks greenguide. There was an article on Vulture which described the show as 'generally loathed' which I thought was pretty strong, I must admit I didn't like the panelists and I wouldn't have watched it myself if I didn't know someone who worked on it but the article raised a point of trying to get diverse audiances to tune in to arts and culture because people believe that it's good for them that they should learn about the arts to benifit their general wellbeing. I'd never thought about this before, we live in an age with more artists than ever and most of them are struggling. They struggle because despite any support and funding the arts recieves ultimately people just don't want it. I'm a painter myself but I think it would have been a selfish decision in the end to be an artist and live of funding that is essentially dollars wasted on marketing trying to get people to want the arts.
They're not going to. I love art, especially minimalist which seems like the greatest joke in the world. Magritte, Dali, Bacon, Rembrandt, Da Vinci and especially Michealangelo and Smart have contributed shiteloads to my personal development. But I don't think people need to want it like they want AFL I'm not even sure they'd be better off. It's not like smoking where you can empirically test the health effects of quitting smoking.
Arts has a place on television, for the people who want it, and just want a nun talking about portraits and there's 40,000 people like that in Australia that can tune in at 2pm on a Sunday afternoon or a Wednesday. But you cant pay marketers to make 450,000 people a week want to watch arts at 7.30 on a monday. You just cant you can make people understand benifits of art, or environmental sustainability, or the Liberal or Labor party because benefits are the reasons people buy, act or vote in a particular way but you cant just make people want shit.
Well someone probably can, I mean somebody bought those Hole albums right?
2 comments:
Economic growth irresponsible? In a long term sense I would say that discouraging economic growth (or the pursuit of it) is far more irresponsible than encouraging it. I don't know why we are here, but it probably isn't to do the same thing over and over every day for until the sun eventually goes out, which is what would happen without economic growth. Ever since the first nomads stopped traipsing around and settled to establish villages, farms, etc economic growth has been the driving force behind society. Market capitalism is a neat little system in that encourages us all to pursue individual growth which also happens to fuel macroeconomic growth. When I was 14 I used to think that communism was a cool idea that had just been implemented badly, but all it took was a few economics classes to make me realise that the difference between capitalism and communism was "everyone at different stages of getting richer" vs. "everyone equally poor". Mind you, when I was 14 I also thought Ace of Base were cool.
As for your idea that marketers help people understand the features of what they are buying... it would be nice if that were true, but marketing based around features has been dead for decades. Almost all marketing now is based on selling you emotions which the company hopes to associate with their product. Product differentiation is so small that marketers now rely on features that their products DON'T have in order to sell them. That being said, I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. Firstly it appeases the needs of the workers for emotional reassurance that they otherwise don't get. We spend all day at the office sitting dormant in a chair, eating our food from bags, but that desire to go out and hunt for out food is still there. So men feel the need for reassurance that "you're still a man". So VB come out and says real men drink VB, bang they sell a million bottles of beer. Whilst this may seem a little sad, it is beneficial in that someone has to sit in that chair and do whatever job it is that person is doing, so we might as well keep them contented however we can. In an economy that is growing based on intellectual growth rather than physical growth, this sort of thing is necessary to keep everyone under control. That is, until we can just put brains in jars to work in call centres and offices. Now THAT is the future.
I also think that people who complain that marketers 'trick' people or whatever are being pretty naieve. Marketeting may distort the truth or divert attention from it, but very rarely does marketing out and out lie. Not that they don't want to, but there are laws against it. (Don't think that if they had the opportunity people wouldn't sell out and out lies. Now that would slow growth.) When people get sucked in to advertising or marketing and buy things they don't want or need, they're not really wasting money. They're doing the economy a service by redistributing wealth from those who have too much money to those who have the skills to create growth. And people know this. No one in Caroline Springs needs a plasma tv. They know they have too much money (or credit as the case may be). They know that the Fujitsu corporation or whoever are smarter than them and have created a product that they don't need but they waaaaaaaant. So what do they do? They give their money to Fujitsu, who give it to whoever caused the sales of the tv. Not only does this redistribute the wealth from one person to thousands who helped design/build/market the tv, but at the end of the day Mr Caroline Springs has bought himself a little bit of happiness or emotional security, or whatever his real reason for wasting a large portion of his money on a tv is, but most importantly he has bought a distraction from his dull life so he can keep on producing. Which is why his life is dull in the first place. But now I'm starting to think maybe marketing is a tool for opressing the common man into modern day indetured slavery... so perhaps I need to stop over thinking and get back to work.
Nice blog, by the way.
Yeah that's all correct. Personally I think marketing does do a great service to seperating fools and there money and generally only fools complain about marketing. Particularly when it comes to rich parents with a 12 year old daughter, guy sits in an office all day so he can have the economic opportunity of listening to Nicci Webster when he gets home and furthermorenicci Webster has also sold his 12 year old a mobile phone in cross promotional marketing brilliance. Economic growth is great, I'm not saying sustainability is necessarily communism. But is 3% economic growth in Japan better than 2% in Australia? Yes but if the extra 1% comes from killing forty thousand extra wales and 12 japanese men recieved the benifits of that growth you would tell the japanese economists to go patting themselves on the back. Furthermore you may have noticed economic growth isn't solving problems like depression, mental illness, community participation, obesity etc. It's better for economic growth to not cure a disease. We haven't actually set a more inspiring target for our nation or any other than 4% GNP growth since the US and Russia where in the space race. Economic Growth is like bodybuilding. It can be a worthwhile pursuit for a while but to what end and where do you stop? In the end you'll be able to bench press 75 kilos which is unlikely you'll ever actually need to do, you'll look fucking disgusting and your testicles have shrunk because like natural resources you have redirected your testosterone from where it really should have been.
Rich unhappy people should give me all their money because I'll be fucking laughing no matter how much money I get. It would be great if Mr.Fujitsu did something meaningful with the redistributed wealth from Mr Caroline Springs but he'll probably just buy some shit from Mr Rolex and both companies will dig more resources out of the ground.
But yeah all good points, it's a cycle of pain that never ends unless you get some self esteem and just choose to be happy. Then you can buy stuff AND enjoy it. To think without capitalism Morley you wouldn't be in a call centre right now.
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