The following book by Martin Lindstrom is
about the extent to which marketers go to sell their products.
Today in era of scientific marketing it has
been found that marketers are looking for anything & any place where there
is human contact whether it is real or virtual world that would encourage
people to buy things.
An Asian shopping mall
chain theorized that pregnant women spend a lot of time shopping. Lindstrom
writes that it deliberately introduced smells and sounds that would entice pregnant
women to return to the stores.
They also have noted that
the choices of parents are reflected later in the child’s preference for
product because they become accustomed to particular smell or style and have
developed campaigns to target them since we develop a habit of clinging on
them.
Now, we have many brands
mostly apparels & fashion accessories target young boys & girls to
promote cool quotient with their products with the motto catch them young and showing
them the path to adulthood.
The marketing of fear –
from pharmaceutical companies capitalising on epidemics and pandemics like H1N1
and SARS to insurance companies producing tear jerking commercials (like this one by Thai Life Insurance). And interestingly, fear does
give us a kick by activating our adrenaline and epinephrine hormones.
Many food product companies
also play into the psyche of fear with launching their products showcasing the
primary motto of being able to solve that fear.
Most new mothers don’t feel
that they are doing everything they can to keep their babies healthy, safe and
happy. Companies have learned to cash in on this fear and paranoia, selling
everything from home sanitizers, baby gates and cabinet locks to $300 digital
color video baby monitors, safety thermometers and faucet covers for bath time.
Addictions and how
companies deploy various ways to get us hooked. From the shot of dopamine we
all get from an email/Facebook message/Twitter response on our smartphones, to
the habit forming chemicals in the food we eat, to the advent of gaming – not
just for teenaged boys, but adults (especially with e-coupons like Groupon).
The pernicious power of peers,
particularly kids, tweens and teens. By triggering social contagion, Cepia
managed to make its Zhu Zhu pets a huge hit, while retail websites from
Amazon.com to Apple’s iTune shop use the power of their Top 10 lists,
recommendations (What others are reading), and “New and Noteworthy” to engineer
collective consumption.
Celebrities too are roped
in with a huge multi-billion dollar endorsements of everything under the sun –
from shampoos, cars, iPods, clothes to drinks. Product placements featuring
Hollywood stars, politicians, sportsmen and even preachers have influenced our
decisions to buy as we pretend to assume their alter-ego when using these
products.
Numerous psychology
experiments show that humans are hardwired to be nostalgic, marketers has identified
one of the major triggers. We become concerned consistently about time flying
by. That is why most marketers know (and the rest of us don’t) that mentioning
"time" in an advertisement increases the chance that people will buy
that product. Thus, carefully chosen boomer generation music plays overhead in
stores that attract people over 35 linking them to their era and bringing up
happy memories.
Nostalgia is all about how
good our past was and companies position their products from that wonderful
past –how good their brands are.
In an experiment about
planting a family in a neighbourhood called Morgenson family Mr Lindstorm was
able to demonstrate how word of mouth is still relevant in today’s era of
connectivity and marketers have not forgotten that but working on it by
incentivizing individuals which eventually become the most powerful persuaders
in influencing purchasing decisions.
Today we see that how every single move we
make from doing a search on google, downloading an App on our smartphones, to
making a purchase with our loyalty cards at the supermarket, can be traced and
tracked. Armed with a complex consumer intelligence system that rivals the CIA,
companies can determine one’s likes, dislikes and demographic details so
precisely that we’re perhaps now living in a “post privacy society”. Facebook
and various other social media forums plays a huge part in that.
So the issue of big data
& data mining is many companies grapple with but on the other hand many
activist have raised concerned that since everything that we touch, feel and
use today is connected where is our privacy as an individual. That’s a huge debate
which will eventually have huge implications for our future.
Thus It has been very clearly
and explicitly explained in this book that how we are surrounded in the matrix
of marketing by companies and extent by which they go to make us “Brandwashed”.
No comments:
Post a Comment