Successful advertising campaigns are becoming harder and harder for corporations to achieve. With today’s ability to use TiVo to bypass completely television commercial advertising, companies are losing revenue fast. Additionally, consumers are becoming more and more skeptical towards blatant advertising. To combat this, companies employ people to study society and individuals and figure out how to design a campaign that would best appeal to the desired demographic.
The PBS Frontline documentary “Merchants of Cool” discusses how the current most desirable demographic is teenagers because they want to be cool and are therefore easily impressionable and with their large disposable income they make the perfect consumers. Companies often focus on the idea of “cool” for their campaigns in order to appeal to this challenging demographic. The idea of “cool” is a difficult concept to cash in on. Cool is ever-changing and once something cool is used too much in the mainstream for corporate purposes it becomes entirely uncool and is then an ineffective campaign. Because it is so hard to capture and market the essence of cool, companies have increasingly tried to forge an emotional connection with their products in the minds of consumers.
Neuromarketing, lovemarks and creating the association between a lifestyle and a product are all ways that companies try to convince consumers that they have a deeper bond with a product than they do in actuality. Because consumers have become skeptical and jaded towards traditional marketing strategies, companies are trying to tap into the unconscious portion of people’s minds. This technique is both effective and scary. The unconscious, by definition, is beyond the realm of what the individual can actively control. When advertisers create an emotional bond with their product that impacts consumers on an emotional, unconscious level, the consumer has no way of combating of this association and often is unable to pinpoint why he feels a certain way about a certain product but just knows that he has to buy Nike sneakers because Nike isn’t just a sneaker, it’s athleticism.
“Cool hunters” are culture spies that can penetrate society in a way that corporations are unable. They live amongst the target consumer demographics and they find out what things appeal to them in order to translate these ideals into an effective market strategy. Some companies use focus groups in which they invite teenagers to talk about their lives in general and use that feedback to improve their campaigns.
Some companies are more manipulative than that. Under the radar marketing firms such as Cornerstone don’t waste their time asking for feedback from their demographic. Cornerstone sometimes pays employees to enter into teen chatrooms and fraudulently poses as members of their target demographic while singing the praises of their product. They also pay hip-hop artists to endorse their product subtly. Consumers see their favorite hip-hop artists casually drinking Sprite and they are more effectively persuaded to consume Sprite than they would be if they were watching a Sprite commercial on television.
Product placement is also an effective way for marketers to subtly get their products into everyone’s mind. Some scenes in movies are created solely for the purpose of subtly endorsing a product. I recently watched another documentary on product placement and this documentary gave the example of John Candy in one of his movies. In the scene he is sitting on a train with a friend and eating lunch. He casually turns to his friend and asks “do you want a Coke?” His friend replies “No thanks,” John Candy finishes his lunch, they arrive at their destination and the scene ends. The scene didn’t seem at all out of place in the movie. It didn’t interrupt the flow of the plotline and it didn’t seem unnatural. This scene, however, was inserted into the movie solely to advertise for Coke. Because characters in movies have to wear real clothing and drive actual cars and eat at actual restaurants, it is impossible for movies to avoid subtly referencing various brands, but it is becoming increasingly harder to tell if a movie or a television show is referencing brands in a way relevant and justified by the context or if we’re actually just watching an exceedingly long commercial, in actuality.
Across media marketing is another way that companies can subtly wheedle their product into the minds of consumers. Many corporations own media conglomerates over many different media mediums. Time Warner, for example, is one of the largest corporations in
Companies are increasingly using more tactics that fall below our conscious awareness. This selling of brands as lifestyles or forging of intense emotional associations is a way for companies to sell their product to consumers without consumers even being aware that they’re being marketed to. Because consumers are becoming more skeptical and aware of corporate campaigns, these manipulative marketing strategies are currently the most effective way to sell their products to consumers and to ensure that their product is always first and foremost in a consumer’s thoughts. As with all campaigns, consumers eventually become aware and the campaign dramatically loses its efficacy. Eventually the time will come when the majority of consumers will realize and protest current concepts in advertising and marketing. Neuromarketing, under the radar marketing and guerilla marketing are going to be the advertising strategies of the future. People are unable to control their unconscious; so what better a way to ensure the success of a product than to forge such a strong emotional product bond that people become slaves to their unconscious desire for Nikes— any company can make a running shoe, but only Nike sneakers make athletes.
No comments:
Post a Comment