Quantity vs. quality
60 Minutes ran a segment last Sunday about what's called "viral" and "underground" marketing. As I understand it, viral marketing seeks to build product and brand awareness by manipulating non-traditional forms of media -- Internet newsgroups and Web chat sites, for example; instant messaging and so on. Underground marketing places paid representatives of companies to show their products in use in public areas that might draw the interest of passersby -- a guy using a video game peripheral on his laptop at Starbucks, for example, or a happy-looking couple in Times Square asking strangers to take their photos with a new camera-equipped mobile phone.
Much was made during the segment about how companies are resorting to these forms of guerilla marketing more and more to overcome a cynicism among the buying public, who feels that they're being marketed to all the time. Between ads on TV and radio, spam, pop-ups and pop-unders, telemarketers, billboards and so on, it's little surprise that people feel that way: It's total overload.
Anyway, I've been ruminating about this for a couple of days now to get a better handle on how I feel about marketing efforts in general, and what I've realized is that I think some marketing is terrifically clever. I see ads on television almost every time I watch that make me laugh out loud or stir something in me, so clearly some marketers are doing their job, at least when it comes to getting my attention. What pisses me off is stupid advertising.
Case in point: This ad for Febreze I just watched. Febreze is this air-freshening product that allegedly neutralizes the crap on your furniture, draps and carpet that makes your house smell like dog, cigars, gym socks, ass, or whatever else. My wife likes it; my mom can't stand it. Personally I'd rather just live in a hermetically sealed dome free of any contact with the outside world, but you can't have everything.
So this ad introduces viewers to what folks did before Febreze -- potpourri, Lysol, priestly exorcisms, whatever, then talks about the way the product works, encourages people to take the 7-day challenge, and ends showing this woman ushering guests into her conspicuously clean and, presumably, fresh-smelling house.
The first thing her friends do when they step in the door is get beatific grins across their faces and inhale deeply. Now, I ask you, what kind of fucking sniff-freaks are these people that they gulp in lungfuls of air the second they walk in? It's just an insult to my intelligence to think that this Febreze shit is going to make that much of a quality of life difference to me. It's stuff in a spray-bottle.
So the point of all this isn't to rant about what idiots the Febreze marketing people are -- I think that point stands to itself. The problem with marketing, in my opinion, isn't necessarily the quantity -- hell, I've said it before and I'll say it again: If there was a Commercials Channel on the cable box, I'd watch it, if it was best-in-class Clio-winning stuff. The problem is the quality of the commercials in general. And, like their prime-time counterparts, the sad truth of it is that the quality, for the most part, sucks.
Comments
another great example of this is stefano's blog.
Posted by: Anonymous | October 30, 2003 07:14 AM