The Preamble to the Constitution

WE THE PEOPLE of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Friday, June 16, 2006

Marketing and the art of the sale !

OK. I'll be the first one to admit, in order to use the rest of this article as any basis for conversation, you are asking marketing genuises to not put their best product foot forward. They get paid to make you think you absolutely have to have their junk or their service and you will not be a fit human being without it.

Here's the issue as I see it.

Most Marketing is a big fat lie. They (ad agencies) call it sales techniques.

I call it lying to sell Junk.

It's not a stretch, it's not a fib, it's not a shading of the truth, it's a big fat lie.

Here's why I think like that.

  1. Yelling the name of a car or product or dealership 74 times in the course of a commercial along with the phone number, does not create urgency in the mind of the consumer. It does not create "impressions". It just invites the gullible to buy a product that they now cannot forget even if they wanted to. Similar to having a song stuck in your head.
  2. No one really has a shape anywhere remotely close to the shape of any supermodel or anywhere close the shape of any magazine model or porn star. Out of all the women I know, not one of them has ever spent $100,000 on the necessary plastic surgery it takes to create this illusion. The problem is that our daughters think they are "fat" when they don't look like some surgically enhanced, photoshopped, airbrushed version of the real person.
  3. It does not matter if you call in the next ten minutes or 10 hours. You'll still get the same deal as anybody else who calls in from their trailer park to order the junk they saw on the informercial at 3am. The technology does not exist which allows ad agencies to control call centers based on when a commercial ran in your time zone on your cable outlet. Also on a related note: If a commercial says "Wait, that's not all- we'll double your order, etc", then the crap you are ordering is not worth anywhere near their "value price" in the first place. When they say "that's a 75$ value", what they really means is we tried to sell it for 75$ and nobody would even come close to this junk for that price so we had to cut the price in half in order to sell it to you. Guess what? The markup is still more than 99%. Plastic caulk edgers can be made from any cool-whip lid for nothing. Molded plastic, while not free, is never worth more than a couple of cents by the time you see it on an infomercial.
  4. Just because it says "New and Improved" on the box, does not mean the product is new and improved. Most of the time, the packaging is what is new and improved. Anytime you see these words it really means that the manufacturer had to figure out a way to raise the price somehow, so they reduced the amount in the container by 1% and increased the price by 5%. Now, that is a new and improved box and a new and improved price , and the product is "Old and the same". Don't fall for that one either. Their is really no value in the words "Lifetime Guarantee" either, unless it is from one the three companies that will probably be around in ten years. If you buy a widget from "Aqueduct sales" with a lifetime guarantee, it will not help you when they go out of business 2 weeks from now. No company= No guarantee. Put the guarantee on a box and take a dump in it. You will then have a guaranteed box of crap.
  5. No One has ever ran through a meadow of three foot tall grass into their lovers arms. Too many stickers, burrs, insects, uneven ground and broken glass. Nobody ever runs through a meadow with freshly washed hair, only to have it get all hot and sweaty and need to be washed again to remove the junk in it from the sweat.
  6. The offer you saw advertised on TV at the car dealership has never been used or offered.. No one ever gets Cash back. The money is added and applied to the price of the car. There is no deal. the price of the car was increased by the amount of the incentive in most cases, Or they want a bigger down payment and have a higher interest rate than you want or the "bank" wants the payments extended longer, or you have to buy an extra warranty. There is no DEAL. There is no "Boss" in the back approving your car deal or purchase. The salesman went to the candy machine. They leave you sitting in the room with the door closed on purpose to make you sweat, to get you to be emotionally invested in the car. Walk away, fast. . Come back in an hour and ask if they are ready to really deal. You will get better results. Trust me
  7. No matter how cool it may look on TV, trust me, never and I mean never, dance your way down a NY city street looking at your shadow, while listening to your music device. It is an invitation to a mugging. And you will look stupid.
  8. A very low percentage of people who join the military (like less than one half of one percent) ever get to fly an airplane, command a large ship, fly a jet, fire a major weapon system, carry a cool sword and dress up in the cool blue uniform. Most of the time you join, you work your butt off doing mundane things, you wait and then you get out. Nobody ever climbs cool mountains all by themselves, flies a jet for the fun of it, or just applies to be a sub commander and walks right into the job. All of those jobs are taken by people who have dedicated their lives to being the best at their craft as they can be. You will peel potatoes and empty garbage cans just like you would be doing in your home town, only you will do it in Podunkviklle aboard a ship somewhere or on a remote base in a hostile country.
  9. There is not a product made on this planet that will get red kool aid out of white carpeting. No matter how many times Billy Mays says so, OXY-CLEAN or whatever junk anybody is selling on TV, the red stain is there to stay even if you had a towel and some of that crap ready as soon as you spilled it. The are only three methods for getting it out. One, the carpet must be treated with a stain blocker like scotchguard or something like it, Two, Cover it up with a throw rug (or try to bl;each it out and when the first two fails(and they will, believe me) , replace the carpet. Same for magic glue (yeah right), 50 machine washings, The last car polish you will ever need and any of the rest of the junk in this category. Two words. Barbie - Unrealistic. Two more words . GIJOE- Gay.
  10. A mop is a mop. A broom is a broom. A spray nozzle is a spray nozzle. Nothing they do to it and no color they make it will ever make it worth $19.99. Ever. Even if they say order in the next ten minutes and we'll double your order for free, keep in mind that they are selling a plastic broom handle, with plastic bristles for $10 each. It just ain't worth it. No air purifier is worth three easy payments of 69$. Why would you pay $300 for a fan ? A rubber tip on the end of a rubber broom don't make it worth $29.95

1 comment:

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