Unfortunately, this philosophy of instrumentality is effective. How would we as a society put marketing back inside Pandora's box?
Unfortunately, while this might have been a great marketing strategy five years ago, it doesn't scale -- and it makes a horrible mess out of dialectical conversation.
When everyone does it like Apple, no one does, not even Apple. It ceases to have meaning or effect.
Unfortunately, treating people like gullible children is a winning strategy. I can't think of any large company that treats their customers with decency and respect.
I wonder if one problem is that cultural/societal values change over time, and a company might not be keeping up with the times. And that may adversely impact the way a company is treating their customers. What do you think?
I disagree. Companies' are top-down in nature, so their values are set by their owners. Large companies are almost always owned by a multitide of entities (investors) that do not care about anything else than profits. In such case, maximizing profits is the only true value, and whatever else they might say is smokescreen.
On the other hand, if the company has a single person or a small number of people in charge, then, depending on the values of these people, company can care about other things than profit. However, large companies controlled by individuals and not mobs of investors are rare.
To summurize, the stock market is a mixed bag for me. It improves allocation of capital, but it also creates the disconnect between owners and their companies which makes the companies greedy and egotistical.
This reminds me of the typical social media company (e.g., Facebook). Certain 'customers' have turned cynical because of the company's aim to maximize profits. I wonder what it's going to do to their brand value/personality in the long term?
Facebook's name being dragged through the mud isn't too surprising if you follow the attitude that Zuckerberg was shamelessly open about since the inception of the company.
'There's no one in their right mind who would say the right way to buy a computer is to look at advertisements. ...compare specs and functionality'
that's not how any of this works :)
in our minds we're perfectly logical units making deliberate choices based on carefully considered factors. in reality I pay $5.45 for blue bottle pour over coffee, in YETI coffee mug that best resembles my ruggedness.
in fact most people sacrifice specs and functionality and buy iPhones simply because of personality
No one is capable of drawing meaningful conclusions by comparing advertisements.
A salesman is supposed to walk the customer through these sort of things. The problem is that salesmen at big-box stores like Best Buy are neither knowledgeable nor trustworthy.
“Comparing specs and functionality” is exhausting, technical, and almost as prone to pointless marketing gimmickry, like the megahertz wars. And it’s usually not worth the effort. Many purchasing decisions aren’t necessary to optimize, and many of the ones that are can only be optimized subjectively—which shoes fit the best to your feet, which helmets fit the best to your head, which furniture looks and fits best in your home. If you’re buying a motorcycle, the technical specs can be the best on the market, but if it doesn’t physically fit your body it’s a bad motorcycle for you.
So if you’re building a personality and a brand around your company and products, does that mean you’re expecting your customers to make irrational decisions? No, you’re just trying to get attention, get into people’s heads, and make them remember that you’re an option. And when it is a deciding factor, most of the time it’s because all of the other factors are meaningless anyway. If you buy Nike because you want to be like LeBron James, and you’re at least satisfied with the shoes and whatnot themselves, odds are that wearing a slightly better designed Under Armor shoe won’t actually make you happier anyway.
> If you were in the market for a new pair of shoes, what would
> be the sensible thing to do to get the best pair? Would you
> look at the glitzy ads, or would you try to choose something
> that is durable and comfortable for its price? Would you compare
> celebrity endorsements or spec sheets?
But in general you're missing the point here.
In fact it can be boiled down to a single word. From the transcription:
> Remember, Nike sells a commodity. They sell shoes!!!
You draw a false dichotomy between "glitzy ads" and "durable and comfortable."
The fact is that most shoes, even modestly priced ones, are plenty durable and comfortable. We've been making them for thousands of years and there aren't a lot of useful breakthroughs left to make. For most purposes, they're a commodity.
So how do you get people to buy your stuff when you're competing in a commodity market sector?
Well number one, you have to actually have some quality there. Unless you're selling high-fashion shoes or something they need to be reasonably "durable and comfortable."
And you need to tell some type of story. Perhaps not "glitzy ads" but you do need that story.
Alternately you can, I guess, compete by monopolizing resources or differentiate yourself materially somehow. But there are a lot of product segments where that's not viable. You can't make a pencil that's much better than any other pencil. You can't grow rice that's too much tastier than any other rice. You can't clean gutters too much better than the next guy who cleans gutters. You can't build a computer that's too much faster than anybody else's, unless you're willing to throw down billions of dollars and get into a decades-long arms race with other CPU makers.
And even if you build a better mousetrap you still need to tell people about it, so it's story time anyway...
I loathe marketing, but I have no clue how to get around it.
Most will be impressively boring and bad. There'll be a few stand out ones promoting style, brand, image over substance, the car ads that say nothing of the car but show 50 miles of empty road, the feeling you get from being the Marlboro Man etc.
We gave everyone enough awareness of marketing to feel everyone has to do style over substance. The brand must have personality, the image must convey the right feelings. Ugh. Everyone is an internet marketer/huckster A/B tester now. Yeah, but what does the product do? Who cares? Just buy^Wlease it.
I truly miss the innocence of small business ads of yesteryear. Many of them were even honest. Now you just need to have the right image - Theranos, Goop. I loathe what we've all had to become, just to stand still.
Simply having functions and features is not enough of a guarantee you will survive when functions and features are easily copied.
Who doesn't know what Coca-Cola is? Who doesn't know what a Macbook is? Who doesn't know what Disney is? Who doesn't know that Ford makes trucks? Who doesn't know that Budweiser makes beer?
You have a theoretical justification for advertisement. If you actually switch on your TV, you will see almost entirely advertisements for products you already know of that are making a purely emotional appeal.
Look at these companies:
https://www.businessinsider.com/10-biggest-advertising-spend...
Every company is a household name.
Look at these ads:
https://www.adsoftheworld.com/collection/2018_super_bowl_com...
How many of them inform you of something you've never heard of? How many of them make a logical argument rather than just baffling you with bullshit?
from the vantage point of 2019, it seems obvious that these are well known brands that don't need to increase awareness of themselves. but they got to this position by making relatively good products and adeptly managing their brands over decades.
at this point, advertisements communicate brand values more than information about specific products, but I would argue this is actually helpful for the consumer in some cases.
if I'm on a tight budget and need a new computer, I already know not to waste time browsing apple or falcon-northwest products. if I'm a contractor and need a work truck, I'm not going to the porsche dealer. advertisements aren't going to help me choose between chevy and ford, but they can narrow down my search considerably. most ads communicate pretty clearly whether or not you are the target audience for a product, without spending hours comparing technical specs.
I could change that, educate myself about shoe materials and construction, but I choose not to for one simple reason: I can educate myself about literally anything and everything, and I've noticed in my life that where ever I look, there is practically infinite depth and detail, and so I have very carefully choose what to spend my time learning about. Shoes aren't it.
Instead I use heuristics -- I have the finely honed taste in branding and advertising that all westerners have, I can infer from the storefront and typefaces and colors on the box what range of quality a given pair of shoes is. From there I have a manageable selection of like 10 types of shoes I can look at, and from there 3 that I like the look of that I can try on. Occasionally I get burned--shoes that my branding intuitions say should be adequate quality for the price turn out to be shitty. But mostly I get this right and end up with shoes that I like.
A shoe expert has a whole different process, I'm sure. They are in the know about the latest construction trends and who is using them, and know how to source them.
Similarly, when you and I buy a computer we can meaningfully distinguish the details of the hardware we're considering, so we do. But most people can't. They have to use branding heuristics. And you know what? I think they are mostly fine. If someone who knows nothing about computers buys a Dell to check their email because they seem basic and reliable, they are going to do fine for the most part.
And for Apple, "people can change the world" isn't the real message. The real message is the thousands of microscopic heuristics that fire when a product brands using high concepts and slick design. They add up to basically "this is a product I am paying extra for, it will be better than most other things on the market but not exactly value for money, and the support on it will be extra good." Which is a heuristic that basically holds for Apple products (although, recently...?)
So actually when I put a personality on my company I am choosing something for my customers that I actually would choose. I'm building in the heuristics they need to make a decision without being an expert in the domain. And because I'm both not an asshole and don't want to deal with a bunch of anger customers, I am going to try to make those heuristics accurate.
If you were in the market for a new pair of shoes, what would be the sensible thing to do to get the best pair? Would you look at the glitzy ads, or would you try to choose something that is durable and comfortable for its price? Would you compare celebrity endorsements or spec sheets?
There's no one in their right mind who would say the right way to buy a computer is to look at advertisements. The right thing to do is compare specs and functionality.
This is good advice for how to make money. But bear in mind that, if you try to build a personality for your company, you are choosing something for your customers that you would never choose for yourself.