Does anyone ponder if marketing is sleazy anymore?

[paisley]

I love this guys' rants (John Shirley)... read the right hand column of boingboing for the rest of the article... if ya like it there are some really cool ones in the column's archives

Does anyone anymore even think about if something in business, in marketing especially, is sleazy? I mean, there's a helluva lot that is legal--and is still sleazy as all Hell. Are we really past caring? SF Chronicle correspondent Hugh Hart reports on NEURO MARKETING. "Movie studios are utilizing brain-scan technology to evaluate their advertising campaigns by recording film fans' subliminal responses in previews. In a continuing experiment at Caltech, researchers show trailers for a variety of movies to subjects encased in Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging tube scanners, via goggles or mirrors positioned above their eyes....by measuring blood flow to a particular portion of the brain, marketers can figure out whether prospective moviegoers are excited, repelled or bored by their teasers."

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In a continuing experiment at Caltech, researchers show trailers for a variety of movies to subjects encased in Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging tube scanners, via goggles or mirrors positioned above their eyes....by measuring blood flow to a particular portion of the brain, marketers can figure out whether prospective moviegoers are excited, repelled or bored by their teasers." Apparently the orbito-frontal-lobe "encodes different kind of stimuli in terms of how much expected reward they're going to create in the person's brain." The old marketing surveys and previews aren't enough, to test marketing and movies, because "we form our preferences...on a subconscious level."

Women shown trailers of The Rock, the ex-wrestler, didn't admit that he was intriguing to them during advance surveys but when tested on the machine their brains told a different story. "They gave off very powerful brain responses." That amuses me, but Hart doesn't ask whether fine-tuning marketing at a neurological level is ethical. It never occurs to anyone to ask if something's ethical, or if it crosses the line from PR into brainwashing. Ethics are so 20th century.

Do we really want marketing to enter our brains-- to know, right down to the neuronal twitch, what we like? True, they can't do this MRI analysis to everyone (till they figure out how!) but they'll use the principles they learned in the lab to manipulate you when you don't know you're being manipulated and on a level of exactitude never before experienced. They're learning how to push your buttons with mind-control efficiency.What happens when these methods are applied to campaign advertising, and speeches? They're learning how to hypnotize you better, my friends, and maybe it's time to snap out of your trance and realize that. They're tinkering in your fu©king brain.

[Thorgnor]

It is environmental pressures that force and corge the course of evolution...

I'm ready to develop ways to fight the nonsense of salesmanship... if I can't I still get to play with cool toys right?

[paisley]

It's just the beginning. Check it out, in the new Wired--did you see that "The Lost Boys" article about reaching the supposedly inaccessible 18 to 34 year old market? Horrors--they aren't watching commercials as much as they used to. They actually have lives. A marketing guy at Toyota complains that young people "have the total ability to block out anything they don't want to get through...that's what makes this animal so scary." The Wired writers don't seem to see, no one seems to see, which animal is really scary. What's scary, dude, is that you think it's scary that these guys have the free will to block out your advertising.

found a page where you can talk to John Shirley about what he's writing about ... cool

he's done his guest-blog soon so if you like the writing you can follow what he's up to at John Shirley's Page

I like this joke he posted on his message board:

White House in 2005

One sunny day in 2005 an old man approached the White House from across Pennsylvania Ave, where he'd been sitting on a park bench. He spoke to the US Marine standing guard and said, "I would like to go in and meet with President Bush."

The Marine looked at the man and said, "Sir, Mr. Bush is no longer President and no longer resides here."

The old man said, "Okay" and walked away.

The following day, the same man approached the White House and said to the same Marine, "I would like to go in and meet with President Bush."

The Marine again told the man, "Sir, as I said yesterday, Mr. Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here." The man thanked him and, again, just walked away.

The third day, the same man approached the White House and spoke to the very same US Marine, saying "I would like to go in and meet with President Bush."

The Marine, understandably agitated at this point, looked at the man and said, "Sir, this is the third day in a row you have been here asking to speak to Mr. Bush. I've told you already that Mr. Bush is no longer the president and no longer resides here. Don't you understand?"

The old man looked at the Marine and said, "Oh, I understand. I just love hearing it."

The Marine snapped to attention, saluted, and said, "See you tomorrow, Sir".

[\/\/illy]

60 minutes had a bit about 'stealth' marketing the other night. It was quite interesting. The example they used were placing 'fun' people in a bar who meet you and after a bit offer to buy you a 'Brand X' drink. Hopefully you reciprocate and soon a whole bunch of people are saying it (Brand X) and ordering it and thinking it's cool because they're suddenly hanging out with some beautiful people. The plan is that the 'coolness' vibe carries beyond the doors of the bar and soon everyone is buying 'Brand X'. Does anyone find that offensive?

[AdamH]

As a marketing graduate I think there's some pretty clear distinctions that have to be drawn here, the first of which is that marketing in and of itself is not bad. If you look at it as something that influences what you buy and what you do with your time it becomes too general to cast as the something confined to evil doers and corporate bigwigs. The most interesting part of it is that most people insist they aren't influenced by what they see and hear around them because their conscious mind says they aren't, whereas their subconscious mind (which you have no control over) has been exposed to hundreds of messages in any given day.

The principles of a marketing mix (Price, product, promotion and placement in the market) are used equally by Nestlé and Greenpeace, or Ford and the University of Guelph. Concluding that Marketing is evil just doesn't hold water when both are employing the same principles to get you, joe or jane consumer, to make a donation or buy some baby formula. What's changing now is that people in my generation (the illustrious 18-34) will scrutinize every pitch or call to action that comes their way. And that's a good thing because it's forcing organizations (that's ALL organizations including NGOs) to think more carefully about how to present themselves and attract their target market. Whereas in the past the assumption was that we are all lemmings, and when we see a message saying "drink Coca Cola" or "Marlboro cigarettes have that smooth, distinctive flavour" we would somehow be motivated to get off the couch and go to the corner store.

Where ethical principles come into play is when you start looking at the operational side of things, and in the world of marketing strategies there are all sorts of questionable activities such as brain scanning and stealth marketing campaigns. The one Willy mentioned is one that most, if not all of the major brewers are using. Bacardi is particularly notorious for sending in "cool strangers" to bars to promote new coolers and mixers.

I'm defending marketing principles as I sit here and use them to promote volunteering overseas to skilled professionals, and I know that I'm the minority in the field but I think I needed to stick up for the concepts while acknowledging the negative strategic side too.

[paisley]

interesting

picturing sitting out at the bar with friends, and like a hooker asking a john "are you a cop", asking the fun and spontaneous girl who's joined our table if she's a "coolness rep for Molson American" after she buys the second round

(incidentely, I titled this thread after his title, not my own... I just found it food for thought as the whole concept of marketing freaked me out as a kid)

[AdamH]

I nailed one once...not the good nail but the "you corporate whore" kind.

I was at the e-bar in guelph with a couple of friends, and this petite blond girl came over and asked for a cigarette. She took it, came back and then bought a round of bavaria for our table (4 people) as a "thanks for the cigarette". She then asked if she could join us, so of course we said yes.

There was a general sort of conversation about nothing for a good 10 minutes, and at that point (mid-beer) she says "Is this beer an import?" So we're all looking at the label like the dumbstruck idiots that we were, and she takes another swig and says "It's pretty good". at this point I've figured out the score and asked "If you don't know anything about the beer, why did you order a round of it?" to which she replied "I don't know, I thought I'd try something a little different for a change". She then glanced to a table to our left and the one to our right mid-sentence.

My drunken friend, god bless him, looked her straight in the eye and said "I call IMPOSTER on you!" and stood up and marched out of the bar! She gae us a knowing smile and off she went.

[gentlemonkey]

ha ha ha. gotta love modern marketing. we get all kinds of interesting examples on these websites we frequent. always interesting finding ones self in the middle of 'marketing research or a product sting'.. when starbucks was moving into westboro, they had a guy subliminally spreading the word.. i was at a bus-stop enjoying my fairly traded bridgehead Bolivian. and the dude walks up to me, and strikes up conversation then it turns to coffee and he says 'cant wait for that starbucks to move in, man that coffee is the best' and i was like 'i prefer to get my coffee from bridgehead', and he started talking about the the prices and consistency of starbucks.. and realizing what this guy was trying to do, i said- 'you know what, i support bridgehead's politics, I like their coffee, and they're canadian. so that will keep me going there' and it was like he wasnt prepared to not just win people over. anyway, i'm glad i dont do that for a living.