Marketing is all about understanding people.

This is probably my key take-away from the course. Through the analysis of several firms and their promotional campaigns, I got a better insight in why it’s important to understand the customers “wants” and “needs”.

I think the group assignment was interesting. The three stage process  gave us the ability to look at the firm multiple times, instead of just having a final paper, where most of the workload would have been done in perhaps a hasted manner. Furthermore I appreciate Sauder’s approach to  teach students alternative skills, such as video editing and so forth, and force us to tap more into the right hemisphere of our brain.

That said, I find it crucial to point out that group work was far from optimal, and by this I mean that the group synergy was  poor. Having now five and a half years of upper education in my backpack I believe I have seen my fair share of  assignments/tasks/projects. Over the years, my understanding was that a team becomes stronger by pooling the resources of all the members, and emphasise the qualities of each team member. Diversity in educational and professional background offer a wider variety of perceptions and help push the project to a higher level. Still, this was not applicable in our group. Instead, I feel like some of our group members had a very individualistic approach and wanted to strive as individuals within the group instead of making it more of a shared experience. Often times, it was unacceptable to approach the idea at a different angle, and decisions were not open to constructive discussion but instead were just the way to do it, “because that’s the way to do it”.

Recently, an article from my Facebook news feed caught my attention. It was a link to a website called PolicyMic. Something about “10 corporations controlling almost everything we buy”… Faced with such a title, I knew the article could go both ways, either an insightful read or the exact opposite, Link to Article. Still, the preview of the article contained the following illustration:Which convinced me to check it out. What amazed me most about this illustration, was that many of the brands portrayed actually were owned by groups, whereas in my mind they were independent firms. Brands such as BOSS, San Pelegrino or even Pringles. What’s also interesting  in this illustration, is to see that all these 10 major groups all follow the same growth strategy at the bigger scale, namely diversifying their portfolio through width and depth of marketing mix (though only the former is depicted in the above illustration).

Further down the article, we see that the trend of big groups owning several brands is not unique to the consumer good industry. As we see here, whether it be the media industry or the banking industry, the same consolidation pattern is visible:

Surprisingly,  the article puts a negative spin on these industry consolidations, by saying for example that the 10 big groups, merely offer us the illusion of choice. Since in the end, almost all products are owned by the same 10 big groups. Still, I don’t see the problem. The fact that these groups grew to become that big, are only proof of their aptitude to do business, and actually are able to do better than the competition. Furthermore, having only the 10 biggest groups left in the industry, pushes them to push competition as crazy in order to improve their individual marketshare, hence making great use of Research and Development to push new products and aggressively compete,  all else equal, leaving us, consumers with the best possible accessibility to the products we want.

The best way to describe viral marketing is by comparing it to an everyday task. And for most of us, I assume cooking is on the list.  In average, most of us human beings will consume between 2 to 5 meals a day, and I guess by now you see where I’m heading with this… We will spend a tremendous amount of our “oh-so-valued” time in the kitchen! Now ask yourself, why not make the best out of that time? Why settle for a macaroni-and-cheese-with-a-can-of-coke diet, when the culinary experience could be so much more? Why not learn to cook new exotic dishes and discover new spices, instead of sticking to the same – unhealthy – variety?

Well these same rhetorical questions apply to marketing. As a matter of fact, the analogy between cooking and marketing can be overly simplified to two activities that are time consuming and fulfil a goal. While the first one nourishes, the second one promotes. And just like cooking, marketing can be done in a variety of ways.  Taking the comparison a step further, I would say most regular ads and infomercials are the macaroni and cheese of advertisements, they are lousy at promoting and probably were no fun to make. While on the other hand, viral marketing campaigns are usually quite exciting and enjoyable to watch. And just like cooking, I’m sure they are extremely satisfying and fun to produce.

Please enjoy the following video!

Europ Assistance Italia Submarine Campaign

To promote they new LifePark Protection store, Europ Assistance Italia faked the surfacing of a submarine in the middle of Milan. With actors disguised as firemen and marines exiting the submarine in chock, the scenery  was worthy of a Peter Jackson movie. Which brings us to our conclusion,  quality cooking, just like viral marketing, are win-win approaches. The creation processes gets more enjoyable and the receiving side – wether it be you or others – also get to enjoy it more!

Have you ever noticed the radical difference between product marketing campaigns and awareness marketing campaigns? Say the difference between a fast food ad, where every single element of the advert is meticulously chosen to saturate your brain with happy thoughts, while on the other hand an awareness campaign against a drug would leave you with a strong taste of discomfort induced by the dark nature of the advert. For sake of illustration, feel free to look at the two following YouTube videos:

Meth Awareness: Crystal Meth – Not Even Once

Coca-Cola Commercial: Coca-Cola Security Cameras

But why is it so? How did we come to the conclusion that inflicting fear, guilt and uncertainty to an audience would lead to a positive outcome? I believe that in simplified terms, the two types of campaigns are the exact same, just with a negative twist on one of the two. What I mean by this is that a methamphetamine prevention campaign is in essence a sabotaged advertisement for the drug, where the substance is still perceived as a product but where it’s just being criticized instead of being valorized. This approach, I’m sure, makes a fair deal of sense if you consider the awareness commercial out of context.

Consider now if you will, your attention for adverts as a market with two goods, with respectively awareness campaigns and product campaigns. We could in no time see that these products are substitutes for one-another. Now remember that one of these products tried to make you feel happy and good, while the other one tries to do the exact opposite. Rationally, we see that the product campaign is the most appealing.

 Leading us to the point of this post. Awareness campaigns are supposed to be a good thing, that should benefit society as a whole, but because they are “painful” to watch, they actually do a lousy job at fulfilling their objective.

Marketing, Market-ing, the repertoire of skills, methods and ways to market your product, and doing it in the best possible fashion. But really, what is Marketing if you had to describe it in one word?

Advertisement. At least that’s what it boils down to in my mind if I were to explain it in one word, and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one making this word association. Of course, Marketing is much more than just advertisement, but for the sake of this post we will focus on advertisement and its ethical ramifications.

When were you last exposed to an advertisement? A minute ago, an hour ago, more? If you answered the latter, it’s most likely because your brain didn’t even bother to notice it was exposed to marketing, and hence you having no recollection of it happening. Which brings me to my first point. Advertisement is ubiquitous. In fact, ads are so present that “the obvious thing to do is just ignore stuff” (Seth Godin, 2007). Which, not so surprisingly, ties very closely to the increasing indifference of individuals towards their peers. I’m not saying advertisement creates egotists, but this defensive mechanism we develop against ads, does incite us to individualistic behavior. It’s not a bad thing, but it certainly is a sad thing, that due to audio-visual “pollution” we have a tendency to ignore “stuff”, perhaps more than we care to.

If I haven’t made a clear case for the somewhat askew ethical nature of Marketing, then perhaps this second point will help tip the scale. I looked up the term Propaganda on Wikipedia and came across this preamble:

Propaganda is […] aimed towards influencing the attitude of the community […] by presenting only one side of an argument. […] Propaganda is usually repeated and dispersed over a wide variety of media in order to create the chosen result in audience attitudes.

How far is the above statement from describing Advertising, besides from the fact that Propaganda applies to a country and Advertising applies to a firm? I guess all I’m saying is that if Propaganda is perceived as unethical, then it’s only fair to raise a question mark about its close cousin Marketing.