Because of the close relationship between marketing, sales and revenue, people in different companies always think of some new and effective strategies to promote their brands and hence earn more money. Some of them go very success in creating extra value of their products, like Apple and McDonald. However, some of them go to the wrong way.
To start with, let’s have an example first. A 57 years old former trainee policeman claimed that he owned a new kind of anti-terror technology and this kind of innovation could detect drugs, people and most importantly explosives. He then told this “story” to the government organization in different places or countries. Unluckily, many of them trusted what he said and bought the devices with a price of £27,000 each and £50million in total. Even Worse, they were used at every checkpoint in Baghdad and Basra from 2006 in Iraq and caused thousands people death or disabled. Ironically, the device was in fact a golf ball finder.
What implications can we have through this example? What is the difference between creating value and manipulating value? One typical example to illustrate this is the tobacco advertisement (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8oRfKWJrOY). Nowadays, when we talk about tobacco, we will come up with some words, e.g. unhealthy, addiction… However, that was not the case in the older generation’s eyes. In the tobacco advertisement, cigarette is always linked to some “unrelated” or “irrelevant” values, like romance, mature, tough or even healthy. Because of the misleading contents and the harmfulness, tobacco advertisements are restricted or even banned in lots of country.
To conclude, marketing is a tool to create value which means that it can let the users or customers to enjoy their goods or services more or through different angles. However, we should keep in mind that we should use it to create an illusion that is irrelevant to the real situation. Otherwise, it is not only harmful to the customers but also your company.
Golf ball finder case: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2318182/British-millionaire-James-McCormick-jailed-selling-fake-bomb-detectors-Iraq-UN.html#ixzz2feBt1NWA