Selling Condoms.

Posted by: | September 22, 2011 | Leave a Comment

I do not want this blog to become a blog about TED but I simply enjoy watching their talks and they more often then not they offer meaningful insight into marketing. In this short talk Amy Lockwood identifies one of the key aspects of marketing that we also discussed in our lectures. Know your audience! Know the Micro and Macro-environment your business is operating in. Know what the customers want. And deliver just that. Create value for your customers. That is why Durex is advertising “performance”, and increased pleasure and sensation. These messages do not focus on the health aspects of using condoms but on the intrinsically satisfying characteristics of sex without scaring people away.

This I guess could also be applied to what we discussed today in lecture. Today we have been talking about knowing your Macro-environment. But only focusing on the Macro-environment does not lead to effective marketing. If one would analyse the Macro-environment in Congo and compare it to the environments in Canada or other western nations one would see that the average age in Congo is much lower so is the average SES. The same is true for the technology and economics. But what this analysis is not taking into account is that some demands and expectations are universal across cultures:

Every culture associates mutually agreed sexual practices with pleasure. Engaging in sexual activities is mainly done for two reasons: reproduction or pleasure. If one would only have sex for reproduction purposes it would not make sense to engage in sexual activities once the woman is pregnant (and of course it would also not make sense to use condoms) but if one is seeking pleasure without reproduction then it does very much make sense to use condoms. While buying condoms one wants to think of the usage of them and the associated pleasures and although one is cautious of the fact that STDs exist (otherwise one wouldn’t have to use condoms but rather other contraceptives) this thought is not the primary concern.

I guess the message Mrs Lockwood (and I agree with her on that part) is trying to convey is that one should focus on the end consumer. The same applies to businesses that have their products shelved in supermarkets. Their primary target must be the consumer and although the supermarkets have to stock the products it is the consumer who buys the product and if the marketing does not focus on the consumer sales will be slow and subsequently the supermarkets might remove the product from the shelves.


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