Month: November 2010

“Addiction is an uncontrollable compulsion to repeat a behavior regardless of its negative consequences.”

Everyday I get this need to drink coffee. I can’t control it. It makes zero sense. It makes my teeth yellow and makes me jittery throughout the day. I continuously keep drinking it though. This is an addiction. Coffee, though, has caffeine, which is proven to be an addictive drug. Okay, so a lack of self-control combined with some drugs has fueled my addiction.

But what about other “addictions”? There are points where I am in a shopping mall, I go in a store and buy something (even though I barely have enough for my rent), and then continue to buy things. Could shopping, and more specifically consumption be an addiction?

I really believe consumption is an addiction, with the negative consequences being reflected on our environment and our social happiness. People are replacing relationships with stuff and replacing the beauty of nature with trash. We keep consuming over and over again, even though most of these products are not actually meeting our true needs. Instead of consuming another chocolate bar, how about we have a fuller meal with loved ones that will fill us emotionally and literally?

“I can get no remedy against this consumption of the purse: borrowing only lingers and lingers it out, but the disease is incurable.” – William Shakespeare

I just read Diego’s blog post Let’s divorce marketing! , which outlined Microsoft Advertising Solution’s clever campaign. The campaign is basically all about how there needs to be a serious change in marketing, as it has all been about slamming random products in consumers’ faces without actually really considering them.

I believe this is a perfect example of a company realizing that value-based marketing is really what we need. As we learned in class, value-based marketing is about the customers needs as well as the needs of everyone a company interacts with (suppliers, employees, etc.). This type of marketer would only sell a product/service if it would genuinely satisfy customer’s needs in an interesting way and can work effectively with those in the supply chain.

I agree with Diego that a lot of marketing right now is just blindly giving out products without really considering the customer. Hopefully this can be the time for change where companies actually care about what they are supplying and how they do it.

“Be provocative. But be sure you ‘provocativeness’ stems from your product. You are not right if in your ad you stand a man on his head just to get attention. You are right if you have him on his head to show how your product keeps things from falling out of his pockets.” – Bill Bernbach

I recently read Anna Bourak’s blog post called Age Defying Barbie. This brought up some more nostalgia for me, which seems to be a running theme for the past couple weeks. As a little girl, I grew up playing Barbie with my sister. You weren’t considered a normal girl unless you played with Barbie.

Anna made an interesting point in her blog about how these dolls have lead to these preconceived views about beauty, expectations, etc. She also demonstrated how if Barbie was marketed as her actual age or at a different weight, then no one would buy this product. I believe that recently Barbie has tried to change this negative aspect by coming out with more multi-cultural dolls and promoting the idea that girls don’t have to fit in the ‘cookie-cutter’ model.

An example of this is the following video, which shows girls can be anything when they ‘grow-up’, should believe in themselves, etc.

Barbie is still an important staple in our society, but as Anna pointed out, Marvel should be more careful about the important image it can enforce on kids today.

“If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?” – Quote from a t-shirt

So for my EOSC 312 class we had to watch a bunch of different videos including Ted Talks and a mini-series called “The Story of Stuff.” The latter really caught my attention, and one of the videos is my specific focus today (which will coincide with deceptive marketing).

Basically what the video says is that the majority of cosmetic and beauty products we use today contain a lot of ingredients that are toxic, and a lot of ingredients that havn’t even been tested. This video really impacted me because as we saw in marketing class, we use so many products and services throughout the day. I was just thinking of a list of products that could have potential toxic things in them that I use – deodorant, shampoo, makeup, etc.

This topic is heavily related to marketing, as many of these companies that use toxic chemicals in their products don’t really let the consumer know about it. Of course these ingredients are listed, but does the everyday consumer really know what ‘propylparaben’ is? Currently there are guidelines to protect consumers from misleading (or omitting important information) product  labels, but in lieu of this information I think there needs to be more. It cannot be presumed that people will actually know what toxins they are putting there body through, so it up to the companies to either tell consumers in simple language what is in their products or stop using these toxins all together.

A useful website on this topic: http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.com

This website has a lot of information on different cosmetics and their ingredients, and how these ingredients can affect those who use them.

“The best thing is to look natural, but it takes makeup to look natural” – Calvin Klein

Today I’m not going to be really talking about marketing, more about something that I’m excited about.

I am super excited for the new Harry Potter movie that is coming out later this month!! This movie brings lots of nostalgia for me because I grew up with Harry Potter. These books came out each year as I grew up, so I felt like I was growing up along with the characters in the books. Even though the movies may not be the greatest (the acting has come into question sometimes), they still bring great joy to me. The special effects are definitely what the best about the movies, as they bring the ‘magic’ to real life.

I guess to somewhat relate this to marketing would be all the hype about the movie. I of course am a loyal follower, so I am participating in this marketing, but as shown in the trailer above, this movie uses social media, etc. to advertise. There is also a new Harry Potter theme park (I think by Disney World) that can help promote it.

Go out and see the new Harry Potter movie! Maybe dress up for it too!

“He can run faster than Severus Snape confronted with shampoo…”