Bothered about too much marketing these days?
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- Created on Friday, November 02 2012 08:31
Couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine mentioned an ad campaign one of the multinationals was suppoosed to launch over here.
She considered this one to be rose-tinting beyond all tastes and not too far from misleading. At that momentb she seemed to be quite upset by the tweaked reality imposed by ads in general.
Well, big deal, What else is an ad supposed to be there for?
Now, if I forget my years in B2C and just take the shoes of a neutral observer, and look at the “need creation” phenomenon.
In our time anybody can bring basically anything on the market hoping somebody will spend his money on that stuff. Here, the customer is completely free to choose, and, yes, his purchasing decisions might be influenced by the producer, we cannot deny that, as the latter has somehow to survive as well.
If I don't like this, I can go somewhere for a state-planned economy where I'll be told by somebody else what I really need, and, as far as my needs are more or less accurately guessed, all will be fine. In fect, both systems should work quite well. Except that one of them has survived very well in North Korea and the other one quite everywhere else.
OK, is my freedom to choose being somehow limited by suppliers’ aggressive marketing activities, as some insist? I admittedly sometimes follow current consumer trends just from fearing to suffer some negative impact on my image if I don't. Do I somehow feel forced to spend money and to consume beyond my needs?
I definitely do, as I all to often ignore the added value of the good itself and take the purchasing decision based on the perceived impact of purchase on my image. Now, what I do to keep things simple is to take this social aspect as part of the total added value of a good in a degree that I consider to be appropriate.
I agree that free market and all marketing tools sometimes make me behave in a way I should think twice about., but, unklike you prefer a handful of rice a day and a pair of rubber boots a year, show me a better way.
