Marketing

12 articles

The toys we buy

5 minutes read

If you are by any coincidence born around 1983, we are the same age and we can try a little experiment:
Remember the time when we were in the 3rd grade of elementary school. That puts us in year 1993. Try to remember the things that you asked your mother or father to buy you because you really wanted it. Does maybe a thing like this come up in your memory?
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Liar liar

3 minutes read

So you think you know what you like? Hm. Think twice.
The real nightmare of a marketing department starts the moment when the campaign is ready to set off. Before the launch, experienced and not so brave marketing gurus turn to conventional methods of gathering people’s opinions about the prepared campaign. Will they love it? Will they buy more beer if we sweat that glass off and make that girls cleevage sexier? Will they hate it? The questions are endless.
Some companies do a brief survey, some of them just sit around for hours and discuss the possible opinions and others turn to focus groups. Aha! Focus group, that is a great idea! (?) Let’s hear it from our future customers, let’s see what they say about it!

Marketing ninjas’ little secret: 90 minutes ads

4 minutes read

Let’s do a quick quiz:
What computer Carry Bradshaw uses to write her column?
What shoes is she obsessed with?
What car James Bond drives in Casino Royal?
What car Mulder and Scully drive in X files?
What store chain sales are Will, Grace, Jack and Karen and all Manhattan characters are obsessed with?

So WHAT do we buy and are we that stupid or are we just giving it a shot?

3 minutes read

Many marketing courses and books are in focus of purchasing habits: how, when and why do people buy certain products and not others.  Some would settle down for a “brand lovemark” answer: people buy certain brands because they have trust in them, they buy some of the lifestyle that the brand is selling, some promise a better life, better looks, better health, better social status. Others say that consumers have a certain pattern in their decision making process and that consumers will buy whatever promises them better life. True. We all buy to raise our Quality of Life. That is the only reason.

Is marketing wasting your money? The saga of buying aluminum foil roll.

3 minutes read

Couple of days ago, I went to a large store to buy some groceries and other home stuff with my mom. We had a shopping list and I was hoping to finish the retail saga in about 15 minutes, but then, we stopped to buy aluminum foil for food storing. The shelf with aluminum foils had about 20 different products, about 5 different brands:  they were all the same, except that they had different length of foil roll and different price. It’s easy to find the cheapest, but hey, guess what, the cheapest is the shortest roll.  “This one is too short, it will go out in a week”, said my mom. Ok, take the longer one-right? There are 5 different brands of longer one, with significant difference in price. “This one?”, I took the cheapest 20m roll. “No, look, for a few bucks more, we can get 30 m roll”, my mom said. I took that one and put it in a cart. Just when I thought we’ve completed the mission of buying such a trivial thing, I saw cheaper 30m roll. I switched it and pushed the cart on, but hey, imagine that, for just a few bucks more, there was 40m foil. We lost patience, and we just took the last foil on the shelf. It was the longest and I think the most expensive one.  Product placement tip: just put your foil at the end of the shelf and your sales will rise just for the sake of shortage in human patience.