All projects: Gel, Jobs, Gootodo, Games, Uncle Mark, Goovite, Blog, Bit Literacy
Manipulation saves lives in Ghana (and scents American couches)
Sometimes manipulation can be used for good: the NYT reports that marketers ran a campaign to increase soap usage in Ghana, and it worked. This was different from preachy PSAs ("use soap to decrease disease"), instead relying on marketers' tricks of getting consumers to form habits around buying and using product.
The article includes a case study of Febreze, a furniture spray that almost failed until Procter & Gamble figured out how to manipulate customers into making it part of their daily routine. Great quote from a P&G psychologist:
we realized we needed to create new products. So we began thinking about how to create habits for products that had never existed before.
... in other words, they ran out of products that people actually need - so now they think up new "needs," invent products to fulfill them, and manipulate consumers to form habits around the product.
Thus the same process that increased hand-washing in Ghana, saving thousands of lives, vastly increased the sales of a furniture de-smelling spray.
Manipulative marketing is neutral, like any other tool. We have a choice of what we'll use it for. What are the outcomes you'll spend your life to create?
See also:
• Deception considered helpful
• Truth in packaging: Pirate's Booty
Intentional manipulation is wrong. I'm happy 3000 children a day are alive b/c there is less disease but lying to people to save them from themselves is the wrong approach. If you think it's right for Ghana to "manipulate" its people ask yourself if you'd be okay if your government purposely lied to you and felt no ramifications b/c they were "helping" you.
sounds like the slogan of the fictious group at WEBN Cincinnati.....
Brute Force Cybernetics...create a need and then fill it....
this video came to mind... oblique reference.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzoNInZ2ClQ
The substance of the article revolves around the manipulation of a populace; though in Ghana it was used for a good cause. Sometimes people need a little nudging or in this case even trickery to help them help themselves and that's fine. However, when we have it implemented into American Capitalism, we see that the same technique is used to gain a profit.
"...they ran out of products that people actually need - so now they think up new "needs," invent products to fulfill them"
The question is, while this is a great marketing campaign (inventing a need for your product), does this not seem a bit, well, extreme? Of course people can decide to buy Febreze or any product, but if everyone used this tactic and the American populace is convinced, do we not then become overrun with "needs" that don't really exist except on TV?
Unfortunately, the American populace has already had many non-existing “needs” really exist suggested to them: individual car ownership, entertainment vehicles (cable television, video games and portable music - none are really needs) and of course the American icon…tobacco. Manipulation of the public and the concept of its needs goes back at least as far as the Italians and spice, if not further, we’re just a little better at it because of statistics.
Social Marketing is a discipline that studies and employs these methods to change public behavior: recycling behavior is a good example. As Mark said, the methods are neutral, it depends on what you're using it for.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_marketing for more information
When I transeferred from Baruch College to Brooklyn College (about 35 years ago), my Advertising and Marketing courses were accepted as Psychology courses, interestingly enough.
Sometimes I think the ad agencies fool their clients into thinking they have a great ad. Case in point: the KFC ad wherein the man tastes the chipotle chicken and says to the woman; "What is it?"; her single word reply; "Taste!". Do the honchos who presumably vetted this ad realize the implication: before this KFC had NO TASTE! I laugh every time the commercial is shown.
"They ran out of products that people actually need - so now they think up new needs."
First thought: ADBUSTERS
Thanks, Mark, for some stimulating content.
I was doing a search on this type of marketing and came across this. What I don't get about P&G is instead of creating "new" products, why don't they do some case studies and work on existing products? Some of their products right now outright stink haha