So there’s this recession thing going on. Not happy for most. I, thankfully, am employed. Amazing what the letters RN after your name can do. In case you don’t know what RN means, it means :

Registered
Nerd.

Just kidding. It means Registered Nurse. This totally means I’m busy being a superhero and saving lives although I’m not the Nurse Jackie kind of nurse. She’s a little too hardcore for me, if you catch my drift. * sniff * sniff * snort * snort * omfg was the powdered Percocet in my powder compact and if it was how did that get in there holy moly guacamole total Epic Fail.

We all know that superheroes are busy doing things like … saving lives and stuff so that leaves us with very little time to do the menial things in life…like laundry. Seriously, what is up with laundry?! I swear those little piles of germ-infested scrubs I leave in the hamper magically hump each other while I sleep because they seem to multiply at a rate that puts even the horniest rabbits to shame. I am utterly convinced they do this to either mess with me or to keep Tide in business. I’m not sure which one it is yet.

Anyway, I was talking with GlowWorm today and I was bitching about how I need a maid to help me keep my sanity at home. He suggested I post an ad.

OMFG, WHAT A BRILLIANT IDEA!!!

I totally crafted one because I would be providing jobs for the jobless but I think there’s a slight problem with what I wrote.

Wanted : Seeking grommet to do my bidding. Said bidding includes making coffee, doing my laundry, delivering and picking up dry cleaning, screening calls for any and all crazy people, screening calls for any guy I might’ve mistakenly given out my real number to instead of the fake one I can never remember after having one glass of killer good Scotch too many and any other thing I might think up.

Pay : What?! You pay me, beeyotch!

Yeah…I don’t think that would work. But that’s okay. I have ready made grommets installed. This wonderful app is otherwise known as MyLittleBrother v2.0

I love it.

* All kidding aside and on a serious note, If I could afford to employ someone, I would. Being out of a job is one of the worst feelings in the world…and I don’t wish that upon anyone.

Recently I got a mail, saying 24th July……. High Tide Picture in Mumbai………..scary man….

Whatever happens in India or anywhere around the world, how do you get to know about it?

There only two common ways, one is through word of mouth & another one is by news.

I generally come to know by somebody first (word of mouth) then I go & check the news. Some people might be seeing the news first then knowing it from someone else.

After few days you receive a mail saying pictures of that particular event. There are people in this world, who likes to accumulate all the pictures & send e-mails to their friends.

I get e-mails for all the events which were occurred around the globe others might have got it as well, to name a few 9/11, 26/11, Tsunami, Earthquake, 26th July & many such events.

I don’t wait for these e-mails to come but definitely if they come in my inbox I go & check it.

Imagine a mail saying 24th July High Tide Picture in Mumbai….. will you not check it, when you know it will hardly take any time & the entire media is talking about it?

One of the media article stated, according to the Maritime Board’s predictions, at 2:03 p.m on July 24th, the tides are expected to rise to 5.05 meters – about 57 cm higher that the high tide of July 26, 2005. This news was floating around on every media channels. I don’t see any reason why people will not check their inbox if they receive this kind of an e-mail from your friend. I too checked it.

It must have taken 15 minutes for that guy to do this & send it to x amount of people.

Once it’s gone there are people who will forward it ahead to someone else & the circle goes on. This is how viral marketing moves around & reaches different strata of people.

Definitely, this mail might not reach your right target group but don’t forget, it has gone to many numerous people. They will indeed talk about it somewhere in their personal meetings & by chance while shopping if they see it at once this picture will come to their mind.

Have a look at the mail which was sent to me. (Let me know what you feel after seeing the pic, in my comment box)

It said, TIDE AT IT’S PEAK

This is a bottle of Tide detergent. It costs about $7 at your local market. It has less than $1 of  ingredients in it. The rest is packaging, marketing, “shelf space fees” and profit. Tide’s manufacturer, Procter and Gamble spends $255 million per month in U.S. advertising for all its products.

In the first six months of the year, General Motors spent around $200 million per month in advertising to sell 250,000 cars and trucks. That’s close to $1000 per vehicle for marketing.

I believe it’s time to ask the question of whether advertising has become the tail that wags the dog of capitalism. We will spend in the U.S. around $300 billion on advertising this year, and that is just the actual outlay for space and doesn’t include all the money spent making the ads. When I am paying $7 for a product where 80% of my dollars are used to persuade me that Tide gets my shirts whiter than all the other duplicate detergents, then something is seriously screwed up with the economics. 

Capitalism has sought to maximize utility–create the greatest satisfaction from the consumption of goods. But just how does advertising increase utility? If the average consumer knew they were paying $7 for $1 of goods would they be satisfied? When Henry Ford first started selling cars, advertising was a very small part of his budget. Even into the 1920’s, the outlets for mass advertising were relatively limited. Radio was just getting started as a commercial business and the era of mass market magazines was in a relatively nascent stage. It was not until the Great Depression that the advertising business presented itself to business as the solution to the crisis of overproduction. Paul Mazur, a Lehman Bros. banker wrote in 1932 (New Roads to Prosperity) that the first task was to give workers more leisure time so they could shop. Within a few years the five day work week became the standard. He went further.

Within the society we must develop systems of education and persuasion which help convert the potential desires of the people into the positive force of their demands for goods with which to satisfy the living standards that they have established for themselves.

The movement of a whole society from a “needs” to a “wants” consumer culture was the role of advertising. And as its importance grew lonely voices like that of John Kenneth Galbraith began to question where it all was going.

It can no longer be assumed that welfare is greater at an all-around higher level of production than at a lower one. The higher level of production has, merely, a higher level of want creation necessitating a higher level of want satisfaction

No one doubts that the ad business has perfected the art of “want creation”, but at what cost? The Psychologist Barry Schwartz has written a wonderful book called The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less and in this great TED video he cites his medium sized local supermarket that sells 175 different salad dressings. Schwartz’s thesis is fairly simple– we are faced with far too many choices on a daily basis, providing an illusion of a multitude of options when few honestly different ones actually exist. Bruce Springsteen said it simply “57 channels and nothing on”.

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal quoted Bob Rodriguez, a money manager who had correctly called the mortgage meltdown in 2005.

He also expects consumers to save rather than spend, spawning “severe difficulty for a large segment of the economy directly or indirectly related to consumers.”

By the time the March quarter ends, he expects the U.S. savings rate will approach 4%. By the first quarter 2010 it could be in the 7% to 10% range. In recent years, that rate has hovered near 1% or lower, indicative of a country binging rather than saving.

In other words, Mr. Rodriguez doesn’t think Americans will shop their way out of a recession.

He believes the U.S. consumer has transformed into a saver, though policymakers don’t fully understand that. President-elect Barack Obama “will try to stimulate spending with one foot on the gas, while consumers are pushing on the brake” by saving. “We’re in for a very discontinuous environment.” Thus, he says, the economy will sputter in fits and starts. The recession will deepen over the next six to 18 months.

The fact that we are greeting the return of thrift to our culture with such fear demonstrates just how distorted our ad driven 24/7 media culture has gotten. If the consumer is finally developing some natural resistance to the siren song of advertising and if our plethora of choice has actually lowered our standard of living (because we are paying so much to be advertised to)–then maybe we can take this period of creative destuction in the retail economy to rethink the role of marketing in our culture. One simple experiment would be to decrease the deductibility of advertising expenditures by business against their tax bill. For instance, businesses can only deduct a portion of entertainment expenses (the fabled 3 Martini lunch) against their taxes. Why not allow only 50% of ad expenditures to be deducted from taxes? The other alternative is a straight sales tax on advertsing. Of course the broadcasters and newspapers would scream bloody murder, but the issue of how they survive in the digital age is a subject for another post in the near future.

first posted in WAWAM! on june 22, 2008 : http://the-wawam-file.blogspot.com/search/label/mar%20roxas

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senator mar roxas in this tide detergent commercial did not mention the tide brand name even once. he also did not touch the product and and in fact his only interaction with tide was when he pointed to the price discount on the pack.

is it a tide detergent tv commercial? hell, yeah! is it a product endorsement tv ad by the nationally elected senator? hell, yeah!

there is no mistaking – mr. palengke appeared in the tide commercial and is endorsing the product. why else would you display such huge bags of tide, standing up with the tide logo clearly seen? i don’t think you will ever see any store in the palengke where they display tide that way and certainly not in front of the store where it contains nothing but giant tide packs. the way tide was displayed and the shelf itself is simply not done in the palengkes.

this is not tide’s brandsell advertising. in the world of p&g advertising, this is considered as a tactical value advertising. it’s meant to sell tide’s large packs and promote big purchases among consumers in the palengke.

what? wait a minute. mr. palengke in a palengke promoting big pack purchases? something is very wrong about that!

first of all, detergent purchase habits says most consumers buy small packs for lower cash outlay. also, the palengke is where most DE and some lower C socio-eco users go to for their daily needs, and most of them go to the palengkes very often because they do no have the money to buy in bulk, thus the consumer practice is small price but more frequent purchases.

and the above is where we move in to a new topic – this is not just a product endorsement ad, it is actually a political campaign ad.

promoting large priced purchases for bulk detergent products is simply alien to the palengke goers. it’s consumers who go to supermarkets who do that, but hardly is that legitimate purchasing habit for those who shop in palengkes. very few palengke goers can afford large pack purchases, in fact it is in the palengke where you can buy literally a spoonful of anything, placed in small plastic bags. you can actually buy condiments and cooking needs in small plastic bags good for one cooking. for an advertising purist, you can argue this commercial is off strategy.

the fact that the mr. palengke, senator mar roxas commercial is situated in a palengke means only one thing – it’s a political ad.

but p&g is not foolish. they will not intentionally and knowingly air an off strategy commercial. being off strategy in p&g is a mortal sin that will get you fired the next minute you say it. i am certain they have done extensive consumer research on this tv commercial – from the choice of the talent to a full blown advertising pre-airing test and i bet they found that while this commercial is meant to be tactical, it has powerful brandsell characteristics.

is it a WAWAM!? it’s not entirely a WAWAM! for tide detergent. mr. palengke has excellent credentials and a huge following. it’s also not a WAWAM! for senator mr. roxas. he is getting national tv exposure highly consistent with his positioning as the mr. palengke. and for free! the media money behind it is being paid for by p&g.

again, is it a WAWAM!?

yes, it’s a WAWAM! for the filipino people and it’s soul. we can rationalize it all we want. we can take it down to technicalities like no brand name was said, but the fact remains, like judas, several pieces of silver worth millions of pesos in talent fee was exchanged for integrity, pride, honesty and honor in a nationally elected public office.

first posted in WAWAM! on june 14, 2008 and june 17, 2008 : http://the-wawam-file.blogspot.com/search/label/mar%20roxas

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here is one of those tv ads – is this a product endorsement ad

 or a political ad?

this is what senator mar roxas has to say on this tide tv spot:

Sen. Manuel “Mar” Roxas II, who once pushed the detergent brand Tide, denied doing any product endorsements: “But I didn’t endorse. I didn’t say that the public should buy a product, nor did I hold any product. And I did not say that it was better than the others. It’s a public service announcement saying that all product sellers should be true to consumers.”

 source: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20080528-139254/Villar-cracks-whip-on-senators-in-ads

let’s get this out of the way first before a discussion on the merits of senator roxas’ tide tv commercial.

senator mar roxas

the above statement is an empty rationalization of the endorsement ad senator roxas did for tide detergent. it’s lawyer speak that’s building a wall of semantics to have some good things around it to have some things to defend something bad.

of course the tv commercial is an endorsement ad. he doesn’t have to hold the product, he doesn’t even have to say anything, it’s enough for his face to be in the commercial and that automatically makes it an endorsement tv ad of tide detergent.

aside from that, the fact that he got several million pesos as talent fee obviously makes it an endorsement ad.

will tide detergent, a leading detergent brand pay him millions to appear in that commercial for public service? who is he kidding?

tide detergent is one of the most competitive detergent brands in the market. it is manufactured by procter & gamble, the inventor of the “brand management” system and one of the savviest marketers in the world. they will NOT get mar roxas to appear in their tv commercial for reasons other than selling cases of tide detergent.

 not only did they pay senator mar roxas a handsome talent fee, they are spending hundreds of millions of pesos to air the tv commercial. there is nothing that tide detergent nor procter & gamble does that is not about selling more cases of its products.

we love to watch christmas ads. actually, we love to see anything that is christmas. this tide detergent is an exceptional christmas ad. it’s not the ordinary and it is the unexpected.

but this ad we think is two steps away from brilliance. read in full here : http://the-wawam-file.blogspot.com/

PART I

My last post on the vice presidential debate highlighted the great marketing campaign of the GOP.  I say marketing because many of you pointed out via emails and ims that Sarah Palin, and to some extend John McCain, focuses on broad sweeping statements about some utopian United States without much in the way of a plausible road map.  Well… that’s what worries me most of this campaign, as did the campaign in 2004.

The American people have always held on to great hope for the future.  It’s been the promise of the American dream that’s driven so many people to immigrate to this great country (yes, it’s still great).  And that’s exactly the tactic that the republican party focuses on during election time.  They toy with our optimism, fondle our emotions and make those sweeping generalizations about how their candidate, McCain, will change the U.S. and the middle class for the better.

But so many supporters of the GOP at major corporations and the wealthy.  They hold much more sway over the party than the millions of rural, small town and middle class families.  Can we trust that they will serve us over the rich?  Has the last 8 years taught us nothing?

But the Obama and democratic party actually gives clear goals and action plans that cite the benefits, costs and consequences on the economy, healthcare, social security, foreign affairs, the energy crisis/global warming, etc.

But at the end of the day, as we learned in Made to Stick, the emotional appeal works much more effectively than the factual… right?

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PART II

Well to explain, let’s examine the brief history of marketing [via lessons from my management 101 class at The Wharton School].

Let’s start at the very beginning (a very good place to start – The Sound of Music). Marketing is defined as “an ongoing process of planning and executing the marketing mix for products, services or ideas to create exchange between individuals and organizations.”  Advertising, public relations, research, branding among others all fit under the marketing umbrella.  But marketing is the core strategy that directs all of the above.

New technology = economic growth.  The Industrial Evolution spurred the beginning of mass production.  No longer do we have to make our own clothes because the cotton mills could do it faster and cheaper.  Great!  With Ford’s application of the assembly line, the Model-T was so much more cost effective car that the average American could afford.  Great!  However, there wasn’t much in the way of marketing.  No strategic placement of a product or service, finding market segments, developing a unique selling point.  There was no need.  It’s “any color, as long as it’s black.”

Skip forward to proliferation of the market place.  Developments in transportation, packaging and refrigeration means that people now have a choice in what they want to buy.  These were especially apparent in the CPGs (consumer packaged goods) like Heinz ketchup (“47 varieties!”), Campbell’s soup (“M’m m’m good” since 1935), Coca-Cola (“Deliciously refreshing” 1900) and so many more.  Slogans were a way to set products apart from competitors and a catchy phrase to help advertising and consumer choices.

From there, marketing mutated to a complex machine.  In order to keep things brief (because it gets a lot more complicated), here are some highlights in no particular order.

• Proctor & Gamble realized that it’s better to cannibalize their own products, if it means gaining more of the marketing.  Just in their family of detergents, they have Tide as a household name and top market brand.  Cheer and Gain, which sorry for not knowing, play somewhere in the mid-cost, mid-performance range.  (I’m sure PG has gigabytes of consumer studies, scanner data and much more market research on the differentiators and market segments under each.  I just don’t know them.)  Then Era at the bottom (which I assume b/c I’ve never heard of it… maybe it has higher market proliferation abroad).
• Intel evolved into a household name by using both the push and pull strategy.  During a time when chips were a dime a dozen and consumers weren’t aware of what went into their computers, Intel pushed their chips as the top of the line.  More importantly, they pulled consumers in with effective advertising and PR (all part of marketing).  Make sure that your computer has “Intel inside” to guarantee quality, etc.
• Pepsi, as the newcomer, challenged Coca-Cola with their blind taste test, and stupidly Coca-Cola (instead of leaning on their tradition, branding and established consumer base) fell for the trap.  They came up with New Coke.  Sure… months later with people across the nation hoarding the old stuff and complaining so fervently, Coke came back with Coca-Cola Classic.  But Pepsi had make it’s mark, and they’re still competing with about 50-50 market share (depending on country) of beverages and snack products.  [Side note: some people suspect that Coke had introduced New Coke as a ploy to convince the public how much they really love Coca-Cola.  I think the executives were just idiotic.  Side note #2: Coca-Cola determined a few years ago that there are 27 beverage opportunities in a day.  Yeah, 27.]

Those are just three very quick snapshots of successful marketing techniques and how much marketing’s evolved from “47 varieties!”

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Now every company is trying to differentiate itself.  We have dozens of choices.  Brands are freaking sub-branding, creating off-shoots and variations.  There’s like 12 types of Tylenol ache, cold and flu medicines.  When I’m in pain, I just want “THIS IS THE ONE YOU NEED.”  So advertising’s become less effective.  Direct mail’s also less effective because my mailbox is full of ads I don’t want.  [Discover, unless you're giving me 10% cash back, which I know you can't afford, stop sending me biweekly mail.  I'm not going to accept your 'exclusive offer.']  Telemarketers hounds us all the time.  These annoying marketing techniques work because they’re so cost effective that a few “YES’s” make up for the majority of “NO’s.” [Unfortunately, they also give marketing a bad name.  It's become an industry of shoving shit people don't want down their throats.  Not true marketing: exposing product/service options to audiences who want to know.]

The problem was that companies were offering their guarantees so often that what they say mean nothing to us.  We’re emotional numb to their appeals and no longer trusted their slogans.  At the end of the day, no matter how kitschy or cute the advertising is, if the product/service ain’t work, we ain’t buying it.   So things started to change.

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Remember new technology = economic growth.  Internet = proliferation and democratization of information.  The normal paradigms of advertising, public relations and branding are changing.  Thus, marketing (the planning of such) is evolving as well.

Inventions like TiVo and DVRs help us skip the ads, while companies are trying to find ways to ‘cut through the clutter.’  Marketers are moving online.  Okay, yes, a lot of the bad habits of marketers have moved online.  The flashy, corny banners.  The incessant pop-ups selling us crap and then selling us pop-up blockers.  The spam, even from legitimate companies (you have the money; hire an email-marketer!).

But this is just the beginning.  More and more, word of mouth is playing a role.  Blogs and influencers across the web are popping up and spreading relevant information to interested niches.  Email marketers are popping up with opt-in policies and reassurances that our information isn’t getting sold to the evil spammers.  Semantic search and backend settings allow us to just see ads and banners that may be of interest to us.  Because we do want marketing.  It helps us find out about great sales, the new android phone or 20% off coupons.  We just don’t want what we don’t care about.

So here’s the lesson: marketing works.  Emotionally appealing to audiences works.  BUT.  BUT, there has to be facts that support the emotion.  In order to prevent buyer’s remorse and to keep a customer (which is so much cheaper than acquiring a new one), the product/service has to deliver.

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Part III

Thanks for sticking with me.

Presidential nominations are like laundry detergent.  We have to choose one.

The difference (other than the fact that one is soap and one is people) is that the companies and branding may stay the same, democrats, republicans, independents, etc., but the product changes all the time.  Last time around it was Kerry and Bush.  Now it’s Obama and McCain.  So we can’t rely 100% on past experience to determine which one we want this time.

But we learn from shopping (an everyday task of differentiating among products and choosing what’s right for us) that we have the tools to make those decisions.  For example, we know that we care about the product specs above marketing gimmicks.  As a shoe fanatic (I have the proverbial shoe closet), Manolos would go so much better with my lifestyle brand.  However, they hurt my feet, don’t fit as well and quite frankly, I’d rather save $200 and buy Kate Spades.

The same should go for decisions on candidacy! Yes, I love America.  Yes, I want the government to be for the people again.  Yes, I want someone who isn’t afraid to challenge the authority and be a ‘maverick.’ But that doesn’t mean I’m going to blindly go on my emotions and not look at the FACTS!

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1) I’m SO enraged that the GOP would use a cheesy marketing ploy to try and fool the American people.

2) Even more so, I’m irked that the public would buy into it!

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FACT: Sure, she’s cute and a MILF, but Sarah Palin said exactly 0 about specific plans of the McCain doctrine.

FACT: A ‘blanket’ tax cut helps the rich exponentially more than it helps “the Joe six-packs and hockey moms.”  (see below)

FACT: Obama’s healthcare reform includes a specific plan.  He plans to “make employer contributions more fair.”  HOW? … “by requiring large employers that do not offer coverage or make a meaningful contribution to the cost of quality health coverage for their employees to contribute a percentage of payroll toward the costs of their employees health care.”  McCain’s healthcare plan is full of unsupported claims.  “John McCain will reform health care making it easier for individuals and families to obtain insurance.” How?  Not sure… but “Americans [sure] are working harder and longer, yet the amount workers take home in their paychecks is not keeping pace because of rising health care costs.”  Really?  I wasn’t aware.

FACT: Obama’s foreign policy talks about the situations, the factors and multiple influences we have as a country to resolve/strengthen the problem/our position. McCain… doesn’t have “foreign policy” on his website…  Apparently, it’s not that important to him…  The closest thing I found was “national security.”

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Look, I’m not going into all the issues and who said what (all from their websites).  You can do your own research.

The point is that when we’re making such an important decision that affects not only Americans but the entire world, shouldn’t we look above the marketing ploys that tug at our heart strings and get to the not-as-interesting facts?

To answer the first question, wayyyy above: the emotional appeal works much more effectively than the factual… right?

We’ll see.  But it shouldn’t.

 It’s one of the neatest and nicest services that 2 on the Beat saw on Galveston Island Monday.

Tide Detergent has set up a FREE drop off and pick up service for residents who want their clothes washed.

It’s called “Loads of Hope”  and it is set up across from the seawall.

Sure, its good publicity for the company, but it also seems like a nice gesture toward those who have endured so much as a result of Hurricane Ike.

Employees accept the bags of jeans, t-shirts (and probably some unmentionables) and then sort, wash and fold them for the residents.

Obviously, most people don’t have electricity or water pressure at home, but everyone needs clean clothes to put on everyday.