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That's pretty hilarious business I am working in. :-)
“Problem: The bank is losing many of its retired clients. The main
reason for this is their death. Objective: get those clients back.”
(Agency, extracted from a brief)
“I call you because I’m watching the ads with the client and I’ve just realized I don’t understand them either.”
(Agency, Account Executive, calling in the middle of a presentation)
There are more gems like those above on AdVerbatims blog. Very entertaining.
A couple days ago I mentioned Dove campaign for real beauty as the example of the campaigns that are targeted to the mature women.
Dove with their campaign intented not only to reach the mature segment of market but wanted to redefine the beauty category.
Their campaign for real beauty continues. In Canada Ogilvy & Mather, Toronto created a 75 second viral movie. Great work. It generated over 3 million views on YouTube and huge traffic to the campaign site.
Year 2006 is coming to an end and it's a period of roundups of the past and time when we try to foresee the future trends and developments.
Last week David Armano asked readers of his blog:
What was the most significant event/aspect of 2006 in regards to marketing, advertising or user experience?
Many responded with very interesting and insightful views, which David Armano put into a very neat presentation.
The year 2006 was very fascinating. It was the year of the sharing and socializing in the online world.It was the year when consumer got the power and the important voice in the marketing discourse and was claimed to be number one on the Who Matters list.
For me 2006 was the year of blogging, sharing my thoughts, participating in the online blogshpere, meeting fantastic people and re-discovering the online society. In 2000 I wrote my thesis about Internet as a Source of Power and I analyzed chatrooms, discussion groups as the new enhacement of the social discourse. 6 years later, we
are talking blogging, MySpace, YouTube, Second Life and many others - sharing, participating and communicating in various forms that involves millions. And I don't even dare to think what would happen if one day someone took Internet from me :-)
2006 was very fascinating year and I can only wish 2007 was so great! But I am sure the consumer's power will continue on growing and will initiate the interesting changes and developments.
Quintura
It's a new search engine that picks up results you won't find in other search engines. After you typed a word, it generates a tag cloud and by clicking on tags, you can see other results and links. It shows you far more possibilities than traditional search engines. Nice tool to play with.
Zamzar
Have you ever wanted to convert files without the need to download software? Try Zamzar - free online converter for free!
Useful freewares for everyday office uses
Good links! Some will definetely make you life easier.
“Companies have been doing this for ages, getting customers to really internalise the brand and feel like they are involved in the 'brands vision'. All thats really happening though is we consumers become little puppets for the big brands. Ipods are a good example, consumers now think (largely because of other consumers) that buying an Ipod gives automatic entry into this super cool culture (when really it's just a portable music player), we have created a 'vision' for Ipods and now buy them because of the vision other consumers have created in combination with the marketing pumped out by Apple. To me, this signifies, not a step forward for consumers but a situation where we who want to feel like we are empowered to make our own decisions and not just be a product of marketing, have become our own worst enemy by advertising to ourselves. Now, not only can a corporation dream up a 'brand vision' and convince customers that this is true, we are so convinced we 'know' the company, we eagerly do their advertising for them. Unless consumers have the full details behind the brand (ie. that it is largely profit motivated, really wants to increase sales in a particular market segment etc etc) the 'brand vision' they create is based on marketing spin and we end up selling products we may not even like (if given the truth) to each other.” (Natalie)
This comment appeared as reaction to one of my earlier post and its critical approach made me happy. The above comment points out one important thing - the common belief that all consumers are thoughtless puppets in the hands of devil corporations. This and the overall perception of consumption open the broader discussion. The discussion is not about the international companies letting consumer to build brands visions, but this is the discussion about consumerism culture we are living in. And this culture is not nothing new.
Many centuries ago, Aristotle wrote in ‘Politics’:
“The avarice of mankind is insatiable”
Over two thousand years later Leo Tolstoy wrote in “My Religion”
"seek among men, from beggar to millionaire, one who is contented with his lot, and you will not find one such in a thousand....Today we must buy an overcoat and galoshes, tomorrow, a watch and a chain; the next day we must install ourselves in an apartment with a sofa and a bronze lamp; then we must have carpets and velvet gowns; then a house, horses and carriages, paintings and decorations."
In XIX there was also Marx who wasn’t happy with the consumption in the capitalistic society.
Capitalism fetishizes products and services; people refer to them as the object with magical power or prestige that can be transmitted to the people. Across centuries, many poets, writers, philosophers have deplored and disagreed with the desire to possess in the society.
Mankind has known and enjoyed consumption over centuries. Consumption is not just modern times phenomena, this is something that has always existed and has it is roots in the social structures; this is the part of Weber’s stratification process, where status is based on the economical status and the non economical qualities like honor and prestige.
Today’s world dominated by market, media, advertising and urgency makes everyone of us to be the consumer. We are all participating in the consumption, and the consumption brings negative associations; we tend to see the consumers as fettered, thoughtless mass that is looking only for entertainment and pleasure. We think everyone but me is the consumer. In the first place we must understand what the consumption is. According to Webster Online Dictionary , the word consumption has four meanings:
1. The process of taking food into the body through the mouth (as by eating)
2. Involving the lungs with progressive wasting of the body
3. (Economics) the utilization of economic goods to satisfy needs or in manufacturing; "the consumption of energy has increased steadily"
4. The act of consuming something.
We consume everything every day – we consume the morning paper together with breakfast and our morning coffee, we consume TV shows, enjoying bottle of coke, we consume Mahler’s 5thSymphony and at the same time we consume wine. We consume the books, no matter if it is the latest Dan Brown’s book or James Joyce ‘Ulysses’. We consume all day long, we satisfy our needs all day long. The consumption has the central role in our lives. We work to afford consumption. We can’t avoid consumption, as the consumption is the way of fulfilling our needs. The development in the modern western societies shifted the focus up to higher needs (see Maslow needs hierarchy). We don’t need to worry about food and roof over the head, those things we just have and take them for granted, so we have a time and energy to focus on the esteem and being needs.
Every one of us has tried to have a few of those masks on. We play consumer roles, as others roles in our lives, in different disguises depending on situation, environment, ours and others expectations. We consume to tell the world who we are and where we belong. We consume to define our social position. We consume to achieve mental stimulation and to avoid boredom. Our consumption has not only the material character, nowadays the consumption of symbols and experiences is blooming.
One of the first sociologists who wrote about consumption was Thorstein Veblen, in his ‘The Theory of The Leisure Class’ he stated that we consume not to survive but to socially differentiate and achieve the higher social status and prestige. The aristocrats or higher class creates the consumption patterns and values which are copied by the lower classes. Those consumption patterns loose on their attractiveness as soon as they become available to everyone, so the higher classes have to create the new ones. The process repeats itself constantly. The same pattern we can observe nowadays, middle class members gets access to mass luxury and get the feel of participating in the high class consumption. But still the rich has to earn more to differentiate themselves from the rest of society and the poor has to earn more to catch up with the rich. As Bourdieu described it, the consumption is about establishing own preferences as superior in order to have the power. The consumption leads to social differentiation and self promotion.
So the consumption is not the problem of advertising or more precise and sophisticated methods of reaching and engaging consumers. The consumption is tightly bound in the society construction. We can’t say no to consumption. But we have a choice to choose different lifestyle or different consumption patterns. We don’t have to buy iPod or Louis Vuitton bag if we don’t want to or don’t need it, some people want to buy those products and it makes them happy, that’s their choice, not Apple’s or Vuitton’s. But we can't reverse the processes of social stratification.
Who is responsible for consumption? Everyone. Good example is the movie ‘Czech Dream’ from 2004. This is the documentary film about the hoax. The directors, Filip Remunda and Vit Klusak, created the deceitful advertising campaign for non-existent new supermarket called Czech Dream. They got plenty of people to arrive to the opening but the frantic hoard discovered that there was no supermarket, no promotion, just a cameraman filming their faces, faces filled with incredulity, anger, disappointment, auto irony and shame. Filip Remunda and Vit Klusák provoked people (consumers), revealed their primal instincts. The scene when people are running towards the supermarket shows the human's strong desire to possess. The film is the key to understanding the consumption culture: none is deceiving and none is deceived. The game rules are clear - one person wants to sell, another person wants to own, both know about it. We have to only know what we want and who we are.
That’s why I disagree with those who blame companies for misusing consumers and see around the conspiracy theory plotted by the big corporations. I guess that none grown-up has any doubts what drives Apple, Microsoft, Toyota, Snickers and others. It is obvious they want to earn the money, who doesn’t! And I think it is inspiring that consumers are being engaged to help them to earn that money, as that makes us into active and interactive consumers and it shows the companies don’t look at the consumers as puppets. It gives the hope for better visions, mores responsible visions, visions that appeal to us, visions that don’t treat us as puppets. Such a model is better than traditional model where consumer were only passive recipients of communication from corporations. The consumers has the voice now and it’s u to them how they are going to use it.
And I believe that we should worry more of other aspects of consumption – the use of resources, wastage and pollution we generate when satisfying our needs, the gap between the rich and the poor, ‘über-consumption’ we cultivate and the growing gap between Western and 3rd world countries.
We are all responsible for the society and the world we are living in. And I believe that with the new media, technologies and all opportunities they bring we do have a chance to make a difference. It is all about making the right choices and showing respect to others and to the surrounding world.
* Thorstein Veblen quote
The modern pop-culture advertising sells us the dreams connected with identity and self expression. We don't just buy the Mulberry bag, we buy the image, the feeling of style and luxury that is connected with Mulberry brand. Modern advertising is a kaleidoscope of the old and moderns imaginations and legends, archetypes that play on our latent emotions and needs. This is what exactly Lux, the soap producer is trying to do - sell us the magic legend.
The video tells the Callista story. She's found a magic item in the forest - a black Lux soap bar.
Lux soap is presented as something magic, that can cause an extraordinary transformation. Its powers turn Callisto from the innocent girl into sex vampire. The whole story has a deep feel of an traditional fairy-tale and seems to be very unconventional for the soap advertising. The producers played well with technology and the mythology. Great and eye-catching result. See yourself!
Society and people have always fascinated me, this was also reason why I became sociologist. I wanted to explore and get deeper insights into society. Sociology helps us to understand the social rules and processes that bind and separate people In other words sociology concerns itself with the way we live, interact, adapt, and play our roles in every day life. It is a 
wonderful science, because it is so human.
One of fields that I became very involved with is the visual sociology, that is dealing with the visual description of the social world.
Visual sociology is the way of decoding the fragmented social reality. It documents the everyday social life. The pictures are the data used for the analysis and understanding the people and they can reveal a lot of aspects of people's life. Just look at the cave paintings from Lascaux that tell us a lot about the ancient culture.
There are three approaches to the visual sociology
- data collection with camera or other recording technology
- studying visual data produced by other cultures
- the use of visual media to communicate sociological understandings to audiences, and the use of visual media within sociological research itself.
Visual sociology gives very valuable insights into everyday life and allows us to better understand the surrounding world. This discipline is very important in the communication field, as it allows researchers to go beyond the verbal declarations. Why it is so important to look beyond the words, you may think. It is simple, as we, people generally don't think with words, but with pictures. In fact we can't rely purely on respondents declarations. Photography or video allows us to read the hidden emotions, needs, behavior, that we would never could access by using only spoken language.
We are living in the visual culture where linear thinking was replaced by the hyperlinks. The world has changed and is still changing but our methods for understanding people haven't. Most of thoughts and feelings that influence our behavior occur in the unconscious mind. 95% of thinking takes place in the unconscious mind, so in fact most of what we know we don't know we know. Moreover 80% of human communication is nonverbal. Apart from words, we use touch, vocal intonation, gesture, body posture, eye contact, pupil dilation, facial expression in our communication. We don't think in linear way as the speech is constructed. We employ the metaphors, which stimulate the working of the mind, help us perceive the world and are the engines of imaginations . We use ca. 6 metaphors per minute of spoken language. Metaphors are simple to use and understand. They are the "primal thought", when we communicate verbally, we simply describe the metaphors occurring in our mind. Metaphors are pictures.
Marketing and advertising are about people, not words or declarations. And here I can see a huge role for the visual sociology. You can collect the material by going outside of your office and photographing people in their everyday natural environment or you can simply equip your respondents with disposable cameras and ask them to photograph their everyday life and support the visual material with interviews. The opportunities are limitless, all you have to do is open your mind and be ready to try something new.
Myself, I am a passionate photographer as well, so I've decided to join two of my passions and have started the new project - the world seen through the camera eye. I will try to go beyond the verbal world and show the "unsaid" aspects of humans' life. I want to show how people live, interact and act in everyday life through the eye of my camera.
Remember: Picture is worth thousand words.
References: J. Zaltman, How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market
Pictures are taken by me, Daria :-)
Tags: Sociology, Photography, Visual Sociology, Society, Research
I have realized I spend a lot of my time online. I participate in online communities, I do social networking and work online. Internet is one of the main sources of information to me. So when there is something wrong going on with my broadband, I am about to panic. I had look at myself in the mirror and admit, that I could hardly live without Internet. Take TV away from me, take my mobile phone, but please do not take my Internet! :-)
My advent rue with Internet began for 7 years ago when I realized Internet is here to stay and it definitely will change societies around the globe. I have made up my mind to dig a little more around Internet as a medium and cyberspace as the new arena for the public discourse. It ended up with my master thesis "Internet as a source of power".
Every time I think about Internet, it brings Panopticon to my mind.
In the end of XVIII century J. Bentham presented the project of the institution of control - it was a simple mechanism that could be used in jails, schools, factories, etc. The mechanism called Panopticon was meant to secure good and effective power and control. Panopticon was designed to ensure surveillance.
The idea behind Panopticon was simple: to see without being seen.
Later on Michel Foucault (in Discipline and Punish) invoked Panopticon as metaphor for modern "disciplinary" societies and its pervasive inclination to observe and normalize. Foucault says that not only prisons but all hierarchical structures like the school, the hospital, the factory and the army have evolved through history to resemble Bentham's Panopticon.
The new communication technologies / channels are extension and transformation of the functions Panopticon was designed to. Those technologies can support proliferation of power and control, and they are free from physical and material restrains of Bentham’s Panopticon.
Based on information technology, it is neither jail, nor factory, but some kind of social formation takes over the role of disciplining and hierarchical machinery. The technological system in the wired society is planned in such a convenient way that it succors centralized and covert system of inspection, surveillance, control and documentation of social acts.
Countless databases, networks, increasing from day to day the number of information about needs, interest of individuals and social groups, transactions they make, actions they take – this is just a massive memory, that allows analyzing people. Just take a look at one of the trends: COUNTER GOOGLING – you Google people names and instantly get more personal information than you'd ever be able to capture with traditional face to face contact in an entire life-time.
Wired society is the society where citizens are naked.
I look at all traces I leave online - aren't we all living in the modern cyber Panopticon?
Tags: Internet, power, Panopticon, Bentham, Foucault, cyberspace, wired society
