Marketing

Where You Start: Up For The Challenge

Garth Beyer

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In a previous story, I noted that where you start really matters.

I used marketing to five year-olds for McDonald’s as an example of a poor place to start if you are actually passionate about the elderly being active.

I missed the opportunity to mention that poor places to start are often excellent places to excel, so long as you are adamant enough to withstand resistance and up to challenge of creating cultural change. For example, there is a push for McDonald’s to become a more healthy option – and to advertise as such.

I’ve mentioned a million times before that there is always room for improvement. You can decrease inequality, you can lower the number of obese people in the country, you can create cultural change from the bottom up.

It starts with saying no.

No to advertising unhealthy McDonald’s products to five year-olds.

It grows by saying “here’s a better idea.”

And having a plan to turn the idea into reality.

 

Stay Positive & Let Your Passion Fuel You, Not Your Food

Garth E. Beyer

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Farts And Twerking (not what you think)

Garth Beyer

1379386_724120447601795_1411583815_nI took a picture of this, not knowing how I would use it, but that someday I would. Today is that day.

I’ve always been interested in product placement. I’m that person that looks at what labels are on water bottles during taped interviews (for example), or in movies (lots of examples), or basically any video or photograph.

I believe this picture represents a vacant area of product placement.

  • Putting objects in places one wouldn’t expect to find them.

Businesses basically pay to be recognized, that’s the point of product placement. I would argue that business should be paying to arouse curiosity. This invites people who may not know the product to discover what it is, and for those who already know the product to, at least in the case above, have a laugh.

The decision makers of product placement are a bit behind on the idea that people buy into how products make them feel.

If you can position a product in a place that makes people laugh, smile, smirk, or giggle over placing it where they merely see it in it’s most used place, you should place it in the former.

A more wild idea in support of this: twerking.

Which excites (positively or negatively…) people more: when they see someone twerking in a music video or twerking in a bedroom…alone… and failing at it.

And yes, that video was set-up. Just like product placement should be.

 

Stay Positive & Who Knew We Could Learn Something From Farts And Twerking

Garth E. Beyer

 

Wait, That Was Leisure Time?

Garth Beyer

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Recently I’ve written a lot about materialism and how uninformed we are of our own real desires and intentions.

We the people do not want more things. What we want is to feel. We don’t buy energy drinks because they are full of sugar, taste good, or because other people buy them. We buy energy drinks because they make us feel energized. They make us feel productive. You and I both know how great of a feeling that is.

This is positive emotionalism at its finest.

And positive emotionalism (seeking out and leveraging what makes us feel good) is expensive. Our desires are manipulated by marketing, but what’s more important is that we do seek out items that make us feel one way or another, regardless of being marketed to. In more simple terms, if we were never marketed to, we would still find energy drinks that make us feel productive because the feeling is what we really want.

How does this affect you and me?

Research has shown that we don’t necessarily work more each week. If anything, we work less and have more leisure time. On the other hand, I would argue that during the hours we do work, that we work harder. Furthermore, the hours that we don’t clock in, we find ourselves still working. For what?

We’ve exchanged leisure time with our pursuit of how we want to feel. The defining principle here is that our pursuit has lead us to consume rather than enjoy, to buy instead of play, and to fall into instantly crippling debt when we could be doing something remarkable with our leisure time.

Marketers don’t control us. Materialism doesn’t control us.

But our ignorance of “how” we can feel the way we want to feel – that’ll be the death of us. After all, it already is the cause of our “non-existent” leisure time.

We have to search for less consuming ways to feel the way we want to feel if we ever want our leisure time back. Problem is, true leisure is the most likely place we’ll find it.

 

Stay Positive & Oh, The Irony. Sensitivity Has Left Us Senseless.

Garth E. Beyer

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Why We Consume

Garth Beyer

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In the early days, we consumed to meet our needs.

Then we consumed to meet our wants.

What most people miss is after we met our wants, we didn’t want more; what we wanted was to feel.

People don’t buy a BMW because it shines. People don’t buy Starbucks because it’s the best tasting coffee. People don’t buy bigger houses because they want more, more, more.

People buy into how items makes them feel.

Businesses have gone from advertising (more, more, more) to marketing (feel, feel, feel). We’ve gone from buying what we want, to buying how we want to feel.

Looking at it this way makes consumption seem more positive. The more you consume the better you feel. But let’s not forget that the less we consume, the more leisure time we will have.

Ask yourself, how would more leisure time make you feel?

 

Stay Positive & Better Than Consuming?

Garth E. Beyer

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Free For You… At First

Garth Beyer

I first noticed with Facebook, what was once a free service, an incredible platform to build your business, to market, and to gather a tribe, reaching out to the mass has turned into a profiting market for sponsors, advertisers, but specifically, Facebook.

It wasn’t always that way. Or at least, it hasn’t always been done right.

Newspapers companies started out reaching the mass, then they implemented (full-force) advertising in the papers, viewership slowly decreased and now newspapers reach a niche market while advertisers still make money.

The moment when newspapers focused on getting their income from advertising and making it a competition among advertisers for space is what I call Free Fall Out. It was at that moment the newspaper companies profit largely due to advertisers. From there is the critical moment that I believe is a large reason why the newspaper industry is dying.

At their prime, the newspaper industry used the money from advertisers to advertise their newspaper even more. Much like many businesses (even today, gasp!) businesses are taking their advertising revenue to create more advertising for themselves.

This seems to be a slow profit method.

Now let’s look at Facebook. Once a free platform, now has been opened to advertisers. Rather than Facebook using the revenue from advertisers to self-advertise, I see a new Facebook platform change nearly every month.

Facebook, while still funding advertising, has put more of an effort toward improving it’s interface to attract a larger newer audience. I think this is smart for one specific reason. It doesn’t so much matter if they lose their appeal to current veteran Facebook users, because new users are more susceptible to buying into the advertisements that Facebook profits to put on your screen.

By improving the platform, they can make more from letting others advertise rather than the old newspaper age belief that by advertising more, they can make more from letting others advertise.

I look forward to seeing how the newest version of Gmail pans out. Right now promotion emails go into the promotion category. What happens when a wealthy company says to Google that they will pay them X amount of dollars to have their email placed in the primary category?

Alas, every phenomenal service is free for you… at first.

 

Stay Positive & Don’t Forget, You’re The Real Product

Garth E. Beyer

What People Need And Demand: Digging Deeper

Garth Beyer

Obese people demand more chips.

What they need is almost the opposite. Obese people need to be taught how to be healthy. Obese people need to forget chips and cookies and soda and other “bad” foods. Obese people need to get out more, they need a bike, they need walking shoes.

Digging deeper though, I would say what they really need is hope and confidence and belonging. Meal plans sell hope, that’s why they are so popular. Personal trainers sell confidence, that’s why they are in demand. Sketchers GOwalk shoes sell belonging. Once you buy a pair, you notice everyone else who has a pair and you feel part of the tribe, that’s why they are so popular.

At face value, everyone seems to have a lot of needs. My nana always said that our wants are many, our needs are few. I guess I never realized how true that was until I dug a bit deeper.

 

Stay Positive & Sell What People Really Need

Garth E. Beyer