Perri Nelson's Website 

Marketing strategies

I'm a software developer by profession, but the company I work for does marketing services. Sometimes, I find the things that I'm asked to do to support a marketing campaign to be full of irony, like when I was recently asked how to work around a problem introduced in the "security" features of a particular product for a DVD full of tips and tricks for working with that product. The marketing campaign is all about improving the user experience with a major software company's flagship product. It's seems that the product prevents users from having malware run automatically when a user inserts a DVD into the drive and the person in charge of the marketing user experience needed a workaround in case the product being marketed got in the way of the desired seamless user experience. It's a tradeoff between security and ease of use, and in this case security somehow became equated with annoying the user. It seems to me that a lot of modern life works out the same way.

Dictionary.com defines marketing as "the act of buying or selling in a market", or "the total of activities involved in the transfer of goods from the producer or seller to the consumer or buyer, including advertising, shipping, storing, and selling". I was going to provide a Wikipedia reference to their article on Marketing Strategy, but typical of Wikipedia articles, there's a whole lot of caveats, including the lack of citations and so forth, so if you're interested in what they have to say about it, you'll have to do the search yourself. Who knows how much manipulation of the content has gone on there and with what agenda. The main bit about marketing I was trying to reach though is the "advertising" bit. The Investopedia Commentary on the dictionary.com page linked above says

Many people believe that marketing is just about advertising or sales. However, marketing is everything a company does to acquire customers and maintain a relationship with them. Even the small tasks like writing thank-you letters, playing golf with a prospective client, returning calls promptly and meeting with a past client for coffee can be thought of as marketing. The ultimate goal of marketing is to match a company's products and services to the people who need and want them, thereby ensure profitability

That's a nice spin to put on the concept I suppose. There's a whole lot of spin involved in marketing as I see it. Yes, you want to put your product where potential customers can see it. You want as many leads as possible. You want to develop good customer relationships. The ultimate goal of marketing isn't really, as Investopedia's commentary implies, "to match a company's products and services to the people who need and want them". That's just the spin on the ultimate goal. The true ultimate goal of marketing is to "thereby ensure profitability". It seems to me that some marketing is going on at Investopedia on behalf of marketers. In any case it seems to me that marketing is all about convincing someone to buy, and to continue to buy, whatever it is that you're selling.

There are currently two major political parties in the United States, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, and both of them are heavily into marketing, not for mere profit, but for power. I'd have to say that they're both pretty good at marketing, because the consumers in their market (the voters) keep buying their product every few years. Sadly both parties are only concentrating on the advertising and sales aspect of marketing. There's very little in the way of customer service. Thank you letters come in the form of tax bills. When a politician plays golf or goes bowling, it's not with voters in mind — it's the gifts that lobbyists bring to the course. Returning calls promptly? Fat chance. When they respond to your mail it's usually a pat response or a form letter —

Dear <insert name of potential voter here>,

Thank you for contacting <Representative | Senator> <insert professional politician's name here> about your concerns regarding <insert issue here>. Please be aware that <Representative | Senator> <insert professional politician's name here> is also concerned about <insert issue here>, but that this is a very complex subject requiring careful analysis.

Sincerely

<Representative | Senator> <insert professional politician's name here>

<rubber signature stamp>

P.S. Please consider a donation to <Representative | Senator> <insert professional politician's name here>

Our politicians pay lip service to the voter's wants and interests. They watch polling data carefully, and then do what they damned well please anyway. The Constitution and the limits it places upon our federal government mean little to them, but of course their advertising is all about how concerned they are for the public well being.

The two parties are little different here, and it's a shame. I recently participated in a poll regarding my political beliefs. It's a real shame, but questions about integrity, a return to Constitutional governance and the like weren't included. Instead it was all about marketing slogans and the promises of politicians — promises none of them can or will, or for that matter in most cases even should keep.

I'm a dissatisfied customer. Unfortunately, nobody's selling what I want.

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ablur responded with:

I'm another dissatisfied customer wishing I could file suit for false advertising. Could you imagine?

If you could win such a suit it would change the face of politics.

grant responded with:

Another dissatisfied customer jumping in. I will qualify that with saying that I am basically unhappy with the inevitable catelogue of services that we are about to experience, but that I am still happy enough with the service provider to continue my evalutaion of their offerings over the next 30 to 50 years. I wonder if the masses could ever realize that our collective actions and virtual acceptance of poor customer service have resulted in driving these marketing tactics. If the target audience will buy lower quality, less effective products and/or services, then why would any business build/offer/sell at a premium level? It seems that the target audience needs to set the market with truly capatilistic measures....stop buying from the current providers...does that mean we need to move out of the country or do we just need to stop reacting to anything less than measureable, discernable results?

Perri Nelson responded with:

Ah, but Grant, the masses already have decided not to buy. That's why less than three percent of our population even votes. The masses simply don't care and they're willing to take what's given to them. It's truly a shame, because as long as the current service providers continue to feed them the illusion that government is there to meet their needs, or the illusion that they can't do anything about it because their vote doesn't matter they're going to continue to stay home and complain about the quality of the product.

Perhaps if enough of us speak out about what ought to be, and if we work to educate people we'll see a change. I think that's the real solution. We need to focus on the apathetic and get them to realize that there's a better way.

Consumer satisfaction surveys show that the current service providers are doing a terrible job. George Bush's approval ratings are terrible. Congress' approval ratings are even worse, but you seldom hear about that. If there's that much dissatisfaction then there's a chance, small though it may be to change it despite the political parties.

First of all, it's a marketing slogan that the President is the most powerful man in America. It's also untrue. Congress has more power and authority under the Constitution than the President. They foster the illusion so that they can escape blame for the negative consequences of their meddling in areas that they are both unqualified and unauthorized to operate in.

Less than three percent of the population votes in national elections. There are only 536 national elected offices, and 534 of those are distributed among smaller portions of the electorate. It ought to be possible to field better candidates and find some untapped part of the population to change things. All it would take would be three percent of the people that don't bother to vote to agree on a different candidate and to get off their apathetic backsides to change things.

Imagine if we could do that here in the state of Washington. There's no reason that either a Democrat or a Republican has to hold our Congressional or Senatorial seats. Maybe we can get three percent of the state's population (surely at least three percent are true conservatives that believe in principle and States Rights) to replace the village idiots we keep putting in office.

The parties don't give us much in the way of choices. Maybe by finding an alternative service provider that will promise to cut federal spending, stop bringing home bacon taken from other peoples farms, and reverse the growth of government and getting enough people to buy their product will wake the major parties up.

Until then, the people are going to keep buying the product they're being sold through false and misleading advertising that never really mentions product features and is all about slick packaging.