Monday, May 16, 2011

S and M

Oh c'mon.. get yer minds outta the gutter! I am referring to sales & marketing.

Do you ever notice yourself humming a jingle from an advertisement? One you just can't get out of your head? I am SOOOO guilty of that, often. Thankfully the "FreeCreditReport.com" ads have eased up ... but for what felt like forever I would find myself unable to get this out of my head:

Sometimes it's not even a catchy jingle, or celebrity endorsement that draws me it. Like the time I was recovering from an awful cold in college back in Chicago; I was crossing the street and one of the "Streetwise" guys ,who normally just call out "Streetwise!" and try to get you to buy one for a dollar (perfectly good cause really, and worth the $1.00), looks at me as I am crossing the street in front of The Art Institute, coughing up a lung, and says "Streetwise will cure that cough!" I laughed so hard at that for some reason (which funnily enough made me cough even worse), and dug deep into my pockets to find $1.00. The guy totally earned it. Hell, he could have been selling used tinfoil and I would have thought it was a funny hook.
I find it amazing how many times I am in the grocery store and debating between various products and my brain just automatically replays visions of commercials and print ads. Like I might remember why one product is reportedly better than the other.
Staring at the laundry detergents:
"Hmmm, this one got that coffee stain out of that ladies shirt"....
"This one beat out the competition when trying to remove grass and ketchup stains, I should get this one"....
(mind you I have no idea when or where I would get grass & ketchup stains on my clothes, but if I ever do... I will be SO prepared!)
Y'all remember the last time I went on and on about Groupon? (It was in this post if you care for a refresher) Well, I still get at least one email daily from them... and the sad part is that they are mostly still for deals in London (*insert a super sad face here*), or they are just for things I have zero interest in, or time for in Boston. Today, however, at the bottom of the email there was something that I thought needed to be shared. In fact, if I wasn't already signed up for groupon deals in my area (as well as London, New Orleans, NYC, Chicago, and parts of CT) I would have signed up on the spot just because I enjoyed this so much:
(click to enlarge)

Do you ever find yourself, even subconsciously, paying attention to marketing/advertising? I know that industry makes the big bucks because they come up with some real winners. Granted, most of them are boring and lame as hell, but once in a great while they do such a good job that I suddenly feel an overwhelming urge to buy/own/use a specific product. Keep in mind I rarely even watch TV... but commercials like this:

Yeah, I ain't gonna lie... I kinda fell in love with Old Spice™ 'cause of that commercial. I don't even know/remember if I like the smell of it, but I will probably now eternally equate it with Isaiah Mustafa (the ridiculously handsome man in the ad) and think it's a great product.
There is the flip side to all this too. Make someone I detest a spokesperson for a product of some sort... yeah, never touchin' the stuff again. Example: make Tom Cruise the spokesperson for something I love, and I will never buy it again. (Or at least till someone new, that doesn't deserve to be in a looney bin, takes over.)
Makeup/skin care is probably the industry that relies the heaviest on "association." Think about it, are you going to buy something like a facial moisturizer, even if it claims to do all sorts of amazing things, if the spokesmodel looks like this:

OR like this:
Yeah, I thought so.

Which commercials/ads have convinced you to buy something, or at least desire to check it out?

7 comments:

  1. Hey,

    Stmbled on your blog because of the Sarah Miller spam (thanks for that post, by the way!). Ended up browsing your entries... and I LOVE YOUR BLOG! It's so rare nowadays to find a blog with a genuine tone, full of personality! A blog where it's plain there's an actual person behind it! I'll definitely come back and read more of your stuff.

    Peace,
    Sofia

    ReplyDelete
  2. Spyderco: First we made things sharp, then we made sharp things.
    Clear,crisp, memorable, of course I own both their sharpening system and at least one of their knives at any given time.

    In the UK there is a brand of mints that are clear (so they look like ice cubes). "Foxes glacier mints: clearly minty"

    And then there's Cape Air - spokesperson Goofy Girl - what's not to love?
    SBW

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sofia- I'm totally shocked by how many people have ended up here due to blog posts about spam (& and strange way of dealing with it), but WELCOME. You've said some pretty kind things in that comment of yours, and... yeah... you made me smile, thank you! So very sweet of you to say ♥

    SBW- Cape Air, eh? Wouldn't that be incredible? I'd be all about that job if it'd get me to/from London, alas... unless I want to go to Boston from here in the air (which is technically part of the journey to London, so there is that...) I'll stick to the bartending gig :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. oh.. & SBW: PS. I totally want to try those mints.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Admittedly (and shamefully) I bought Old Spice after those commercials. It smells like Grandpa trying to cover the smell he's cultivating in his Depends (which I also bought because of the commercial...okay, not really).

    ReplyDelete
  6. Pickleope- Just yesterday I was standing in the bathroom and noticed a stick of Old Spice deodorant (pretty sure it belongs to my friend that is currently living in an RV at the end of my yard (don't ask!) and the urge to take the cap off and smell it, just "to see" was totally overwhelming. I refrained... but you know what? It's still there... and I don't know if can hold out forever...(though, takin' a whiff of someone's deodorant is just so... blech! Probably gonna do it anyway...):)

    ReplyDelete
  7. I know I have seen commercials that prompted me to buy something but I honestly can not think of what they would be. Hrm.

    Btw I like the new layout. I wish I would get around to figuring out how to change mine.

    ReplyDelete