Philosofriday – profound thinking for the weekend (28/08/2009)

by Scott on August 28, 2009

philosofriday Philosofriday profound thinking for the weekend (28/08/2009)(Image hat-tip to Telstar Logistics and the awesomeness that is Creative Commons)

Here’s an innovative idea.

If you’re a brand, spend your money on developing a product that actually works and improves peoples’ lives, rather than spending it all on a smoke-and-mirrors campaign to convince people that your steaming turd of a product is really the greatest thing since sliced bread.

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Tagged as: common sense, philosofriday, philosophy

  • scotennis
    Scott - totally agree, that's why i abandoned a career at proctor and gamble 7 years ago, i was tired of the subjective "benefits" marketers and agencies would heap onto a bottle of cough mixture in order to sell more units. After all, it's cough mixture, and any doctor will tell you it's rubbish. Worse still, every survey into shopper behaviour suggested that consumers hate supermarket shopping, the very location one had to trudge in order to pay a premium for a bottle of marketing smoke and mirrors that didn't actually work. So i applaud your post.
  • Cheers for the applause Scot :)

    Hope the cough has cheered up ;)

    Whether you agree that brands need to be more transparent or not (and there are strong arguments on both sides of that particular fence) the days of heavy smoke and mirrors tactics are surely numbered.

    Cheers for dropping by and taking the time to comment btw. I'll be reading your blog with interest and will dive into the debate there when I feel like I've got something interesting to say.
  • voirol
    Think you know your users & can design without involving them? Observing and talking to actual users is *always* eye-opening.
  • thegit
    Unfortunately, if you don't win the battle for the mind the good old steaming turd will always win. Brands should focus on positioning and differentiation.
  • Fair point Gordon. Can you think of a brand that has done this particularly well?

    I heard Gerd Leonhard at the Insight Exchange event (I reviewed the event here) describe marketing as Chemistry. It was a handy analogy.

    You have to understand the mix of elements that you are going to drop your product into - that's the market research that informs your positioning really. Then you can understand how your product (the catalyst), when dropped into the mix of elements out there will have the desired effect.

    I was always pretty rubbish at Chemistry at school, mainly because there was way too much writing up of experiments and not enough explosions!
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