Seeing Behind the Marketing Curtain

After writing the other day about brand in the age of social media, I've found some interesting dialogs where similar questions are being asked about how marketing changes when consumers become more aware of how marketing works. I think it was stated most succintly in one of the comments to my previous post, in which Sivaraman commented that branding is shifting from an exercise in constructing messages to an exercise in deconstructing messages. Certainly social media accelerates this process, as consumers begin to parse and often parody advertising messages.

In some senses, it has become an arms race, in which advertisers develop ever more sophisticated methods to project their message, while consumers become increasingly savvy about parrying those messages or tuning them out altogether. In fact, there's a really fascinating theory from the world of evolutionary biology that John Girard pointed out to me, that demonstrates a powerful survival advantage for members of a society that can detect cheating. If you want to geek out on the theory of Reciprocal Altruism, you can find an explanation here. But I can tell you how I see this playing out very clearly in my own experience.

I have a five year old son who has watched a lot of videos, but until recently almost no broadcast television. When he saw his first commercials, he was literally slack jawed in amazement at the frenetic assault on the senses--they really pack a lot into 30 seconds. But he was also confused, because the "plots" didn't make any sense to him. He'd ask: "Is it over?" So I explained to him that commercials were mini movies that businesses paid for in order to convince you to buy something. To my amazement, he immediately got it, and applied it to his experience of using gift money from his grandma to buy legos. And then he started asking at each commercial, "what are they trying to make me buy?"

Now, I don't know when I became aware of the manipulative arts of advertising, but I know I wasn't five. In the same way that I often wonder with amazement what a generation of engineers that grew up with computers will invent, I also wonder how a generation of business people who grew up being assailed with marketing to the point of cynicism will view the world, and what kind of marketing they'll create.

We have more tools than ever to really see behind the messages that businesses spin, and it's a frequent topic of conversation all over the Web. Tom Asacker has an interesting dialog going on at his blog today about "authenticity", and whether or not a company like Unilever can authentically position a product with an "enlightened body image" like Dove, while at the same time positioning a product that crassly objectifies women like Axe body spray. I'll let Tom frame the argument on his blog, but I think the very fact that the market is aware enough to compare Unilever's positioning over a family of brands demonstrates that people are looking behind the curtain like never before. Whether or not that actually impacts the purchasing behavior of consumers is another question altogether. 

What's interesting to me on a deeper level is the degree to which marketing has taken over the telling of our stories. Human life in society has always hinged on the telling of stories, right back to the dawn of civilization. We've always told stories to address the fundamental questions in life about who we are and what we're about. At various times in history, we've entrusted those stories to religion, to art and literature, to educators and even politicians. But in today's world, marketing has overtaken every other medium with which we tell the stories that give meaning to our lives. Consumers construct their lives by the brands they buy--whether it's the clothes they wear, the cars they drive or the places they shop. Politicians, priests, artists and writers, all know the tools of marketing, and they all speak increasingly in the language of brands, positions, and core messages.

But what happens when people begin to notice? What happens when a 5 year old starts to ask questions about what they're being sold on? What happens when a market becomes a networked community of people with a strong self-interest in pulling back the curtain on positioning and spin? Does it change anything, or does it just impact the ways in which messages are framed without really shifting consumer behavior?

Does anyone else find this interesting?

Comments

[Linda Meneses]

How do people react when the magician's secret is revealed? Do they continue to be interested in seeing the illusion or do they not care anymore. When people realize they are being sold on a product or a service, I think they take the "sell" in stride if indeed the product/service is something they want. If I really love Dove products, I'll stick with them even if they conduct an idiotic marketing campaign--unless they offend me in some way--then all bets are off. No marketing campaign just sells a product or service, though. As you mentioned, what is sold is a lifestyle, an image, a fantasy, in which case consumers, knowingly or not, gladly will be reeled in.

[Ardath Albee]

If the magic curtain is going to be pulled back, and it is, then what's behind it had better be authentic and honest. As the cost to switch continues to shrink and change becomes easier to embrace, disillusionment can be very costly.

This is why building relationships based on more than spin is important. The customer experience should match or, if possible, transcend the message.

[Chris Kenton]

Hi Linda and Ardath--

It's really interesting to hear marketers start pulling at the threads of purchasing behavior. There are a lot of complexities, and not a very clear line of causality from messaging to point of purchase. For one thing, different products are purchased in very different ways. What goes into purchasing a car or a computer is vastly different from what goes into purchasing a bar of soap or a can of deodorant, and the degree to which we invest ourselves in the brands and the businesses behind them are different as well.

Oddly enough, I have been an Axe customer, although I've only once actually seen an Axe commercial. I discovered Axe on the shelf at the drug store. I wasn't shopping for canned pheromones that would magically induce cocktail swilling and skirt chasing. I just liked the way it smelled. As it happened, a few months after I started using Axe, I came across a report online about studies showing that chemicals in products like Axe were showing up in the ground water. After that, every time I used the spray I felt like I was in a chemical cloud and I cared less about the smell. My entire customer lifecycle was effected by shelf-placement, packaging and social media, and not at all by advertising or messaging.

As I marketer I wonder about the conclusions Unilever will draw about how my purchase history intersects with their marketing efforts. But as a consumer, I never really thought much about the brand behind the product--experience led me to buy, but social media inserted dissonance into my use of the product. That's the battlefield that I find interesting to watch as consumers find more effective ways to tune out advertising.

/chris

[Chris Kenton]

Hi Linda and Ardath--

It's really interesting to hear marketers start pulling at the threads of purchasing behavior. There are a lot of complexities, and not a very clear line of causality from messaging to point of purchase. For one thing, different products are purchased in very different ways. What goes into purchasing a car or a computer is vastly different from what goes into purchasing a bar of soap or a can of deodorant, and the degree to which we invest ourselves in the brands and the businesses behind them are different as well.

Oddly enough, I have been an Axe customer, although I've only once actually seen an Axe commercial. I discovered Axe on the shelf at the drug store. I wasn't shopping for canned pheromones that would magically induce cocktail swilling and skirt chasing. I just liked the way it smelled. As it happened, a few months after I started using Axe, I came across a report online about studies showing that chemicals in products like Axe were showing up in the ground water. After that, every time I used the spray I felt like I was in a chemical cloud and I cared less about the smell. My entire customer lifecycle was effected by shelf-placement, packaging and social media, and not at all by advertising or messaging.

As I marketer I wonder about the conclusions Unilever will draw about how my purchase history intersects with their marketing efforts. But as a consumer, I never really thought much about the brand behind the product--experience led me to buy, but social media inserted dissonance into my use of the product. That's the battlefield that I find interesting to watch as consumers find more effective ways to tune out advertising.

/chris

[Carol]

Chris,

This is a very complex subject. While consumers are more aware of marketing and its attempts to "manipulate," do they make more rational decisions? I think this is debatable -- and, of course, varies by individual. Often our purchasing reasons are quite subconscious, and "image" based advertising may impact us more than we are willing to say or even more than we may consciously know. This is why consumer researched is so often unreliable. When marketers ask consumers about their purchase behavior, they are often mislead. Consumers often don't truly know their own motivations (and sometimes they provide answers they think are more acceptable). This fact has led to the marketing industry's increasing interest and investment in brain research as it relates to buying behavior. It's particularly of interest among those who sell luxury items --

The January issue of the Conference Board's magazine has an interesting article on this subject (unfortunately only in print). And the practice is raising privacy concerns. http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/neuro/brain_privacy.htm

While I agree consumers are more aware of marketing and how marketers attempt to sway them, they continue to be affected by marketing.

[Chris Kenton]

Hi Carol--

I agree completely: there's no question that marketing has a tremendous impact on buyer's attitudes. What's difficult to parse are the mechanics of that impact. We are influenced as consumers by so many factors that are not cognitive, or rational, or even measurable, but are incredibly powerful. As social science, it's fascinating. But in business we're compelled to harness and measure factors that often aren't nearly as malleable as we like to believe.

I haven't seen the Conference Board article yet, but I have seen a lot of research on the neuroscience of marketing. In one example researchers hook a subject up to an EEG to map areas of brain activity while the subject is shown various products and brands. The goal is to understand how brands are associated with emotions in ways that might be manipulated to influence purchasing behavior. What I haven't seen, though, is any further research that studies how a subject's awareness of the way they are being influenced might change their response. It seems like a reasonable hypothesis that the difference would be measurable.

Like you, however, I don't think marketing will be rendered impotent by consumer awareness--communication is too rich and varied for its effects to be turned off like a switch. What's of interest to me in the context of social media is that consumers are changing from blind subjects to increasingly informed and active participants in this whole experiment--and I think we've only yet scratched the surface of that transformation, much less how it will change the way we market.

/chris