h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: - A1107929
Author: Mart2362 - U233945

Brands... how to make people pay more than their purchase is worth.

Do you not miss a point ... about brand identification and familiarity.

Anyone thirsty?
Yeah, I'll have a ... er ... coke.

It's the first thing that comes into one's head. It's been driven in by massive advertising campaigning ... it's marketing the brand. Nothing to do with wanting to look shiny and new ... it's because we need a response so we say the recognisable brandname.

Man: I'm going to the shop ... need anything?
Woman: Please, get me some nappy-liners.
Man (in shop): Hmm shall I get these in the cheap-and-shoddy looking packet? Or shall I get the Pampers/Johnsons? I'll get the latter, they must be all right, I've seen them on the tele.

See?

Fair comment. This is something not dealt with in the article.

Of course there are situations where a particular brand will be selected simply because its the one the buyer knows or sees, although product selection can be a very subtle decision affected by the brand identity without the buyer being aware of making any concious decision. In fact this is precisely how the most successful brands work.

However, I think brand recognition and familiarity are more about the extent and cost of the promotional campaign rather than the effectiveness of the brand itself. Recognition is a reflection of the brawn, not the brain behind it.

I am more interested in the way that clever branding makes people exercise choices that in any scientific are analysis are illogical, without even realising they are exercising choice. Even in your own example of purchasing nappies there are two contradictions:-
1) Saying the packaging is "cheap and shoddy" is subjective. What looks cheap and shoddy to one person may look classy and cool to another.
2) Just because the nappy packaging may look expensive, and because the buyer has seen an advert for it bears no relationship whatsoever to how good the product inside it is or to whether it is better or worse than the one in the "cheap and shoddy" packaging.

That's right ... many 'branded' products are sold, not on the basis of lifestyle choice or image, as your entry implies (or at least as I infer therefrom), but by saturation marketing so that when faced with a choice the consumer will select the product with which they are most familiar. I might buy Fairy Liquid not because I think Nanette Newman's going to do bob-a-job in my kitchen (nor indeed becasue I think it is a superior product), but because the product-name is cemented in my head. Thanks to the Nanette campaign.

You state that "Marketing people want to persuade you to buy things". Is that strictly their intention. I believe not. It is more about ensuring that when you have a choice, the first name that comes into your head will be the brand for which they have the agency. That is their success.

What do you reckon?

T

OK, first point needs dealing with. This is a well-written, cogently-argued polemic. But it ain't Edited Guide material, mainly because it's positioned as a personal take on the whole branding issue. So I suggest you put it in Speaker's Corner or submit it to the Post. I'd like to see it in print somewhere public on this site.

Secondly, I agree with what you're saying. Take the car branding: I don't give a sick dog's dump about image and what your car says about you. I prefer to spend my money on things which matter, like books, my family, my garden, jazz CD's and my holidays. Hence the reason I bought and drive a Skoda Fabia which is actually really rather good. But now even Skoda are exploiting branding: look at the latest set of TV adverts which imply that if you drive one then you have a depth of judgement which exceeds the superficial attachment to labels of others. So how are the reborn car company positioning themselves? As a brand for those people who don't care about brands . It all gets too post modernist and self-referential to the point of becoming anatomical. These people should get out more.

FM
Scout

I agree with what's been said above - but as a side note, could I mention that you can save yourself a lot of bother with the footnotes etc in an article like this by using Guide GML. This would also let you have a proper title come up in the PR list so that people would know what to expect.

If you check out the <./>GuideML-Clinic</.> page it will start you in the right direction.

Wildman

A lot of marketing depends upon what people think of themselves. Now I know I'm not trendy and gave up trying to be about 30 years ago. I bought my car because it had 8 seats and I have 6 kids. I've still got it because I can't be bothered with the hassle of changing it.

I don't claim to be totally image-immune, but marketing is a lot cleverer and more insidious than you're giving it credit for.

EG Is Marlboro man flashy or trendy or stylish ?

Thankfully, I haven't seen Marlboro Man in a long time, due to the complete ban on tobacco advertising in my country.

I like this entry, but I can see problems with it. It is very hard to relate to without the examples of Coke, Mercedes, Nike and so on which we all know you're talking about. But putting these names into the entry will be either considered advertising if they are favourable towards the product or libellous if not! So you have to leave them out. This gives the whole entry a very artificial feel. It's like it is talking about this really famous cola drink with the red and white logo, without ever mentioning its name.

I can't think of any way around this particular problem, so perhaps you'll just have to live with it.

Other problems with the entry: you're not supposed to mention "I" or "me" in the entry. It is supposed to be written in the "third person" so that it can be added to later by other researchers.

There are ways of discussing well-known brands without it being considered advertising - they're a bit more relaxed on this since the days sellotape stopped being referred to as 'sticky-backed plastic'.

One thing that would really help would be to move your first header and put it instead in the 'subject' box in the entry editor.

I don't think this is suitable for the Guide, either because it is insufficiently balanced or not true, depending on the author's intention.

For a preface, I would like to say my parents lived through the Great Depression, and we had six kids on a janitor's salary. I am quite thifty-it's ingrained. But:

In the section on "mugs": The statement "that much better, of course not" is absurd. How do you know that someone's personal taste is absolutely not fine enough to tell? How do you know I'd rather not spend L1 extra in order to have something I consider pleasant, even if it doesn't directly affect my survival? My local hypermarket's generic children's fizzy drinks are pretty vile. Have you actually tasted 20p-worth children's fizzy drinks? Yes, tongue-taste *is* individual, but it actually doesn't vary a huge amount, because we are all human beings who evolved in the same earth.

In the section on "robbery": actually, in a society that is well-regulated, you can read ingredients lists. If you go to an automobile manufacturer's site, and even some generic car sites, you can get comparisons of figures. Often, what a merchant will call Mayonnaise in america has little or no relation to sauce mayonnaise, and generic or house brands tend to skimp on the most expensive ingredients. This can be objectively seen by comparing between products and your own sauce mayonnaise recipe. If Unilever wishes to save me some time by putting a brand on their Best Foods, and producing it consistently, then why should I object? If, having read the car stats in the internet, it turns out that Dumkopf-Crissler cars are uniformly more powerful that Itsusu cars of the same price, why shouldn't I go confidently to a DC dealership to get a powerful car? Slightly off-topic, but interestingly, for OTC medicines, generics used to be demonstrably worse and have less active ingredient, etc., but this stopped about 5 years ago.

In the section on "brand monster": who says the communal nature of saying you've eaten somewhere that your neighbor has eaten is without value? Human beings are primates and primates are social, why pretend we're not?

In the section of "standardization": unless you intend this to be an elitist screed, this is nonsensical to me. Commercial transactions in an industrialized age succeed precisely because there is guaranteed not to be a pig in the poke. There are standardized Mexican (Baja Fresh) and and American-Chinese (Panda Express) and Japanese (Yoshinoya) and Italian (sbarro) food chains here in LA, the origin of the drive-through restaurant. Their food is good! As more and diffent folk from around the world continue to choose to live here, there'll likely be new ones. No culture is *necessarily* lost. Certainly, we americans love the delightful british cultural institution called royalty, but only so long as we don't have to actually suffer it. Maybe, people worldwide really like to eat BigMacs and it really hurts some folk to suppose that they do, because they in particular do not?

Just seen this and I haven't time to look through it yet, so I'll *bookmark* it, as it's on a subject that interests me.

I think this *could* be suitable for the guide, once some of the personal stuff comes out 'In my own village we have a pizza take-away shop' or is reworded in the third person.

Too many headers at the top! It needs a title, and the title forms the first header, so no more are needed until after the first paragraph at least...

I suggest that the first header is taken out and a proper title put in as Cyzaki suggests.

People also brand themselves and indeed in marketing terms are encouraged to think of themselves as a brand. To give themselves distinction in some way or other. Think Chris Eubank - he wears a monocle (and jodphurs)!

Sportsmen, too - I'm not sure where you're from, Mart, but the English footballer David Beckham is a prime example of someone who's marketed and moulded himself and become built up as a brand. There's an Edited Guide entry you could link to - A1138600 David Beckham - Rise of a Footballer. I suppose another good example would be Michael Jordan.

Isn't something worth whatever someone is willing to pay? Therefore you can't pay more than something is worth, cos it's worth whatever you're willing to pay...

I wasn't going to assert the inherent and deeply anti-humanist socialist slant of this article until the author tried to defend the article. So far, no attempt has been made. Perhaps your challenge will get some action, Cyzaki.

Mart has left the building - propose a move back to entry.

Seconded.

E-mail will be sent soonish.