[juzzza]

Don't believe the simple explanations.

If Stephen Brown is the poster boy for postmodern marketing, then you just nailed the strapline, Gary!

That's the whole debate, marketing is so much more than simply messages, noise and actions. Consumerism and individuality and products defining the consumer rather than consumers demanding a product and then marketer's fulfilling that need, is spot on.

Firat & Schultz (postmodern marketers) go so far as to suggest that Homo Sapiens have evolved through Homo Econimicus (a creature defined by time, resource allocation, cost and benefits) to Homo Consumericus (defined by consumption and the experiences derived therefrom).

So much of what influences us is deeply personal and unconscious.

What the new gurus are suggesting Scott, is that consumers like advertisers to be clever, witty and postmodern. Hell, our lecturer told us to watch The Simpsons back to back, and we would find everything we wanted to know about postmodernism, cynicism and humour.

[Gary Wassner]

Just look at the Bennifer phenomenon. No one can stomache either of them any longer. Ram it down our throats and eventually we will gag. Paris Hilton is next.

Discordant music appeals to some, but to most it is annoying. Yet harmony should ring, not bore. The generic quality that stars have today is slowly giving way to more discriminating tastes and the fact that we embrace the likes of Paris Hilton only tells us that the models we had been previously foisting on the public need to be retired. She's the transition to something better. She's on the very edge of the cliff, and it's that fact, the anomalous nature of her existence, that makes her interesting, despite every reason why she should not be. The transition: Brittany Spears > Paris Hilton > Joss Stone. In the end, the quality will endure.

[juzzza]

Yes, that's the other element of postmodernist thinking, Gary:

Paradoxical Juxtapositions - Everything can and will be linked; media, influences, past and present and it can all happen 'here and now' even if it seems contradictory and essentially unrelated.

Our fascination with celebrities and almost voyeuristic desire to watch them, read about them, emulate them has created this whole Paris Hilton brand! This girl's hardcore sex video is available to buy from blockbusters, yet parents chuckle when their kids buy the Paris Hilton stuffed pooch in a pink handbag toy! Now she is in movies (getting killed mind you!), adverts, fashion and you can buy promotional t-shirts for 'House of Wax' with 'watch Paris die' on them! Paradoxical Juxtapositions!

You like quality, and a lot of your brand choices are made upon the basis that the brand stands for quality... I wonder if the reality matches the perceptions of most of your purchases?

[Gary Wassner]

We have to be discriminating. Often we confuse high price and quality. But not in music. Not necessarily in art with the exception of investors who are there for a different reason. Supply and demand plays a part in price and in perception. Yet a quality book that is released in a cheap paperback format doesn't detract from the content. The intrinsic determinator is untouched. I think that holds true for many things despite the fact that the true determinator is often so illusive and misunderstood. We have to be discriminating.

[juzzza]

Agreed, yet research continues to make consumers look like idiots, especially over the price/quality debate.

Researchers put identical scissors into a supermarket, next to each other, one priced high and once priced extremely low... they didn't sell a single pair of the cheap scissors... and when quizzed, shoppers said that they thought the cheap pair would be poor quality, despite being able to see, touch, feel both pairs.

I think the way to go is to recognize that there are purchases at different levels... we buy things to survive like food and water, we buy things for pleasure and we buy things to make statements about who we are. And of course, we can blend them all if we hold to the Parodox view. I drink pepsi because I want to be Britney, even though it's water I need... I drive a BMW even though I just need to get from A to B and I wear a Rolex because I can afford it and like quality...

[Scott Bakker]

But the quality preceeds the press, the press does not create the quality.

This myth has been recently exploded by research in the neurological effects of advertising. Marketing actually affects the taste of things, Gary, let alone our desires for them. Quality and press are dialectically interrelated.

What the new gurus are suggesting Scott, is that consumers like advertisers to be clever, witty and postmodern. Hell, our lecturer told us to watch The Simpsons back to back, and we would find everything we wanted to know about postmodernism, cynicism and humour.

Postmodernism is a crock, a name we've given to the breakdown of traditional normative systems due to the rapid pace of technologically mediated social change. I'm not sure it makes any more sense to use it as prescriptive category in advertising as it did in art (where I think the consequences were nothing short of disastrous). This is moreso the case if you think postmodernism is essentially invested in exploding conventional expectations. I'm not sure toying with them to entertain consumers really qualifies.

Whatever the case, postmodernism doesn't make much sense unless employed oppositionally (thus the 'post'), which means that as soon as things like semantic promiscuousness and hybridity become the new norm, postmodernism - by its own lights - becomes the new 'tyrannical' normative system. Which is to say, traditional.

[Gary Wassner]

Everything new is old again.

They are certainly related. I don't know if I would say they are dialectically related. There is a difference between intrinsic quality and appearance, particularly in products that can be measured in a clear an concise fashion. There is sham and artifice, and there is the real thing.

[saintjon]

the thing about that scissors example is that even if that most people don't even know how to tell quality when they see it. Before I went to chef training I had no idea what made a good knife. So you know, maybe the person is looking at two identical pairs of scissors but just doesn't trust the evidence of their senses and wants something else to go by, which leaves only price short of having to chase down a store employee who may or may not know what the hell they're talking about. I don't see that one happening much cuz a lot of people would probably risk getting burned on the price of scissors than embarass themselves asking someone about scissors. There's that interdependance thing again I guess.

Anyways, I'd be very curious as to where this study took place (and what the average income is like in that area), I can assure you that most of the people in either half of my family would go with the cheaper ones for the express reason that they're cheaper.

[KatG]

I can see why you didn't want to rewrite all that! Fascinating thread.

I was simply lumping books in with beer and SUVs - anything you've ever seen an 'associational' commercial for in fact. Has there been any research on the marketing differences between books and other commodities?

You can lump non-fiction books in with beer and SUV's, although a non-fiction book is a bit trickier to market than an SUV. Partly because most people don't read and buy books. And word of mouth still comes into play in non-fiction, which is how a book on the history of the pencil can become a best-selling title. But fiction doesn't work like the rest of it, does not work like movies, fashion, music. Fiction is naturally marketing resistent for the reasons specified in that other thread. Which is one of the reasons you usually don't see t.v. ads or a lot of other advertising for books. (Another being that publishers can't always afford it.) Which is why the poster in train station strategy is very interesting.

Certainly publishers can't manufacture bestsellers at will, but can they manufacture mid-list authors?

Nope. Which isn't to say that there aren't things they can't do to try and get a new author's name out there. That's name recognition, which is different from brand recognition (see other thread.) The Web is chiefly effective in being an easy means to spread massive word of mouth. Publishers have been slow to pick up on this -- they don't trust the Web -- but the more tech-savvy among them are starting to try and use it. But with fiction, it comes down to people reading the book and then what they say about it to others, and then those others not only reading the novel, but actually liking it. And even if you try to do bad-mouthing or good-mouthing of a title, you can't control the buzz about it from those who have read it. You can build curiousity, though, which is a good thing. It's not that no marketing stuff works in fiction publishing, just that it works very differently from what we're used to. That consumer sophistication that Juzz is talking about doesn't really apply to fiction publishing because of the ways people buy fiction.

The posters in the train stations mean they are deliberately trying to associate books with movies, which is an old strategy. People do think that novelists must be just like the folks in Hollywood and that you are living it up just like Colin Farrell. But this association doesn't really get people to buy books. It may, though, lure the media. The mainstream media has very little interest in novels. Most of the time, they ignore them and authors unless movies are made of the novels and even better if the author writes the screenplay adaptation. But if you can make novels seem very glamorous and a big deal, then the media may be more willing to do some coverage, which gets the authors' names out there to sink or swim. They are trying to make fiction publishing look much bigger than it is (which is not meant in any way to underappreciate your accomplishment, Scott.)

But really, this kind of very targeted advertising is a good idea, because people do read books on the trains -- actual book buyers. Plus, it's way cool.

[juzzza]

Postmodernism is a crock, a name we've given to the breakdown of traditional normative systems due to the rapid pace of technologically mediated social change. I'm not sure it makes any more sense to use it as prescriptive category in advertising as it did in art (where I think the consequences were nothing short of disastrous). This is moreso the case if you think postmodernism is essentially invested in exploding conventional expectations. I'm not sure toying with them to entertain consumers really qualifies.

Whatever the case, postmodernism doesn't make much sense unless employed oppositionally (thus the 'post'), which means that as soon as things like semantic promiscuousness and hybridity become the new norm, postmodernism - by its own lights - becomes the new 'tyrannical' normative system. Which is to say, traditional.

I happen to agree with you, even using the term 'postmodern' is very, well... un-postmodern.

I made it pretty clear to the other students and my lecturer, that I felt a lot of the so-called postmodern marketers seem to be slapping each other on the back, saying "look how clever I am".

But... some of the challenges to traditional marketing theory are sound, whatever label you want to give this era. Segmentation or rather stereotyping, brand loyalty and the premise of the interrelations of the various media and influences.

Of course, and something that annoyed the hell out of me, is that these postmodernists look at you all smugly and say "ah... but if that is what you believe, than who am I to argue... your reality is the only reality that matters... that's hyper-reality and a postmodernist way of thinking."

God help us if postmornists rule the earth but I think a balance is probably best.