Doris The Cauliflower

The blurb on Doris the Cauliflower in this article gave me pause. Were I to run into her in the local supermarket would I choose her over Anon ? Being a frugal shopper the only measure that would steer me Doris-wards would be price. Now, if they were priced exactly the same, I do think I would allow myself to succumb to the cute factor choose a named cauliflower. 

If the trend caught on and every fruit and vegetable started to have a name, it would become unappealing and annoying even - at that point I would not care anymore. I wonder how kids may react to this and if they may be more inclined to try something they may not have otherwise cared for. As a test, I asked J and she said she'd be more interested in Doris than a plain old cauliflower (a vegetable she does not like too much) - it was more fun. She added that the blurb about Doris gave you an idea of how to cook the vegetable without being a recipe - that she thought was interesting idea too. 

Should this be appealing to kids in general, there could be some co-branding opportunities. Baby carrots being Thomas the Train or Dora the Explorer could get our little ones to choose them over chicken nuggets and Cheetos for instance. Parents would likely pay a little extra for the named vegetable in that case.

Humanoid Barbies

There was a colorful brochure from a popular cosmetics store in my mailbox the other day. I often save these for J's art and craft projects - the colorful images on glossy paper are just perfect for collage.

Flipping through the pages, I was struck by how extreme the photoshopping job on the faces of the models was. With every last trace of imperfection removed, the faces did not look human anymore and there was something oddly unsettling - even repelling about that look. A woman may want to look beautiful, perfect her flawed skin, discover the elixir of youth and more but I am not sure she wants to resemble one of those humanoid Barbies.

It seems like the line that separates flawless from unnatural is frequently crossed these days because there is technology to enable it. From the cover pages of glossies and brochureware of all kinds, stare out women (more frequently than men) who resemble lifeless mannequins with big smiles plastered on their mouths. If anything it is hard to relate to these conjured up creatures at any level. You have to wonder if they are actually able to help whatever it is they are put out there to peddle to the consumer, being  that they primarily provoke an uncanny valley reaction.

Being Good

I received a couple of bars of fair trade dark chocolate for Christmas from a friend. Since I find it impossible to toss out anything that has writing on it without first reading it, I spent some time reading up the inside of the wrapper. It went on at length about all the good things the buyer of this bar of chocolate was doing for the environment, the farmers and for themselves. The feel-good factor of the copy abnormally high or maybe it felt that way because of the mood enhancing properties of the chocolate itself.

I take pride (very foolishly I am sure) in that I cannot be manipulated my marketeers and sales people to buy things I did not want to buy in the first place. The imperviousness clearly has its limits. If I had to choose between a bar of generic, mass-produced chocolate and something like this pristine fair-trade number, I would most likely settle for the later - all other things being equal. I think the word used to describe this buyer behavior is eco-consumerism. I would no doubt be attributing my choice to the superior taste and quality. Subliminally the message about me being good and kind to others, myself and the planet would have played a big part in the decision.

Intellect And Consumption

Reading a comment on this article about rejection reducing IQ levels, made me wish that the commentator had written a comprehensive essay on the themes touched upon in the comments. Despite the political slant in the observations, it makes for very interesting reading. Specially loved the concluding remark :

And if , by some magic, an average American's IQ can be raised by, say, 10-25 points - this economy will simply collapse because much of it is based on artificially manufactured needs and wants supported by massive marketing and advertising budgets of corporations.

A few weeks ago, I happened to have a couple of hours to occupy after dropping J off at a birthday party. There was some grocery shopping to be done but it would not take as long as I my wait time was. So, I wandered into a newly opened home decor store in the area to browse around and see if I could find a replacement for my down at the heel frying pan. The parking lot was full, the store was swarming with holiday shoppers and business appeared to be brisk. I looked at some of the price tags and wondered how any of it made sense in the current economic climate.

All around me homes have For Sale signs, the job market continues to be tough - former co-workers desperate to find employment after being laid off are working at half of what they used to make, liquidations sales have become so commonplace that they no longer provoke any surprise. That a pricey home decor store is able to thrive in such difficult times is a puzzle to say the least.

Likewise, the nicer restaurants in the neighborhood are are busy as ever judging from their parking lots at least - maybe the regular patrons are relatively untouched by the recession. In all there is little evidence that the pattern of consumption is driven by real life circumstances or even tempered by it. Maybe upping everyone's IQ by 20-25 points as this commentator suggests would cause that alignment to happen.

Zombies

What the author describes as the American Zombie could be found just as easily in any other developed /developing country where consumerism is the predominant force in people's lives. They do what they do in order to feed the consumption habit. The picture John Place paints is sad, scary and true. While not every person fits the zombie bill, significant numbers of them do. Significant enough to warrant the large marketing budgets companies have to push their goods and services.

Reading this article reminds me of a former ad agency guy I once met who had this moral awakening in his 40s that prompted him to change his profession. He said he found it very hard to make peace with his conscience when he got paid for getting people to buy by playing mind games on them. Apparently when success in your day job involves being good at pushing people's buttons, it becomes very hard to succeed in interpersonal relationships. He was never sure at what point he stopped being genuine and started becoming manipulative.

Fearless Flyer

I love flipping through (and even reading) Trader Joe's Fearless Flyers. There is no other piece of unsolicited mail that I even bother with. When you consider the cost of acquiring mailing lists, scrubbing them, segmenting the consumer population, matching the names back to internal databases, setting up a marketing campaign, glossy print, postage and all - the numbers add up quickly.

After all that is done, the average recipient of these materials tosses them into trash without a second thought. The Fearless Flyer on the other hand, is printed on really cheap paper, it is anything but flashy and is takes no trouble to target messaging by way personalization.

Yet there is something about the Flyer that makes me want to read about products I have not considered buying before. Even if I don't buy, I am at least aware of what is available - a good enough engagement metric by most counts. Occassionally, the reading has translated into an actual purchase - which is exactly the kind of conversion marketeers want to see happen.

Being that the fans of the Fearless Flyer abound, I am not a demographic anomaly. Obviously they are doing something right with it. You have to wonder what makes the Flyer (and by extension Trader Joe's) tick at a time when the consumer is innundated by slick narrowly targeted ads online and offline.