--- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, "Stephanie Bryant"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> I don't think you know anything about Internet marketing. If you did,
> you would know the difference between a discussion group and an
> audience for spam.
I think thats a very important point that helps explain this groups
stance on what are not acceptable ways to do business here. Of course
there is no single groupview on this or any other issue, but certaint
kinds of marketing are definately one of the things that gets some
vocal peoples backs up here.
I personally dislike marketing in general, but I have a passionate
hate for really vulgar marketing & sales techniques, adverts etc. Now
it seems to be that these days there are a lot of companies that are
doing the modern style of sleek seductive advertising, and internet
savvy/more ethical/less vulgar type stuff. And this stuff is bound to
be a bit more palatable to a wider range of people and the blogosphere
than the other sort of marketing, the sort that gives marketing a bad
name, and that I have ranted about in the past.
If Im not mistaken this latest vulgar marketeer has tried an ebay
auction of pixels on his site, and the marketing used on the ebay
auction page for that item is just a classic example of the kind of
marketing that will get you a lot of heat from people. It makes some
people hopping mad, I will speculate as to some of the reasons why:
1) A relentless hard sell. If the product is worth it, why the need
for hard sell?
2) The hideously outdated and tacky use of a few specific font
attributes. Clearly there must be a long tradition of dodgy marketeers
selling other would-be marketeers stupid guides that say that using
red sentences and ALL CAPITALS at specific moments, then throw in some
blue sentences, along with a relentless style of bullshit, will just
melt those potential customers minds and the dollars will come a
flowing. NO! It looks bad enough on backpage classified adverts, on
the internet it just looks like laughable parpings of the truly desperate.
3) The term 'viral marketing' is used. It wouldnt be called viral if
it was a nice thing. Does that make the person behind viral marketing
campaign a virus? If so then is an angry response a yahoo groups best
innoculation against such a virus?
Oh well I dont know why Im bothering with this rant, experience so far
is that the people who indulge in such stuff never seem to understand
why some people get so upset with it and them. They dont see anything
wrong with it, which is understandable as humans need to
self-rationalise their own behaviour. So its percieved that we who
moan are the problem, that we must be a minority, so its worth setting
up another group where the majority will live happily with the viral
marketing slugs and be happy to be crudely manipulated by them using
the power of red fonts and half-understood pseudo-marketing techniques.
Nah, anyway I think the biggest brainwrong is the assumption that its
only a minority who hate this sort of marketing. I happen to think
that most people are against hard selling because if something is
worth buying, why the need to push it so. And its totally natural that
humans hate the idea of being manipulated by anybody else. So whilst
they may still sometimes fall for sophisticated advertising or subtle
uses of emotions in adverts (or even not so subtle uses of eg sex to
sell), they will not have pleasant thoughts about stuff that is not
subtle, is pushy or invasive etc.
A bizarre test of this opinion of mine that the majority hate such
things, would be wrestling. A wrestler with the gimic of doing that
sort of marketing/selling, would be an instant heel, plenty of cheap
heat from the crowd, and some people would pay good money to see
another person pretend to beat him up. And it wasnt loud-mouthed
opinionated gits like me who decided the masses should think that way.
If anybody has any ideas about how video could be used to fight viral
marketing and other such stains on human civilisation, I would be
ready to reactivate unquack.com for just such a purpose.
Steve of Elbows
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