A marketing tactic studied

[bellatrys]

I've been thinking a lot about the MINX mess, and how it was that that the professionals could get it so wrong and be so oblivious to how and why, when customers and potential customers were trying to tell them so loudly in so many ways for so long, and something somebody said that I saw in my dowsing which I need to find and cite helps encapuslate

Comments

[jonquil]

OMG those soaps are *beautiful*.

Another case would be the WB: they were attracting a strong female and over-30 audience, but they kept trying to make it attractive to a male under-30 audience, because that's where the advertisers were.

"We don't want this bird in our hands,

[bellatrys]

We want those much bigger ones over in yonder shrubbery!"

OH NOES NOW WE HAS NO BURDZ AT ALL, WOE IS US - STOOPIT BURDZ. WE DINT WANT UR OLD FEATHERZ ANYHOO!

--Just how old *is* that proverb, anyway?

Re: "We don't want this bird in our hands,

[fridgepunk]

OH NOES NOW WE HAS NO BURDZ AT ALL, WOE IS US - STOOPIT BURDZ. WE DINT WANT UR OLD FEATHERZ ANYHOO!

OMG Cats! They're giant hairless talking cats!

It all makes sense now.

Cousins of Catbert, no doubt

[bellatrys]

Of course, Dilbert had the marketing guys drinking ambrosia and frolicking in a meadow full of unicorns to explain their lack of contact with what the rest of the company knew as "reality," so not really that far off either.

It all makes way much more sense than the idea of "we will throw away the stinky customers we got in hopes of attracting a higher grade and larger numbers of customers we don't got," still!

[deiseach]

Oh, those are gorgeous soaps

I think that is very close to what must have been,

[bellatrys]

but it gets even weirder when you look at the specifics.

For instance: Regifters - what the hell kind of a title is that? What story does it suggest? To me it says something dreary about Ordinary Girls (probably white upper-middle-class suburbanites) trying to avoid getting in trouble (and failing) by giving away unwanted presents from relatives or friedns without getting caught, probably with some uncomfortable embarrassing sequences that are supposed to be 'humorous."

It doesn't say "Korean-American heroine trying to become successful martial arts champion in California," which isn't necessarily something I would go out of my way to read, but is more interesting than the Angst of the Unsuccessful Yankee Swap, and would likely appeal to quite a few teenage female readers, based on how popular Tae Kwan Do etc are here for kids of all ages, boys and girls.

But it turned out, according to an actual Korean-American reviewer, that they didn't bother to do basic research and thus got the personal names and the places and the Korean

[skapusniak]

One version of this is when, after initially getting a completely different set of customers than they thought they were aiming for, and subsequently spending a few years slowly degrading the features that those customers like about the product to add other ones they're not very enthusiastic about in a futile attempt to attract the audience they originally wanted and are still determined to get, they move on to stage 3 of their cunning plan

[ext_59120]

I want to call it 'The Livejournal Syndrome'.

Yow, I forgot about *that* mess

[bellatrys]

And of course nobody ever *learns* from events like that, because that's one of the side-effects of chugging Everclear all day the symptoms of Marketing Hubris - that same imperviousness to reality that marks a certain Head of State and his advisors, who think they can make their own realities by sheer willpower.

Nurture the bird in your hand, don't toss it away to go chasing the ones fluttering in other hedges - shouldn't be rocket science, but it so often is.

(This, btw, is why I ceased to be a loyal, card-carrying Body Shop patron many many years ago: every time I would find a product that worked for my only-somewhat unique skin and hair issues, that didn't give me rashes and didn't make me gag because of my hypersensitivity to a lot of smells, and I'd get attached to it, they'd drop it and replace it with something totally different that I couldn't use or didn't like. I tried to tell them this and they said that it was their strategy to always be bringing out new things and retiring old ones, and I just couldn't afford to buy

[jenny_islander]

I wonder whether the Sci Fi Channel is holding in Stage 2 of this cunning plan.

My husband recently dug out some old tapes of Robotech that he recorded off Sci Fi Cartoon Quest. Oh, the ads the ads the ADS. Amazing Stories. Inside Sci Fi with guest editorials by Harlan Ellison. Because, you know, people who watch a channel named "Sci Fi" can be expected to know who the hell he is. Plus con reports that didn't sound like somebody cataloging the local freaks. Science Now, an actual factual scientifical show that was, IIRC, nearly as meaty as the stuff you get on PBS

What depresses me

[deiseach]

There is never any campaign like this for boys

What, you mean we *aren't* Mysterious Creatures(TM)???

[bellatrys]

Are you sure about that? I thought we were, you know, Spinks.

FWIW, I vaguely remember seeing Castellucci's prose books a couple years ago in B&N and thinking the same thing that I did about MINX, that they were for the Travelling Pants crowd and not the Urban Fae/Shapeshifting-Falcon-Princesses/Heroine-Disguised-As-Boy-Aboard-Sailing-Ship crowds. Now, apparently CC is herself a lifelong fangirl of superhero comix, but who would ever guess that from the covers of Riding In Cars With Boys etc? There was nothing about them that said so, not marketed to genre readers, and so a fannish audience for her prior "strong YA showing" is not likely to have existed.

...BTW, have you seen Mighty Godking's infamous commentaries on a particularly bad recent characterization of von Doom? It is truly, truly a Work of EBOL Chaotic Good.

You alarm me

[deiseach]

"have you seen Mighty Godking's infamous commentaries on a particularly bad recent characterization of von Doom?"

What have they done to my favourite insane scientific genius absolute dictator and armour wearer? I swear, if they've made him all reformed and giving up trying to rule the world (or Latveria, at any rate), I will be very disappointed indeed.

Regarding the cute fuzzy kitties for bikers - why not? Biker lolcats - can't you just see it?

Oh, good heavens

[deiseach]

Whoever this Brian Bendis may be, one thing is for sure: he's an idiot.

Talk about totally not understanding or caring about the history and background of a character!

He is proud, arrogant, vain, brilliant, obsessed, scholarly, and convinced he knows what is right for everyone.

This is not someone who is reduced to "Shut yer face, ya fat cow!" when using invective or rhodomontade.

[ext_59120]

The thing I find fascinating about your eassy is the moment when TPTB notice Bikers are buying CuteFuzzy Kitten Promotion and THEN don't actually go "Ahah! We must create more cutefuzzy kitten promotion BECAUSE Bikers have loads of money and apparently they like this. Hey, inventory? What else can we stick cutefuzzy adorable kittens on? Think people!"

PS

[ext_59120]

It's like the Mark Twain quote: “It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.”

I know! Wouldn't *rational* people do egg-zackly that?

[bellatrys]

On the one hand, they would have people investigating (w/lab coats and clipboards of course) the scientific reasons behind this mysterious, hitherto unsuspected phenomenon of Bikers going gaga over cute fuzzy kittens (and trying to see if puppies, or bunnies, were more likely to be another Niche Market here, or if it were strictly a feline-centric phenom!) the way that snack food makers have done, testing Preferred Chewability Densities with meters and so forth as well as surveys - and on the short term side, they'd be just rushing like mad to see what else they could ram through production and how to get the maximum CFK materials delivered to Harley Shows and Motorcycle Weeks around the world

[ext_59120]

I think airbrushers should be all over that. "I can totally paint a cute fuzzy kitten mauling a business suit onto your engine. Totally."