The other day, I wandered into a 7/11 wanting chocolate. I didn’t know which candybar I wanted, I hadn’t decided. And so I stood there, in a colourful aisle surrounded by candy and snacks, looking at boxes and boxes of chocolate bars, mulling over my decision. I surveyed all the screaming colours and smiling cartoons, eventually deciding that I wanted a Kit-Kat.

As I was reaching for the candybar, I was blindsided with a flash of introspection. Out of all the options, why was I picking Kit-Kat?

It was as if all the candybars in that 7/11 were a million tiny marketing execs, dressed in suits in their candybar colours, all yelling at the top of their lungs, clamouring for attention like stockbrokers right before the closing bell. As my hand drew closer, the tiny red marketing men of Kit-Kat cheered and claimed victory, the losers threw a tantrum, moaned, and went back into a huddle to figure out how to yell louder at the next guy who comes down the aisle.

Consumers are horribly undermatched

So much time, energy and money is spent in our society to funnel consumer behaviour into a desired course of action. People devote entire careers to figuring out how to make people buy their candybars. Marketers are in meetings, watching people in fake shopping labs, staying late at work away from their families, so that they can learn how to make strangers think that Axe Bodyspray will increase their virility or that McDonald’s is an essential part of every childhood.

I became horribly sick at the thought that I was starting a career where my sole purpose would be to make people believe that they can’t live without Brand X.

It was in this moment that I realized marketing is evil. Whenever you step into a grocery store aisle, your wits are against the wits of millions of Marketers, armed with consumer tracking studies and pilot tests and multi-city research and loads and loads of statistics.

Soulless Commerce

Manipulation and fakery of the finest details takes place on a daily basis so that Jane and Joe Consumer will pick Brand X.

I thought about all the 30-second ads on TV, and all of the focus groups, rewrites and reshoots that go into them in an effort to exert maximum consumer influence.

I thought about all the billboards and posters on the street and in magazines and how incredibly manufactured it all was, how the models in the pictures were hand-picked from thousands, then tweaked and photoshopped, optimizing appeal for the target audience.

I thought about the creeping, unstoppable march of marketing into our personal lives, and how any blank crevasse of public domain is being claimed under the flag of Advertising. Those miniature yelling ad execs are not just in our grocery aisles, they’re on our gas pumps, in our tv shows, and even on our parking stripes.

I thought about how powerful brands have become, from Nelly naming his daughter Chanel to basketball teams named Burger King Whoppers.

I thought about how nothing is authentic anymore. Marketing has reduced everything to design-by-focus-group and popular culture is usurped to increase Brand Awareness and ROI. Everything wonderful and real became reduced to soulless statistics.

All I wanted was some damn chocolate and instead I got depressed about my career. I needed to take a step back.

The Necessary Evil

Marketing is a field of mercenary psychologists. We are people who are continually trying to figure out what makes consumers tick, so we can get more money. I thought: Is that really so bad? Isn’t that the essence of business?

Marketing is inevitable. There will always be competition and there will always be a need to prove your worth in relation to competitors.

Farmers in tribal villages, fourth graders battling for class president and entrepreneurs seeking funding all rely on marketing. The American health care debate is a fierce battleground of ideologies, and both sides need marketing. Marketing answers the consumer question: Why should I pay any attention to you?

If I lived in complete isolation from media my entire life and wandered into 7/11 looking for chocolate, I, as a consumer, will still use marketing to guide my decision. I may not have been exposed to ads, posters and billboards for the candybars, but I would evaluate packaging…shape…name…price… to make a choice. All of that is marketing.

The Root of Evil

The ugliness of Marketing is that it cheapens so many things, all for an extra dollar. Remember Chocolate Rain? Marketing execs found something that was popular, so they decided to throw money at Tay Zonday and make Cherry Chocolate Rain:

At 8 million views, I’m sure it achieved Coke’s marketing objectives. But there is something disheartening about taking something organic and authentic and slapping brand names all over it.

Gen Y and the Push-Pull

Marketing works when an intersection exists where the brands push and the consumer pulls. Generation Y is living in a time where for the first time, the consumer can control the corporate push. Tivo and Adblock are testaments to this ability.

This selective screening just causes brands and Marketers to yell even louder, causing an escalating arms race between push and pull. This is a strange battle because ultimately marketers and consumers need each other.

Is Marketing Evil?

Is marketing evil? Absolutely, but only in the same way that the gun or the printing press is evil. It is a tool that takes whatever form its owner wants it to take. Power is afforded to whoever uses it.

As the threshold of marketing and corporatization pushes deeper into our personal lives, the only hope I can have is that in my lifetime, I don’t see parents selling naming rights for their children to GoldenPalace.

photos by s2art, marketingfacts

Living in South Korea, where cellphone penetration is nearly 100%, the culture of electronic communication is astonishing. It’s normal to see 60 year old women texting effortlessly or 9 year olds using their phones to take pictures and videos of anything they find remotely amusing.

This culture of hyper-connectedness has made me keenly aware of communication habits, both my own and of others. My cellphone usage has sharply increased during my time here, despite having a smaller circle of friends than back home.

Gen Y Never Eats Alone

I realized that with all the avenues of communication available, I’m never, ever really alone. If I’m having lunch by myself, I’ve noticed that I’ll send text messages to people in order to relieve the silence. If I’m bored on the subway, I’ll call or text someone.

If I’m working on something on my laptop — at least one IM program will be open. Sometimes I’ll sign on and passively leave it in the background. I’ll happily oblige if someone engages me in conversation, but I’m content with simply being available.

In my unscientific poll of some colleagues, it’s clear that I’m not alone in doing this. Viewing it objectively, it looks like a strange behaviour. What’s the point of all this seemingly needless connectivity?

The Facebook High

This always-on mindset could be indicative of a generation with low self-esteem. I still remember the days before ubiquitous cellphones, email, IMs and social networking. If you wanted to get in touch with a friend, you’d have to hope they were near a landline or you would go to their house. If you couldn’t connect with them…no fuss, no big deal.

But now that we can connect with our friends (and expect to hear a response anywhere within 24 seconds to 24 hours), we’ve tied our ability to connect into our self-identity. Because we are used to being surrounded by people — from our helicopter parents to our always-available peers — we have become dependent on their communication and addicted to their contact. Are we a generation that self-medicates its emotional issues by sending out texts?

Our personalities are now inextricably linked to our cellphones and Facebook walls. Notification of a new text or message can trigger a dose of excitement, a microsecond-high that makes you think ooh, what could this be? That’s why some people (affectionately known as “Facebook whores”) are so addicted to Facebook. It’s constant reinforcement that says yes, I have friends, and yes, I have social value.

The desire to be liked is certainly not unique to Gen Y. But this is the first generation where you can actually measure your popularity. Just count the text messages in your phone and see how many Facebook friends you have.

Pic by lst1984

During these holidays, my Facebook news feed has transformed into a litany of endless photo albums. There are pictures of parties, beach vacations, families and ugly sweater parties. I see my friends with changed haircuts, doing the same old antics with new (or noticeably absent) significant others.

Inevitably, some pictures I’ve seen — mostly the ones from parties — have resulted in some less-than-flattering photos of my friends. Not surprisingly, these pictures have been detagged.

Detagging is the process of disassociating yourself with a picture on Facebook, in such a way that it is not linked to your profile in any way.

Generation Y Can Pick & Choose Memories

Forgetting about your ex has never been more convenient. Have some text messages that make your heart cringe? Delete them. Really sappy Facebook photos that you wish you never uploaded? Detag them. Does your ex’s IM status talk about their new beau? Block then delete the contact. They never existed. It’s like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, lite version.

Oh God, That’s Detag Worthy!

It’s common knowledge by now that Gen Y is narcissistic. But whenever I see it play out in real life, I’m still floored by just how obsessed we can be when it comes to our peers’ opinions and our image.

Whenever I’m at a bar or club and I see a group of Millennials snapping pictures, the same thing always happens. After someone takes a group photo, the picture-taker will automatically let the people in the picture review the photo. If someone says it is not acceptable, the picture is deleted and the pose is re-shot.

If an ugly photo ever sneaks its way onto Facebook, it is simply detagged. With privacy settings, the self-conscious have even more control about who can see what pictures.

Damage Control In the 21st Century

Can you really blame Generation Y? If Gen X-ers had an embarrassing photo, only a select few people could see it, and then any evidence could be physically destroyed. As our lives go digital, all it takes is one person to Right Click Save As and your shame can become worldwide. Extra difficulty if the incriminating digital evidence is a video.

I bet Star Wars kid would do anything to get a chance to detag.

Thanks for the pic, blythe_d.

Millennials have unprecedented access to product information. Looking for the scoop about a digital camera? Type the brand and model into Google and you’ll be inundated with blogs and reviews. Buying a first car? Go to one of countless auto-enthusiast message boards and you’ll have enough reading material to last you for weeks.

Gone are the days when you would pick up a magazine and read a professional review column, thinking it was the be-all-end-all say on a product. These days, people are putting their trust in blogs, choosing peer opinion versus expert opinion.

Word-of-mouth is not new, but this is new territory for companies constantly jockeying for the market’s attention. Trying to tap into something as organic as blogging has proven difficult. Sponsored blogging company PayPerPost ran into trouble when Google decided that sponsored blogs were unworthy of front-page rankings. The sponsored blogging business model still remains controversial and has yet to see full-fledged mainstream adoption.

The recent news about Bike Hero being fake reminds me that Gen Y has extremely fine-tuned BS detectors — it seems that we think something is even remotely fake, it probably is. It’s almost disillusioning and insulting to think that agencies are continually trying to camouflage adverts. Why pretend to be something? The magic is always lost when you discover something to be a lie, even if it’s just a YouTube video or a funny blog.

It’s a very fine line between corporatizing something natural versus being a contributing participant. For brands trying to infiltrate Gen Y and its media, the key factor is, and has always been, sincerity.

Thanks to Alx for the pic.