Marketing

For the past months I have had an interest in marketing and the effect of advertising on the internet.

These words have had a negative feeling in my personal vocabulary. I don't like the idea of helping people buy for buying's sake and this is what I felt advertising and marketing is about. I have also felt that advertisement has been about making people want to buy things they do not really need...

Condiment Gun

But lately I have had to change my mind about what it means. It is not so much making people buy what they do not need, but making people aware of what exists..

The amount of choices that you have to make each each day are staggering. And the choices have increased manyfold. The other day I was at my husband's family gathering. His parents, grandfather and his sister and her boyfriend were there and we were going to test the new coffemachine.

  

We all got to choose which type of coffee we wanted.And we all did, except the grandfather. He said

"I'll take regular black coffee, I can't tell the difference between these, just give me one that will give me black coffee"

The number of new releases on Spotify last week was 13 487 (got that number from this website) I can say that I cannot be bothered to sift through that many songs to find the ones I like.

And that, I'm starting to realise, is what advertising is about. Making you aware of the choices that they think are relevant, and also help to block out the other million choices that are there. I don't want to spend 30 seconds choosing the type of soap I want in the bathroom. I want to go to the shop, take the item that does the job I want, and leave. The choice of 50 items is so much easier when you only compare the known items.

So I will be a bit less negative towards advertisement. It helps me spend less time on things that do not matter.