Thursday 22 January 2009

RUTH. The Chav.



We began this lesson with an experiment where we had to group a page of shapes of a variety of colours, numbers and shapes into as many groups as was possible. It was amazing how many ways there was of doing this, for example, blue stars, stars, blue shapes would just be 3 ways for one shape. The possibilities were endless. This, was segmentation. When one considers the absolute immense number of citizens in the United Kingdom alone, the possibilities of segmentation are VAST. We discussed profiling in questionnaires and how profiler questions, such as age, newspaper read, ethnic group, gender were there to simply look at new ways of segmenting the population and ways of targeting them as a business.




The model of buyer behaviour by Kotler shows perception is a psychological influence on the consumer. Everything is based on perception. That is the beauty of human nature, the fact that everything we see will not be seen the same by anyone else in the world. It is an individual and personal concept and for marketers to try and target this, they must begin to understand the many populatory groups. Years ago, products served a purpose, for example the original car, it was £500, came on one colour and drove from a to b. People were satisfied with this as it satisfied their needs. There was a market monopoly and people thought nothing of not having a choice, it was only the privileged that had a car in the first place. Nowadays, cars are bought for certain purposes, such as racing cars, dune bashing and mountaineering.




A type of marketing which uses this concept is STP marketing. In this, the company looks at Segmenting, Targeting and Positioning. See diagram above.


Segmentation can also be known as cluster analysis. The term cluster analysis (primarily used by Tryon, 1939) encompasses a number of different algorithms and methods for grouping objects of similar kind into respective categories.


So why do we bother to segment? Segmentation is a personalised approach which induces the possibility of a consumer purchasing the product that they supposedly 'need'. It's very effective which is why companies have such a large marketing budget. They reap the benefits at the end. There is a criteria of segmentation (there's no point in doing it if it doesn't work!) it is that it needs to be effective, identifiable, profitable, accessible and actionable.


You're probably wondering how I came to the conclusion that Ruth is a Chav? Well after being produced with receipts and being told to create a word picture out of them, my group was given a long receipt with ready meals, chocolates and a lot of convenience style goods. We decided this was because it was a chav mother with millions of children living on the dole. Apparently we were wrong. It was Ruth's!! So now we know how you perceive something can be be completely and utterly wrong... or was it?!!! x


Why Women Are Superior to Men

This week we tackled gender differences in advertising. There’s no need to mention the fact that females are superior to males on many levels. We can just leave that unsaid! It may seem an obvious thing that males and females are targeted in different ways, but after this lesson, the differences are so much more in-depth than I originally thought. Men really are more basic than women! And now we can prove it!! We began the lesson discussing how to impress the separate genders and women are far pickier when it comes to absolutely everything it seems. After consulting the male members of the group, they seemed to agree that it doesn’t take very much to impress a man. Men! Apparently if one shows up naked with food, it satisfies a man’s real needs (or desires?!)

As already well acknowledged, advertising campaigns have to primarily choose their target audience, specifically the gender of the T.A. They must target one specific gender as different things trigger different reactions in males and females. For example, the conservative party, previously using a supposedly phallic representative symbol attained the help of an all female agency in the designing of their new icon. It is now a tree, representing growth and development. This action was taken as advisors suggested they ruled out the vote of women with their male orientated party.

We then progressed the targeting of specific genders with charity advertising. We watched a number of adverts for well known charities and wrote down our feelings about them, the techniques they used and whether or not we would consider donating. The most effective one by far was the cancer research UK advert where numerous social groups were targeted. It very cleverly targeted males as one man and a boy were featured saying they shouldn’t be there, as in they should have died from cancer but were saved by the research conducted by the charity. They used a black boy, white man, blonde and brunette woman and the elderly. Possibly as tokenism but also as a direct link to those watching. There are very few people who could watch that advert without having some kind of relation and tie to it. The last girl featured, a blonde girl in a wedding dress was the only one out of the interviewees who had actually lost someone to cancer, and the rest were positive outcomes. This leaves the audience on a ‘downer’. They would be far more inclined to send money when they feel upset than happy. According to both the males and females in the lecture, this girl was by far the most effective in the advert. She states ‘my mum should be here’, everyone has a mother and this statement would upset the majority of people. This cleverly targets both genders.

The reason behind these different approaches is due to the different types of thinking conducted by the genders. Males use a different part of their brains than women. Fact. This explains why each sex never understands the others behaviour! The side used by males likes simplicity and a more ‘black and white’ approach to thinking. Women are ‘airy fairy’ and notice details which the men do not. For example, the photograph we were shown in the slide show was that of a room with a circular ceiling, painting in the middle, two book cases, two flags, a table a desk a chair, and a very detailed green patterned wall. These were the sorts of details remembered by the women in the experiment. The men remembered things such as a room and books. It was recommended to us that we should take a ‘which sided brain are you?’ quiz by Ruth (our lecturer). One would presume all females had a right sided result and all males had a left sided result but this was challenged with a few members of the class. I, for example, had an ‘equal brained’ result. The conclusion from the test stated that I could reason simply, like a man and plan ahead, but also remembered and paid attention to the details, like a female. I was also quite altruistic and cared deeply for others. I was originally quite offended by the result! But after reading a pure female response, i’m glad my brain doesn’t have to do all the processing that some women have to do! In fact I might use that as an excuse for missing my mum’s birthday....

The type of charity advertising that appealed to men was factual newsletter, such as war veteran charities. This is because they lay out the information in an organised manner, like a newsletter; the one we looked at, was informative, lacked any colour or details and was most definitely targeted at a male audience. It was so much so that I lost concentration in the first paragraph. With other forms of advertising, men like humour much more so than women. Women like to reminisce and day dream about, love, children, fields and the seaside. Men are switched off within seconds of an advert like this starting. For example, the Marks and Spencer advert with twiggy and Myleene Klass having a picnic, appealed to women of all ages and gave an immediate association of Marks and Spencer’s with happiness, friends and fun. Men would not care. The kind of advert that would engage a man would be one such as the Budweiser ‘wazzzzup’ advert. It was painfully corny to women but became a massive hit with men and a real catch phrase. Comedy’s such as little Britain who are completely focused on catch phrasing target men immediately. Now we wouldn’t want to cloud their little brains with too many words now would we? So for all the women out there, I think it’s marvellous you are taking the time out to read my blog, I thank you with my whole heart and hope you continue to do so... etc... For all the men... LATERS.

Mirror Mirror On The Wall

This week we looked at what marketers focus on, personality or self concept. Two key theorists, Mead (1934) and Goffman (1959) argue that self concept is based on experience, this is most definitely true. If we were to look at adults of my parent’s age, we see that it is less important what their self concept is, as they are far too busy in their social roles, as stated by Goffman (1959). Mead (1934) argues that self-concept is formed directly from social experience which is partially true in my opinion but I agree slightly more with Goffman (1959) who believed that self concept was the playing of social roles. (E.g. daughter, wife, mother, employee, manager) which add facets to our view of ourselves. There is of course, a fine line separating personality and self concept in most people’s opinions: ‘people are what they see themselves as’ (Bjorn 1989.) I definitely have to question this opinion. There is, as we see in Maslow’s theories, a seeming aspirational tendency in people and a misconstrued opinion of self. For example, when I was shopping last week, there was a girl having her makeup applied at a stand. She was of average height, brown hair and brown eyes and, in MY opinion, very average looking. She was telling the makeup artist she realised how beautiful she was and wanted to model professionally. This is a prime example of a correlated personality, truth and self concept. The girl obviously believed she was beautiful and was confident enough to display it. This is not the average teenage girl. The majority, even if stunning, have decided they are too fat, their hair is not long enough, not short enough or too dry, they are too white, too tanned, want curly hair or want straight hair. Why is this such a great thing for marketers? Well they take a product, such as conditioner and tell the girl she needs to use the product and then she can improve herself. This is of course, ridiculous. It is a known strategy in marketing principles that it is far easier to sell a product which plays on insecurities and offers an escape from this terrible problem. It is also obvious that with the girl I saw in the centre, no product could directly target consumers such as this girl; she does not aspire to be anyone but herself which shows herself concept to be a strong, positive one. When dove conducted their infamous self conceptual beauty campaign, they questioned thousand of girls on their self percept. Only five percent believed themselves to be beautiful. That is ridiculous. It is only in this world of celebrity obsession, CGI and extensive airbrushing that we have seen in immense increase in beauty product sales and eating disorders. What a shame. Why is it that this is so great for marketers? Well they can take the average girl and help her to aspire to be an unachievable image of perfection, they help to reduce the positivity of herself concept and knock her confidence and then help to boost her morale by selling her this amazing product. Does the product do the job? Obviously not, because if it did, we would all be walking around with perfect hair, teeth, clothes, bodies. Which we don’t. So how it is that sales are maintained, and even increasing? Because the targeted consumers do not think on this level, as argued in sales and decision theories. They buy for the rush following purchase. This will be a cycle and continually happen as long as there are insecure, young girls around.