Make Marketing History

The views of a marketing deviant.

Friday, June 30, 2006

Problem-less Solutions

Some prospective blogposts grind to a halt. Maybe six weeks ago, upon seeing a minibus emblazoned with the words "Family Solutions", I'd started to write about how that made me wonder what was being implied.

Further tailgating had revealed that the bus belonged to a nursery company offering creche facilities and after-school clubs. I thus started to pontificate about the positive evocations of helping the family and of being part of the family; the negative connotations that associate the word solution with process and profit; and then rightly abandoned the post. Or so I thought.

Then I inevitably heard that hateful, fatuous "Don't bring me problems, bring me solutions" cliche to which I've alluded before and a penny dropped. The nursery's clients would never characterise themselves as problem families, but if your marketing frames them as dynamic, collaborative, problem-solving families, they'll happily buy into that story regardless of the implication. It's a principle that can be applied universally.

The twenty-first century mindset of rush, confusion and neurosis is so ingrained that if you build a solution, the consumer will all too willingly magnify and validate the problem, even if it doesn't actually exist.

3 Comments:

Blogger Pali said...

Nice blog dude :)

3:19 AM, June 30, 2006  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

good topic.
- Julie -

7:38 AM, June 30, 2006  
Blogger kaylen said...

i refer to that as the 'infomercial marketing flip'.

before they introduce the big plastic tube that you put pasta in, add boiling water and dump it out, they show someone struggling, attempting to cook spaghetti the traditional way. noodles fly everywhere, boiling water scalds ten people, and ... it is practically a woody allen drama before a soggy plate of pasta is produced.

we all know pasta is not really that difficult. but seeing someone act out the exaggeration... well it plays on the retrospective exaggeration people are already fond of.

commercials do it more subtly, though. what tickles me is the way they blow dusting out of proportion.

11:53 AM, June 30, 2006  

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