Intro to Marketing 102

                    Segment Occupation

One thing that marketing has done for all of us

is to provide us with numerous homes, like it or not,

places where we feel comfortable and secure,

called Market Segments.

In regard to wine, for instance,

I occupy the price-sensitive segment of the market.

Fair enough.

This makes me neither proud nor ashamed, just comfortable;

together they and I have pigeonholed me

right where I rightfully belong.

When it comes to orange juice, however,

my market segmentation is somewhat more nuanced.

I was, for instance, in the supermarket one warm day,

and, since I didn’t have a car and had to walk

for twenty minutes to get home

carrying a heavy backpack

(after all, it contained, amongst other things,

four bottles of price-sensitive wine),

I decided to buy a small,

drink-it-down-in-two-swallows bottle of juice.

I went to the open fridge where they display such things

and grabbed a little plastic bottle of orange juice.

Then I noticed that the marketers had prominently crowed,

right there on the label, that the juice was ‘Gluten Free’.

Orange juice!

Shit.

Not one orange on this whole orange-shaped Earth

has ever had one whisker of any whole-grain protein.

I put it back and chose another brand.

I didn’t think I’d feel comfortable

occupying the fuckwit segment of the market.

              Who DO They Appeal To?

It matters not one jot nor tittle

to the meatballs who produce and broadcast them

that the repugnant Jeep commercials

on the now-defunct sport channel,

with their representations of vomitously smug Jeep buyers

and model names redolent of American jingoism,

disgusted me to the point of wanting to smash something,

because, hell, I’m not in the market

for any new car at all, anyway.

                Demand and Supply

The amount I buy in supermarkets

and other places that sell food and groceries

is so small – except for wine –

that it must make but a negligible impact

on the demand for the items involved.

This means that the management decisions

in regard to whether to stock those items

result from other people supplying

the demand for them,

putting my tastes at others’

collective mercy.

I’m grateful for some of the odd things that they buy,

and resigned when odd things I like

disappear from the shelves.

                     Market Value & Value

My house’s market value has fluctuated

down and then up

within a span of about a hundred thousand dollars

in the ten-plus years since I bought it.

No matter how many dollars

the market has quoted as its value,

its value to me has remained about the same

in regard to being a warm, dry, comfortable, and convenient

place to live.

Well, yeah.

Economics is, after all, just a pretend science.

The price of a tree has no relation to its value, either.

Obviously.

                    Demographics

One of the many aspects of marketing

that frosts my arse

is demographics,

as if my age, income, educational attainment,

employment status, ethnicity, place of residence,

whether I own or rent it,

and so on

defines who I am

and pigeon-holes me

as indistinguishable

from others in those categories,

or can even predict what brand of beer I’m gonna buy.

It’s similarly hideous

to an Israeli academic named Zaki,

who somebody at the uni

(people who know the U of Waikato

politics department know who this was),

threw me at 25 years ago,

and who was truly

one of the most irritating assholes I’ve ever known.

Zaki told me,

with his arrogantly self-assured Israeli attitude,

that just by knowing my surname

he knew everything about me.

I was, apparently,

one of a particular kind of Jew,

all of whom are alike.

Interchangeable.

Don’t get me started on astrology.

  Global Capitalism and My Shoe Problem

Being poor,

I have a problem with shoes,

because due to the nature of the global economy,

and the way that the egocentric,

type-A greedheads run things,

and of course the unfortunate nature

of my childhood and adolescence,

the only ones that I can afford

are the cheapo sweatshop products

that fall apart,

with remarkable rapidity.

I do an awful lot of walking, but still ..

The soles of a pair that I’d had

for less than three months disintegrated

just before I composed this,

even though their uppers still looked new.

The only shoes that I have as I compose this,

being unable to afford new ones,

are some old leather sandals,

and a pair of dress shoes

that I bought in 1989.

Both were actually

made in New Zealand.

I’ve had to get both

re-soled once.

That’s one reason why

New Zealand lost its shoe industry, I guess:

people didn’t have

to replace Kiwi-made shoes

often enough,

thereby reducing sales.

                   Educational Branding

The flow of the conversation

led Martin to say something dismissive

about Waldorf-Steiner schools.

Geoff, who prides himself on his erudition,

opined as to how he couldn’t see how any parent

could take Steiner schools seriously,

and launched into an explication of their history.

He was just getting to

Steiner’s involvement with Madame Blavatsky

when I interjected that it seemed to me

that most of the parents involved

are just buying a brand,

and don’t give a shit about this historical stuff,

any more than they’d research Ronald McDonald’s biography

before treating their sprogs to a burger at Macca’s. 

Privately Mocking Commercial Symbolism

Years ago,

when I sometimes used to watch

television other than sport,

I would always wonder,

during those commercials

for coffee or other hot beverages,

whether those actors

playing mothers in their thirties

who always held their cups or mugs

in both hands

did so because they had the shakes

from the previous evening’s piss-up.