marketing101

The Second Coming: Nike Basketball

2007-01-23T13:40:00.000-08:00

I was watching television last night and I saw probably the coolest commercial that I have ever seen in my life. This is the newest nike basketball commercial. I am kind of a sucker for cliche cinematic elements like the white suits, the dramatic walk with a green-screen background. And let's not mention that the background song is amazing. It is Juelz Santana rapping over a Just Blaze beat. It's Probably one of the sickest beats I've ever heard.

Maturity kind of sucks

2006-12-27T11:49:00.000-08:00

I am 23. I am going to be graduating college after this semester. You would think that I would have matured a little bit. But you would be wrong. This is a comprehensive list of things that are still cool to me at age 23 that probably shouldn’t be.

1. Swear words…Yes, I know that apparently it shows a lack of intelligence and vocabulary, but I consider myself to have a pretty good grasp on the English Language, and there is nothing as funny as a well timed “F” bomb.
2. Filling out “YES, please” on applications where it asks me my sex.
3. Jokes that talk about poop or farts
Wikipedia: Flatulence Humor

4. lighting farts on fire
Wikipedia: Fart Lighting

5. Little Indian children/midgets that pop and lock AND smoke…how cool is that.

6. Anything where people get hit in the balls

Multilevel Marketing Blows

2006-10-18T21:01:00.000-07:00

Amway, Quickstar, Herbal Life, and a host of other great American institutions have one thing in common. What is that? They are all well-devised schemes to steal money from stupid people. Under that premise, nobody can say that there is a victim in such schemes. If people are dumb enough to fall for somebody’s “exciting business opportunity” pitch, then by all means, they didn’t deserve to have their money in the first place. Likewise, the proprietors of such pyramid schemes are just taking advantage of one of the fundamental principles of business, and how can they be held accountable for that?

That principle is as follows: The more stupid people that you have generating revenue for you, the more money you can make. Usually, you get people to generate revenue for you by performing some sort of viable business good or service like washing dishes, selling video games, or spraying for insects. However, legitimate business ideas take some hard work determining what consumers actually want and finding a way to give it to them in such a way that your revenues exceed your costs. But what if you could just get people to pay you money for no apparent reason? That would be perfect. That is where multilevel marketing comes into play. You can create some B.S. product or service, and then have people pay you for the right to tap into their marketing network and sell your B.S. product. The problem is that no matter how dumb people are, sooner or later they figure out that the product you are selling sucks so hard that they will never be profitable by selling it.

Here comes the problem and the solution to multilevel marketing. Once the people at the base of the pyramid get tricked by the people at the top, it is as if the people at the top say, “Ha ha, we tricked you sucker. But don’t stop paying us money just because our product sucks. We make $5000 a week from the comfort of our own home just by tricking stupid people like you into buying into our organization. And being as how there are plenty of stupid people in the world you could totally trick someone else into paying you to be a part of the organization, and you, too can make $(insert some ridiculously stupid amount of money that gives people false hope) from the comfort of your own home.”

So what exactly are multilevel marketing firms selling? They are selling the right to trick people into paying them money for no apparent reason, so that they can trick people into paying them money and so on and so on. This really is a beautiful scheme because it plays on a few great economic principles.
1. In our modern society, people are rewarded for stupidity, therefore, there is an excess in the supply of stupid people
2. The economic assumptions of having too many stupid people are as follows:
• They are unaware of the fact that in order to get money, you must provide an equally valuable good or service to people. In other words, the market will always pay you what you are worth and any attempt to make any more is pretty much futile.
• When stupid people fall for schemes which are contrary to the above statement, they are not smart enough to cut their losses and run. Instead, they will keep trying harder to contradict the laws of economics to break even on their dumb decisions.
3. When there is an excess of stupid people in the market, there must be organizations constructed with the sole purpose of separating these stupid people from any and all money that they may come across.

When you look at this economic model you can’t necessarily be angry with multilevel marketing companies. They have a role to play in the American economy. If they didn’t exist then the revenue they generate would just fall into the hands of NASCAR, Wal-Mart, and any local barber shops that specialize in mullets, rat-tails, and shaving lines into the side of people’s heads. So if multilevel marketing means I have to pick between more mullet-having dudes racing off to Wal-Mart to buy Dale Earnheardt Jr. Decals for their El Camino or a couple more rich guys who have made their money by exploiting stupid people, then I welcome more multilevel marketing.

Ultimately, you shouldn’t get angry that multilevel marketing exists. You should only be angry if somebody thinks you are dumb enough jump into the bottom level of a pyramid scheme. And if you are a multilevel marketer here are a few pieces of advice.

1. Just because you are dumb enough to get on the bottom of the pyramid scheme does not mean that I am willing to join you.
2. If you really want to convince me that your business proposition is a good idea, then you should probably move out from your parents’ house or buy a nicer car than your 1989 Honda Civic hatchback.
3. You aren’t fooling anyone, I can see the financial desperation in your eyes.

Bitter BYU Students

2006-12-12T14:56:00.000-08:00

Check out this site, it's a new and exciting blog from my friend Josh. He's kind of a jerk and he sucks at drawing. But those qualities combined make for one very funny web comic.

Check out the site.

http://bitterbyustudents.blogspot.com

Myspace: How to get on the national registry of convicted Sex offenders

2006-10-25T15:19:00.000-07:00

Internet marketing is huge. I think one of the newest advances in internet marketing is the advance in social networking sites. These things are going crazy. Myspace was sold last year for somewhere around $600 million, and Yahoo is now flirting around with buying Facebook for somewhere around $1 billion. This is absolutely nuts. I am a little bit behind the times, but I do have a Facebook account. I am not the most active Facebooker, but I think I am becoming a bigger fan. Myspace, however, is a whole different story.

I have been thinking a lot about different slogans that could be used for Myspace. Here are a few that I have been working with:
• Myspace: The biggest place for wierdos on the web
• Myspace: The easiest way to get on the national registry of convicted sex offenders.
• Myspace: Thousands of crappy bands that are bent on shameless self promotion.
• Myspace: The largest online catalogue of creepy dudes and girls who think they can pull off trashy clothing.
• Myspace: forcing people to call into question the sexual orientation many shirtless morons.

I got these slogans from some of the trends that I am noticing with Myspace.
Desperate Men go onto Myspace to meet attractive new girls. This is evident by the number of dudes who get their best guy friend to take shirtless pictures of them so that they can post it on the web. Mix this with the fact that the average girl with anything going for her does not want to meet new people on Myspace. In order to fill the rift between the desperate men who want to meet people on Myspace, and the women who do not want to “hook up” with guys on Myspace, unappealing girls and the dudes who seek to exploit them fill up myspace with trashy profile content seeking to drive traffic to their “adult-oriented” sites. Myspace does not have effective ways to control who they let on their site, thus shaking the confidence of anyone who would want to meet legitimate people on their social networking site. As a result, Myspace is turning from a social networking site to a gathering point for the undercurrent of society, and marketers for any product with any sort of brand equity do not want to associate themselves with such content. Therefore, I am predicting that the “Myspace bubble” will shortly burst.

So, what are the lessons we learn from the whole situation.
1. If you are a guy, the best way to meet new women is to walk up a girl and say hello, not send her a friend request.
2. If you do meet a new girl on the internet, chances are she just wants you to go to her adult webcam site
3. Social networking sites may be a great way to keep in contact with friends that you otherwise would lose contact with, but If you think you will change your social status with online buddies, you will be greatly disappointed. This is because most of the people that want to meet you online just want to sell you something.
4. Myspace needs to find a way to filter its content or it will end up being one of the biggest busts in internet history.

Your Favorite News Station is Biased

2006-12-13T13:02:00.000-08:00

Newsflash: CNN and Foxnews are biased.

I have a great friend who is a diehard liberal and he hates FOX News. My mom and dad are die hard conservative and they hate CNN. They each think that their favorite 24 hour news network is by far the most fair and unbiased news network on television.
Every time I talk to my mom about politics I hear little bits of Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly mingled in with rational thought. Every time I talk to my friend Kyle I get little bits of Lou Dobbs and Wolf Blitzer mingled with hippie rhetoric. All things considered, I think that it is funny how much people are swayed by media biases. Each side bitterly accuses the other of being so biased and uninformed, but has it ever occurred to anyone that both liberals and conservatives may both be a little uninformed? And if they are informed, heaven forbid anyone ever admit that there is even a little bit of bias in their primary sources of information. I am not siding with either one, I watch both FOX News and CNN. However, I am not going to lie, most of the time I spend my time watching MTV reality shows. I find that the only secret agenda that MTV has is to make me want to buy American Eagle clothes and listen to Lil’ Bow Wow songs.
Sure, there was that whole, VOTE OR DIE campaign that Diddy had during the last presidential election, but that was pretty much harmless. Sure, it was essentially the VOTE (for John Kerry) OR DIE campaign, and I did get a little annoyed by celebrities with GED’s spouting out uninformed political rhetoric, but everyone knows that young people don’t vote. In the end we found that it had little impact on the election, much less than Bill O’Reilly had with all of the neo-cons that voted W back in office. Hell, even half of the celebrities that wore those shirts and appeared in the commercials didn’t even vote, how are we going to expect the kids like me who can only take “news” in five minute chunks between music videos to go out in any sort of significant numbers to vote.
Needless to say, all news is biased, I don’t care what you say there is always biased information floating around. So if you get your news from one source and if you just take it at face value, then you should probably re-evaluate how “informed” you are and just give up and start watching MTV reality shows. And if anyone wants to join me, I watch the Real World/Road Rules Challenge on MTV every Thursday night, you are welcome to join me.

Toothpaste for dinner.com

2006-12-12T15:12:00.000-08:00

This site is toothpaste for dinner. It is very funny and it is the site that Josh stole his idea from. As a matter of fact, Josh's site should probably be called toothpasteforbitterbyustudents.com Anyway, it is one of my favorites, you should Check out the link:
www.toothpastefordinner.com

Opera Sucks

2006-11-02T10:50:00.001-08:00

I went to the opera Die Fledermaus this weekend and it kind of sucked. Don’t get me wrong. I am not one of those insecure men who claims to hate art because the arts challenge their masculinity or something. There some things that could be considered to be fine art that I really enjoy, but my decision of whether or not I enjoy anything is purely based on merit. Therefore, let me say once more that the opera sucks. The performers were great, the time and effort that they put into it was considerable and commendable; however, the actual opera itself sucked pretty hard. Here is why:

1. The plot line was absolutely stupid. Let me sum it up. 3 years previously, rich German guy #1 gets rich German guy #2 drunk while he is wearing a bat costume and leaves him passed out in the middle of town square. Rich guy #2 is apparently one of the most vindictive men in the world because his revenge includes throwing rich German guy #1 in prison and getting both him and his wife to be unfaithful to each other. Wow! That is hilarious! But here are my major questions. Did rich German guy #2 ever consider that it was kind of his fault that he got silly drunk while dressed up like a bat? I don’t know much about drinking, but I think that standard etiquette is that any time you get piss drunk while wearing a funny costume, anything that anyone does to you is pretty much fair game. Secondly, why would anyone ever think this is funny?

2. Let me just say, male ballet dancers in tights. Good lord, why do male ballet dancers have to wear such revealing tights. Yes, we live in a brutal double standard. If a girl wears the same pants it is hot, but once a dude puts on tights I throw up a little. Male ballet dancers might as well just walk around naked with puffy shirts, because that’s pretty much what they do anyway, they might as well not wear the tights and save a little money.

3. The thing was like 5 hours long. Did anyone ever tell the dude that wrote the opera that I expect all entertainment to last 90 minutes, and anything lasting any longer needs to star Mel Gibson, Bruce Willis, or Chuck Norris; have at least 3 car chases, explosions, swordfights, and/or a combination of the three; and have the words blood, sport, brave, heart, highlander, rocky, gladiator, and some ridiculous combination of roman numerals after it.

Halloween = homeless kids

2006-10-31T15:53:00.001-08:00

Crappy Halloween Give-away ideas:

The other day I was sitting around and thinking of the absolute absurdity of Halloween. Think about it for a second. A bunch of little kids dress up in cheap plastic outfits and expect me to give them free candy. Well, guess what kids, nothing is ever free. Life does not reward people who dress funny and go around begging people for handouts. 364 days out of the year we call that being homeless. This has to stop. That’s why I think that everyone should discourage such detrimental behavior by giving children negative rewards for going trick-or-treating.

Dentists and old women have had the right idea for years by giving out dental hygiene products and pennies. Even though if you were a business minded dentist you would give away the best, most sugar-filled candy you could find with your business card attached to it. I could be wrong, but dentists who hand out dental hygiene items are either really dumb or ultimate masters of the art of no-fun because they are destroying children’s fun and ruining their business in the process. And what’s the deal with old people handing out pennies. That’s nothing but pure economic mockery. That’s telling people that you would rather throw away money on the world’s most useless piece of currency rather than buy them something decent.

Even though people have been giving out horrible Halloween candy/treats for years what I am calling for is more than just inadvertent fun-stoppage. I am talking about cool, calculated meanness. I am advocating giving children an impetus for stopping this foolish tradition. So anyway, here are some ideas. Let me know if you can think of anything better.

1. Pennies
2. Dental Hygiene Products
3. Kevin Federline cd’s
4. Pictures of Britney Spears post Kevin Federline (that would scare me out of trick or treating)
5. Take them into your home and make them sing a song to get their treat, then give them some lame piece of candy like salt-water taffy or candy corns and tell them you would have given them better candy if they would have been a little more talented.
6. Give them religious tracts…it’s been scientifically proven that kids lose interest in holidays once they are attached to church in any way.
7. Spider rings…who invented those and why do they suck so much
8. Wax lips…when I was a kid I spent a lot of time wondering how anyone could give away such horrible tasting candy.
9. Carry a bowl of 1 lb. Hershey’s candy bars and have chocolate all over your face and then come to the door and lecture them about how they are a little to old (regardless of their age) to be out trick or treating. Then tell them they should be ashamed of themselves and walk back into your house.

So yeah, that’s all I got for now. Merry Halloween.

BYU Dating

2006-10-12T22:58:00.000-07:00

Sometimes people like to refer to Provo as the “BYU bubble”. I don’t understand it. Provo is normal, right? Provo is full of college students that are pretty much the same as college students everywhere, isn’t it? Well, that’s what I thought until I saw this blog posting.

Let me preface this link. It is to a link written by an actual BYU student about an actual BYU romance. This account is not fabricated at all; I personally know these people and they are 100% serious. I will warn you that the account is a little long and there is a good possibility that you might throw up a little in your mouth. But this is also one of the funniest things that I have ever read and it is well worth your time to click on the link and check it out.

Have fun and enjoy.

www.markandamarisfletcher.blogspot.com

P.S. I don't feel bad about making light of an otherwise serious situation. I figure that if you post stuff like this in a public forum it is fair game.

What is Marketing

2006-09-21T17:24:00.000-07:00

What is marketing? I am studying it and I am not sure what it really is. A lot of people try to tell me that marketing is just manipulating the general public into buying stuff they don’t need. That is 100% true, but people need to stop making it out to be such a villainous thing. I have a close friend who tried to tell me that I was a bad person for studying marketing. He told me that marketers made people buy stuff they didn’t need and couldn’t afford and that they were the cause of the rampant plagues of commercialism and consumer debt.

Despite my friend’s claim, pretty much everything that a person buys is something they don’t need. As long as I am not walking around naked and I have a little food in my belly, I will undoubtedly blow money on things that nobody should ever claim to “need”. In fact, if it came down to it, I might even sacrifice clothing myself if there was a good enough deal on Steven Segal flavored energy drinks, that’s just how I choose to divide up the slices of my economic pie.

To understand marketing further let us examine the fundamental laws of economics which state that if I have a supply of money I will demand to spend it. What I spend it on depends completely on my personal tastes and preferences. My individual tastes and preferences are as follows: priority one, that which is absolutely essential to survival; priority two, that which is utterly absurd and ridiculous. The sad and glorious truth of marketing is that my tastes and preferences are strikingly similar to everyone else’s tastes and preferences. Why is that? Not because marketers told me so. Please, give me more credit than that. I am not a pawn of Madison Avenue. Rather, my tastes and preferences are instinctual, and have been since the dawn of time.

Back when we were cave men I have no doubts that as soon as the hunting and gathering was done men chose to spend their time collecting useless shiny things, staring mindlessly at cave paintings of beautiful stick women, and scratching themselves. Women fell for this trick because they felt that in order for a man to be able to spend so much time staring at cave paintings he had to be a great hunter/gatherer. And if that was the case, they wanted in, and they wanted to pass those skills on to their children. That’s why men spend so much time trying to get shiny things and why women spend so much time trying to look like the stick figures on cave walls. If men weren’t so busy uselessly spending their time and money it wouldn’t have taken us so long to come up with important societal advances such as plasma screen TV’s and titanium anything. My sneaking suspicion is that these advances came only after women stopped falling for the original “cave paintings and shiny objects” trick and demanded newer and better useless stuff to command their attention.

Therefore, it is evident that saving money or putting it towards constructive purposes is just plain idiocy. I need to buy stuff because if I don’t I will look like a little nerd who cannot provide for a family, and as a result I will never ever get any girls. I know I may sound like a genius for figuring this all out, but it’s nothing more than science, common sense and shiny stuff.
So yeah, of course I will spend $100 dollars on jeans that are more worn out than the $20 dollar pair I could buy at Wal-Mart. You better believe I will buy a Ronco food dehydrator for 7 easy payments of $99.99 because making my own jerky sounds like an amazing idea. And good Lord, you know I will buy a Steven Segal Energy drink for $2.99 when water is free and is probably much healthier for me. Why? Because these things make me look tough, they impress women, and all of them are a whole heck of a lot cooler than saving my money, giving it to charities, or putting it towards any asset of any kind that appreciates in value.

Is it some marketer’s fault that I choose to spend my money this way? No. It is the fault of cavemen who were so good at hunting and gathering that they had plenty of time to spend their resources to buy shiny things that impressed cave-women. Secondly, it was the fault of those cave-women who fell for the “shiny object” trick and in turn perpetuated the world’s problems by passing their genes on to me. I can’t fight nature, and neither can the world’s most heartless marketer. It’s just the way things are. Marketers don’t create demand, cavemen create demand, and there is nothing you can do about that buddy.

When you look at marketing from that standpoint, you come to understand that marketers are not trying to force you to buy anything that you wouldn’t buy in the first place; however, they are just trying to get you to buy more useless junk from them than from some other dude who is also trying to get you to buy completely useless junk.