Marketing WACCed!

I've attended lectures (that’s what I precisely do!)…more enticing ones and a plethora of, uh, well, more lackluster ones. But none have been able to attack my writer’s block or say lazy blogger’s block. Today’s Written Analysis & Communication Course (WACC) lecture, though, was somehow successful in converting my ponderings into a systematic blog post!

The professor quoted an ad. The one in which a little girl of about six is upset because of her ostensibly plain looks and is unable to garner her classmates’ attention. In comes Daddy Dearest and swishes her to school, in a swanky car. All her previously indifferent classmates come wagging along! Our Marketing professors would have gone gaga as to how the ad-maker had successfully adopted the Elaboration Likelihood Model by aiming at the targeted segment of customers through the direct as well as the peripheral/emotional route by tugging at their heartstrings and evoking mushy-mushy paternal feelings! What kind of a stone-heart would ignore a little girl’s puppy eyes? What kind of a father would be oblivious to his darling daughter’s little social dilemma? The ad had perfectly segmented the car buyers’ market, targeted the desired ‘my-daddy-strongest’ group (Another ad jargon! And people think only sugar daddies are in vogue!) and positioned itself in the family man’s heart. A perfect recipe dished straight out of the hallowed bibles of Kotler & Al Ries.

But our lady in command is hardly a marketer’s muse. She knew too much about neuromarketing and psychology to be fooled thus! She strongly reviled the entire context and trashed the concept itself. She literally (communications class, man!) tore the ad into shreds by stating its subtext to not only be male chauvinist by pushing a little girl to be a male-attention seeker and shallow enough to equate looks with beauty; but also sweared that the depiction belittled the male gender for being hollow enough to fall for pulchritude and shows of riches! She went on passionately about how it purports into creating a socio-cultural scenario wherein girls grow up to realise that the only aim of their lives is to attract the male attention and that the only way to achieving that is through made-up looks or daddy’s money! The ad maker should turn in his sleep out of the guilt of compromising on his ethics and fuelling a social evil! Many a feminist would give away her left hand to tune in to her vehement censure of fairness cream ads promising an ugly duckling to swan transformation of not only the skin (authenticity of such claims being quite questionable in itself!), but also of the girl’s career, love and social lives!

Actually the aftermath awaits! The lure of Class Participation has caused disparate and desperate discussions over the same cases (Nirma, Starbucks, Walmart et al) across classes from Marketing to Strategy to HR! Who knows, this ad might earn someone a few more (D)CP points on some D-day!