I'm sure there's many doctors, professors and other big fish of the marketing world, who can all justify the fact that marketing uses the language that it does. I'm sure all the rules out there are well researched, have enormous impact on sales figures etc. etc.
I'm only wondering how does it bounce off against a normal, living, flesh and blood creature. I'm thinking - are people really THAT stupid?? Can it be???
But I'm racing to the point before giving you any background.
I've signed up to Irish Opinions quite a while ago, as a way of getting some much needed cash. It's one of the numerous pay-for-your-opinion portals that pays you for answering questions like 'What do you think of this particular brand of cheese?'. Oh, they pay. I must've cashed about 4 Tesco vouchers by now. They pay much less than they promise in their ads, but they DO pay, unlike many other portals out there.
The surveys are mostly boring. Sometimes unbelievably boring, rarely mildly interesting. I'm at the bottom edge of their popularity spectrum because I commit the crime of not watching any TV, but that's just my private little grudge, you don't need to agree with that. The thing, though, I find really, surrealistically, out-of-this-world insane is the sheer absurdity of some questions, which is closely connected to the language marketing uses these days. Let me give you an example:
How exited are you about this particular design of a cheese packaging?
Exited??? About cheese packaging? FFS! Is there anyone there, anyone at all, who gets excited by cheese packaging??? (For the record, I'm making the example up. I was never actually asked about cheese packaging. But I was asked about very similar things, using exactly the same vocabulary).
Just how pitiful your life would have to be for you to get excited about cheese packaging???
The only person whom I can imagine as mildly excited by any product's packaging is the one who actually designed the thing, and only if they really like their job. Which is quite an alien concept to me but what the hell, there are various sorts out there.
It looks like the marketing guys assume that all of us lead that kind of life, because this type of vocabulary crops up again and again in all kinds of marketing activity.
The disturbing detail is this - if it didn't work, would they bother still doing it?
Is the conclusion - yes, it works and we really do go for that kind of bullshit - sound and correct?
If so, I really think we deserve the Armageddon and hope like hell the Doomsayers of 2012 will be proven to be right.
