How To Abuse Your Customers 101:AD SLAMMING!

Ad Blasting, covered in our previous lesson, is not typically effective at establishing your domination over your customers. It has too much of a random incompetence factor to make your disrespect for your customers blatantly clear. Thus we move on to a higher and more definitive level of disrespect, Ad Slamming.

Simply defined, Ad Slamming is the presentation of repeating product ads within a single advertising session. The type of media used for the advertisements is irrelevant. However, the most effective Ad Slamming is performed using television or movie theater previews. There are a number of levels of Ad Slamming. Let us start with the least offensive method, working our way to the most offensive of all. The naming of each level of slamming has not been established within the vernacular. I have, however, nominated some naming of my own for your consideration and enjoyment.

The first degree of Ad Slamming involves the advertising of a particular product at non-sequential times within an ad session using dissimilar ads. I call this 'Slap Slamming'. The concept is to keep the victim awake throughout the ad session through the use of suspense and anticipation. The most effective of Slap Slamming ads are used to cap both ends of an ad session. The first part of the two ads is used to tantalize the victim customer such that they want to see the resolving second part of the ad. For example, an automobile company states in part 1 of a slap slam ad that they have lowered interest rates on their car loans to an unprecedented level, but the customer will have to wade through further ads until part 2 is presented as a resolution, providing the awaited low interest rate number. Slap Slamming is perceived as the least offensive of the Ad Slamming options.

The second degree of Ad Slamming again uses dissimilar ads for the same product, but they are abutted one against the other. I call this 'Hammer Slamming.' The most famous of these ads are from the car insurance company Geico. Because these ads are typically written to be humorous, the victim customer does not perceive the inherent disrespect in this type of slamming. If properly written and performed, the victim may even long to see several of these ads in succession, never perceiving how the product is being hammered into their brain again and again.

The third degree of Ad Slamming places the doubled presentation of the exact same advertisement within an ad session at non-consecutive times. Here the percussive effect upon the victim is more severe and blatant. I call this 'Anvil Slamming', similar to having an anvil dropped on the head of a cartoon character. This type of Ad Slamming clearly presents disrespect for the customer, but keeps open the possibility that the doubling of the ad was the result of programmer incompetence. For example, the victim could picture that the programming engineer at the television station accidentally hit an advertising cart button twice, out of succession, by accident. This provides deniability should, for example, ad victims call and rant at the Ad Slamming television station.

The fourth degree of Ad Slamming doubles the exact same ad twice in succession. Due to the extremely high offensiveness of this type of Ad Slamming, I call this 'F*ck Slamming'. It is the equivalent of a mental rape. There is very little chance of deniability with this type of Ad Slamming. Therefore, it must be kept to a minimum and used, if possible, with only the most dim-witted of the target audience. For example, the use of F*ck Slamming during a National Geographic presentation or a romantic film on the Oxygen or Lifetime networks is extremely dangerous, typically resulting in swift and vicious retaliation by the victim. However, F*ck Slamming during a professional wrestling program or any programming on the FoxNews Network is nearly unnoticeable by the relatively dull-witted victim audience. Despite the offensiveness of this type of Ad Slamming, it is considered to be the most effective of all, making the deepest impression of the product into the victim's mind.

Note that there could potentially be higher degrees of Ad Slamming, such as showing the same ad three or more times in succession. However, at this time, this degree of ad slamming is considered offensive even within the advertising community. It is simply not done.

Another cultural limitation upon Ad Slamming is the use of professional quality ads in any but first and second degree slamming. If the advertiser wishes to elevate to third degree Ad Slamming or above, it is required that the ads be poorly produced, as would be created in the locale of the victim. The professional advertising community would most likely severely admonish any advertising firm or television network involved in third degree Ad Slamming or above. For example, a professional car advertisement from Ford Motor Company would never be used in third or fourth degree Ad Slamming. However, third or fourth level Ad Slamming is commonly used from local Ford Motor Company dealerships. The lower the repute of the advertising source the lower the perception of offensiveness of third or fourth degree Ad Slamming. Equally, the greater the use of 'Hard Sell' advertising techniques, the more a victim is willing to accept third or fourth degree Ad Slamming. Hard Selling in and of itself is already considered to be offensive by any living human being. Adding third or fourth degree Ad Slamming on top of the Hard Sell is considered to be almost inevitable by most advertising victims.

Keep in mind that the mark of a true Marketing Moron is customer disrespect. With that goal in mind, use levels of Ad Slamming appropriate to both your product and your target audience.

Class dismissed.

The Angst Theory of Creativity, Applied Examples

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This post is an introduction to a theory about one of my favorite subjects, creativity. It's going to be a bit out of context and clunky. I'm lifting it out of what was essentially a conversation. But I like it as an improvisation on the theme. Let me attempt to set the situation:

Over at MacDailyNews.com this past week we had been jabbering about a bizarro rumor that General Motors is considering Tim Cook of Apple for the position of CEO. (Good luck with that GM. Not gonna happen.) One of the members at MDN had not understood my concept of what should happen to GM before Tim Cook might give the idea a second glance. In a series of three replies I wrote him back what I have posted below. It gives a reasonable applied summary of how I view the capitalist company life cycle as well as how I view governments and similar political organizations. Some graphics, including a couple I tossed together as elaborative efforts, are included. Enjoy!

:-Derek

Jan 03, 10 - 07:49 pm Comment from: derekcurrie

G4Dualie sez to me: "Who do you imagine is the person(s) to bring about this miraculous change to GM before Cook gives that idea a look over?"

I think you need to read what I wrote again please.

Elaboration of my point: GM is a walking corpse.

For over 30 years they outright REFUSED to catch up with the international auto business. AFAIAC they have been in the pocket of Big Oil. Anything to sell more gasoline. That meant essentially:

(1) Buy and Bury all the patents for significantly improving fuel efficiency.

(2) Sell as many gigantic oil guzzling cars as possible via marketing methods and subterfuge injected into the US car culture making smaller, fuel efficient cars seem unAmerican, flimsy and dangerous, despite the fact that the rest of the world uses them with great success.

(3) Act all concerned about becoming modern to the public, solicit ideas, ignore the public, claim to have modernized, sell the SOS to the suckers.

GM killed off innovation motivation inside their own company. If they finally, 30 years too late, figured out how to actually be a modern car company, it would be IMHO a frickin' MIRACLE.

Conclusion:

(A) GM must go bankrupt and break up the company.

(B) Out of the wreckage, an actually innovative entrepreneur could grab up pieces of what USED TO BE GM, and use them as part of a NEW car company. THEN I could see Tim Cook being interested.

New companies are required to be innovation driven. They can start their work culture from scratch. Those that don't fit the positive work culture are not hired. That 'locks out' the self-destructive GM workforce dumdums from sabotaging the new company. Instead they can collect unemployment then go flip burgers for a living.

Do you get the concept now?

Marketing driven companies, such as GM, that have permanently lost the ability to innovate, will die. The sooner the better. Only then can a phoenix rise from the wreckage as a viable, modern company of benefit to the market. This is an ancient cycle, older than human history. You can go back to basic, instinctive concepts of human sharing and understand how this applies. Steve Jobs himself has spoken about how this works, which is one reason he is such a stubborn bastard at Apple when it comes to breaking old molds, smashing the box and boldly going where no one has gone before.


It all fits into what I call 'The Angst Theory of Creativity'. As I put it:

The Muse is not impressed with comfort.


. . .

Jan 03, 10 - 08:06 pm Comment from: derekcurrie

... And no, I have no idea what entrepreneur could make a silk purse out of the sow's ear of the bankrupt, sold off wreckage of GM. You maybe? It could be no one. That happens too.

Happily there is already great competition in the car marketplace. I've owned Toyota and Subaru cars. Love them. My ex loves her Hondas. Sorry they're not American made. Neither is Apple hardware these days. Quality wins in any healthy marketplace. Thankfully all of the above are quality.

And no, I don't consider the computer community to be particularly healthy considering the domination of crapware, such as Microsoft. We are still in The Computer Stone Age. Think of it as a Dark Age where dumbass aristocraps get to tell you what to do, like fall on your sword for the sake of the divine king. Think of Apple as analogous to the USA telling King George to go f*ck himself, establishing a golden age.

Extrapolating into the futurist abstract: Then think of the Neo-Con-Jobs as the marketing morons who infiltrated the company and destroyed its Innovation Incentive, creating a self-destructive work culture of bumbling idiots incessantly undermining each other with lies and bullsh*t, getting nothing of any importance accomplished. Think of the current USA as GM.

Get the picture?

The nexus: Either GM (USA) gets an entrepreneur (innovator) to kick the company (country) into competition/collaboration mode, or the company (country) should go bankrupt ASAP and let something angst driven (creative) replace it.

Such is my Positive Anarchist philosophy.
;-)







. . .

Jan 03, 10 - 08:18 pm Comment from: derekcurrie

... Where I developed and watched my Angst Theory first hand: Eastman Kodak. It's a textbook case.

OK, OK! I'll shutup now.

©2010 Derek Currie
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The Age Of Marketing - Truth Decay

I've been wrestling with myself for months about how to start off the guts of this blog. One subject kept pinning me to the floor: Marketing Abuse. So here goes.

What is marketing? It is an extension of the fundamental human behavior of sharing. Marketing is a sub-game, part of the overall game we call 'business.' It's goal is to sell shared items or services, trading them from the people who have them to those who want or need them. How this is done is a subject of ethical dispute.

I of course focus on the element of what I call 'Truth Decay.' This term came to my attention through T-Bone Burnett, a master musician, composer and recording producer. I've followed his work since 1976. Among other things, he won a Grammy Award for his soundtrack to the film 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?", an adaptation of Homer's Odyssey by the Coen Brothers. Mr. Burnett looks and thinks remarkably like me. I believe he must be one of my long lost big cousins, so to speak. His 1980 solo album was entitled 'Truth Decay', an apt pun for the subject at hand.

We are living in The Age Of Marketing, or The Marketing Era, whichever you prefer. I use the phrases interchangably. The artifice of marketing is centuries old. But it became a subject of urgent study after corporations were erroneously given the status of 'personhood' at the end of the 19th century. This abomination was heralded into existence, I am told, but the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

Odd much? I'll be covering this travesty of truth in a future post. Now that The Age Of Corporate Ascension had begun, so had The Age Of Marketing. One of the pinnacle achievements of this artifice was propaganda. To quote a quote from Wikipedia:

"Propaganda is neutrally defined as a systematic form of purposeful persuasion that attempts to influence the emotions, attitudes, opinions, and actions of specified target audiences for ideological, political or commercial porposes through the controlled transmission of one-sided messages (which may or may not be factual) via mass and direct media channels. A propaganda organization employs propagandists who engage in propagandism—the applied creation and distribution of such forms of persuasion."
—Richard Alan Nelson, A Chronology and Glossary of Propaganda in the United States, 1996

An excellent example of current propaganda today in the USA is the network of pseudo-political pundits in the pseudo-news media. One of the most famous pseudo-conservative political pundits was Jerry Falwell, inventor of the divisive term "The Moral Majority". Taken at face value, this term can vaguely make sense regarding human ethical beliefs. But it was used as nothing more than a political tire iron by a group of pseudo-Christian politicians. Jerry Falwell was one of the most successful propagandists in US history, pulling the wool over indeed the majority of citizens. His political movement culminated in the successful election, twice, of pseudo-conservative George W. Bush, who brought along with him the pseudo-conservative dumdum tank known as the 'Project For The New American Century', aka PNAC, infamously lead by publisher and political analyst William Krystol. The ruination of the concept of 'truth' that followed is only now being realized and understood.

In the future I'll undoubtedly post a diatribe about the history of propaganda, as well as a rant regarding what I call the 'Neo-Con-Job' movement in the USA. Please note that I have no respect for either of the political parties in the USA. If I'm biased, it is toward making sense, and neither party qualifies. It just happens that the tribe, oops I mean party, that has done the most damage recently has been the Repubicans, or Repubicraps as I sarcastically call them, as opposed to the Democrats or Democraps. In the future I will also cover the use of humor and linguistic invention in the pursuit of satire, a form of truth exhumation and zunipus humiliation.

The Age Of Marketing has created a wide variety of concepts. The best of these is the phrase "The customer is always right." This is what marketing should be: A positive service to the customer. Provide to the customer what they need and want. I consider the aberration of convincing or persuading a customer to buy something to be an art of deception, aka zunipus. It brings into the natural human sharing system all the human vices. The business game becomes an act of harming people, of harming truth.

Over time I've been categorizing ways in which bad marketing abuses customers through zunipus. Ahead is a series of short articles describing some of my concepts. I enjoy writing with a sense of irony and satire, and these articles will be no exception. I've been reluctant to post them here because they have an emotional component. They are in response to my sense of repulsion and annoyance with the acts of people I call 'Marketing Morons', those who use abusive marketing, as opposed to 'Marketing Mavens', those who use supportive marketing. Clearing away my rage regarding bad marketing, this entire issue is one of truth decay, or perpetrating zunipus for the purpose of personal gain at the expense of the welfare of others.

Share and Enjoy,

:-Derek
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