Craptacular, Craptacular!

The wicked witch of Halloween’s corpse had hardly shed a degree of body temperature before stores started hawking Christmas goodies this year, much to my chagrin. I know Christmas is the season where retailers really make their money for the year, but the way things are going these days, I’m expecting next year’s Christmas hysteria will start in June. What’s worse, consumer product manufacturers are really struggling to identify new markets for consumers and coming up with some truly crap gift ideas.

For example, consider this value proposition: it’s Christmas and you’re away from home, working hard at a customer site. Why not bring a little Christmas cheer into your life with a USB LED Christmas light? Are they insane? I swear, it’s like consumers are desperate to burn their money: “Sure, yearly savings as a percentage of post-tax earnings are in negative territory in the US, but I gots ta get me a glowing fake Christmas tree to plug into my computer!”

Even worse are the gifts people buy other people. I swear, a significant portion of Earth’s natural resources are sitting in a closet somewhere just because someone felt they needed to buy a Remington Shaver for that hairy relative they don’t really like. At the bottom of the barrel-of-consumer-shame is those products that aren’t actually designed to be used. You know the gifts I’m talking about, those gag gifts where the majority of the product’s value is the gag of giving them to someone.

Example: Does anyone really need a Dead Bug Funeral Kit? How about a Hipster Handbook? I mean, if the bug is dead, a dignified burial isn’t going to change anything; and if you’re a hipster, why would you need a manual? Unless, of course, you’re actually trying to be a hipster, in which case you need more than a book to help you.

The moral of this Christmas story is simple: stop shopping big and start thinking big.

Not a Target Market

There’s been a lot of discussion in my MBA Marketing course about how to manipulate…er…I mean “serve” consumers’ needs. It’s kind of interesting, but I’m not sure I believe in the theories being discussed. For example, one of the tenets of marketing is that a high price can be used to create the impression that a product is luxurious or of superior quality. Maybe it’s just the Scot in me, but from my point of view the fact that something costs more only implies to me that I’ll have less money left over when I buy it, nothing more.

Walking around downtown today, I started trying to put what I’d learned into action. Who, exactly, was the target market for that $200 pair of Nikes? And what was it about that product that would make anyone pay that amount of money? What need did that store on Robson, the one that sells only magnets, fill for a consumer? When I couldn’t figure it out, my wife pointed out that I wasn’t the target market, hence I couldn’t easily understand the motivation for the target market’s need for the product in question. And then I realized something.

I am no one’s target market.

That’s pretty weird. This has got to seriously piss off the marketing people. After all, I’m a 25 to 35 year old professional! I’m supposed to be a prime candidate for buying clothing, music, car, home stereo and other assorted bric-a-brac. Nothing could be further from the truth.

It’s not that I don’t buy anything, it’s just that I resist buying everything except for the essentials most of the time. I just don’t really see much purpose in a lot of the distractions that people buy, choosing instead to focus my attention on other things. I’m starting to come to terms with the fact that I’m not very representative of the general population. But am I really that abnormal?

I guess I must be, at least from marketers’ perspective.