Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id BAA02044 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 23 May 2000 01:28:10 +0100 Date: Mon, 22 May 2000 17:26:09 -0700 (Pacific Daylight Time) From: TJ Olney <market@cc.wwu.edu> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: RE: Central questions of memetics In-Reply-To: <NBBBIIDKHCMGAIPMFFPJEELMENAA.richard@brodietech.com> Message-ID: <Pine.WNT.4.21.0005221701100.-402265@Starship051.cbe.wwu.edu> X-X-Sender: market@voyager.cbe.wwu.edu Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On Mon, 22 May 2000, Richard Brodie wrote:
>
> Marketers know that people buy based on wants, not needs. Making a new
> invention sound sexy will do much more to sell it than making it sound
> useful. Beyond that, how do you convince someone? I thought you were
> asserting that no convincing was necessary, that people would beat a path to
> your door the moment you came up with a useful idea. They don't, of course.
> Ideas spread when they are packaged so as to attract people's attention.
[snip]
> People adopted his ideas because ADOPTING the ideas relieved pain/provided
> pleasure. This is very, very different from asserting that the ideas
> themselves were useful. Memes spread because they push people's
> psychological buttons.
Marketers also know that the central problem of marketing is that wants
are underdetermined and are based on needs. Hence, the problem for a
marketer is to find a way to attach some basic need to a new product or
service that people will then want. Making something sound sexy is an
attempt to attach the something to one's sex drive.
Sometimes the sex drive is only invoked as a temporary hook to grab
attention. In those cases, the "usefulness" may in fact be the thing that
makes the product sell, even if no attention would have been paid to the
offering had it been presented only in terms of usefulness. The meme
itself may not have the "sexy" part at all. [I can point you to examples
if you are interested.] The attention getting device is only for primary
replication of the meme.
Other times sex drive becomes part and parcel to the meme. The sexy
aspect of the offering becomes an integral part of the memeplex that
people buy into.
My search for leg shaving information is exactly this kind of question.
One of the known needs that early marketing efforts for leg shaving tapped
into is the same as the one tapped into by Wisk with "ring around the
collar" and Lavoris with "halatosis". That is the need to belong and be
accepted by other people and to be able to attract other people for
mating.
So, while I agree that memes do not have to be useful, I contend that most
are useful to someone. The obnoxious jingle is useful to the company
spreading it who therefore puts lots of money into making sure that
everyone hears it enough times that the pattern will have been engraved in
peoples musical memory. It is not likely to be useful to the person
receiving it.
On the other hand, what could possibly be more useful to a human creature
than something that relieves pain or causes pleasure??????
***
BTW before Gobels gave propaganda such a bad name, public relations WAS in
fact called propaganda. But, they knew what business they were in and
therefore acted on their knowledge to dissociate from the Gobels machine.
market@cc.wwu.edu
-- TJ Olney Western Washington University - Not all those who wander are lost.
For the musical version of this thought: http://mp3.musicmatch.com/artists/artists.cgi?id=113&display=1
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