S is for Shockvertising, Shrinkflation, Storytelling and Sacred Selling

And so reach the letter S in our reverse anti-marketing alphabet. I should quickly say that S is the stuff of dreams for the anti-marketeer. There are so many words which jump out of the grass and do a little dance. So let's get started on this sassy, sanguine, sarcastic, sincere and always scintillating voyage through all matters S.

SHOCKVERTISING is a great example of marketing people appealing to the raw emotions of an easily-offended public. And shock, by its nature, is always meant to be dramatic and controversial. Back in the early 90s, the large Italian clothing manufacturer, Benetton, produced a series of posters for billboards which were at the extreme edge of advertising. The Benetton baby (a new-born baby in all its ‘gore’) was banned as being ‘offensive to public sensibility’ by the UK Advertising Standards Authority whilst, at the same time, it won a prize from the Swiss General Poster Association. It clearly divided opinion, but crucially created a stir. Benetton enthusiastically followed this up with more posters along similar lines. Barrack Obama photoshopped into a picture kissing the Chinese premier, stark pictures of HIV sufferers, guerrilla fighters in Africa and finally three human hearts labelled black, white and yellow, pushed the campaign into very controversial waters indeed. The product has become secondary to the message and yet the logo lingers in the corner of the message. It was designed to tweak human conscience and make a make a brutal, moral comment on an issue of the times. Shockvertising is a way of startling the viewer and creating controversy.

SHRINKFLATION is another controversial S. Basically, it is a way of making more money, by selling less. Maybe, this is a little unfair, but when ‘Toblerone’ suddenly redesigned their chocolate triangles to be wider apart, most choco-holics sat up and frowned. And it was not just ‘Toblerone’ either. If you bother to count the number of sheets in an ‘Andrex’ toilet roll, you will find you may be three or four wipes short of a standard roll. ‘McVitie’s’ chocolate digestives are in packets that are a little lighter in the 21st century and, if you are into counting the number of ‘Maltesers’ in every packet, you will be in for a similar surprise. Why? Well, manufacturers will say that raw materials are getting more expensive and anyway, pricing is not in their hands, but in the hands of the retailers, so basically don't blame us, blame the shopkeepers! Most will say that shrinkflation is necessary to ‘keep products affordable.’ Whatever is said, the customer is still left sometimes paying more for what looks like, less.

STORYTELLING has been around since time immemorial and has been used by marketing teams as the bedrock of many successful campaigns. People love stories because they are compelling, interesting and human. They do not appeal to logic or reason. It is one of the principle reasons why human beings are different from animals and is fundamental to how we have developed over time. In marketing, it is a perfect tool to get messages across. The classic storytelling advertisement of all time in the UK was the 80s ‘Gold Blend’ romance saga. This was a story that customers happily bought into and wanted to believe. A ridiculous romance between a pair of flirting business people over a series of 30-second television commercials over cups of steaming Gold Blend coffee. It was the ‘will-they-won’t-they’ aspect which had viewers hooked. Gold Blend even did pre-advertisements designed to inform the public when the next episode would hit the screen (a delicious example of self-referential daftness). Gold Blend coffee sold by the lorry-load, of course, and no house was complete without a jar in the cupboard! The storyline of the Gold Blend couple still lingers as a prime example of storytelling at its most effective in a marketing setting. It was reality TV / soap / romance / titillation all at the same time. Nowadays, storytelling is very much part and parcel of the marketing game. Recently, it has been taken to startling lengths with marketing people actually making full-length movies to advertise their products. The Catalonian lager, ‘Estrella Dam’ produced a well-plotted, dramatic movie with ‘A-list’ actors to promote their lager. Estrella Dam lager was placed in pretty-much every scene and yet the whole film still worked as a cool and trendy cultural reflection of beach life in Spain. Turkish Airlines have followed suit with a similar epic with the renowned director, Ridley Scott, behind the camera. Storytelling is a human way of getting not just the message across, but in getting the product name to ‘stick’ in the memory of the viewer at a subconscious level . Stories appeal to the emotions, the senses, to our innermost feelings and are the best way of explaining things which would be forgotten very quickly, if told in a factual and rather dry manner.

SACRED-SELLING bases itself on a very simple premise that it offers real care for potential customers even if a sale is not achieved. It is one step further down the moral line from ‘ethical’ marketing. This is probably as far from traditional sales and marketing as you could possibly get. Making money here is never the prime reason for selling – which might seem a total contradiction. It is far more about the ‘joy’ of serving without the heavy weight of sales targets and conversion rates hanging heavily around the sales person’s shoulders. The extremely admirable mantra of the scared seller is: You will develop real relationships with people who will gladly purchase what you are offering, because they like you. And even when they don’t, you will both feel good about the conversation.

There are many other Ss, of course, but enough is enough. This is a blog and not a rambling dissertation. I could have had a bash at SIMULACRA (yes, really), SIMPLICITY and even SELF-REFERENTIAL stuff - all gold dust for the anti-marketeer. And then there's SWOT - possibly the worst idea since Donald Trump decided too run for president.

If you want to now more about this, then go straight to the link below (you'll have to copy and paste it, I'm afraid), then treat yourself for Christmas and never look back. It is the anti-marketeer's Holy Grail. Well, not really - but it does provide a good chuckle here and there. Plus there's 15% discount because it's that mad time of the year when retailers desperately try to offload their stuff!

https://www.lulu.com/en/gb/shop/adrian-liley/the-anti-marketeers-handbook/paperback/product-1665dwpk.html?page=1&pageSize=4