You know, as a young adult, I read several warnings about not using Lysol as a contraceptive douche. And i always thought that was a bizarre thing to do. I mean, who wants something as nasty as Lysol on sensitive tissue.
I had NO IDEA they advertised that use! Holy fucking shit.
Yeah, it’s arguably worse than the old advertisements where doctors supposedly endorsed cigarettes as a perfectly safe way to aid digestion and calm one’s nerves.
Why would you characterize this as marketing “manipulation”? There’s no smoke and mirrors here. It seems to me that they came up with an excellent and convenient new product that consumers loved.
If you start, as I do, from the perspective that marketers are trying to alter behavior, that is by definition manipulation.
For large segments of the customer base those folks do what they perceive is popular, and persuade themselves they like the product not necessarily because it is good, but because it is popular and they trust the “wisdom of crowds” more than they trust their own tastes.
Modern so-called “viral marketing” totally depends on the phenomenon of consumers conflating popularity with quality.
We also know that people by and large don’t like making decisions and are happier following habits. So once they persuade themselves that e.g. concentrated OJ is a good breakfast food, they’ll keep buying it for years without ever again critically evaluating whether that makes sense or whether they in fact like it better than some other alternative or than nothing at all.
The marketer’s goal is to create that critical mass of desire once and then let the self-propelled snowball roll perpetually thereafter.
I don’t agree. Manipulation has connotations of unscrupulousness and subterfuge. You can “alter behavior” by offering an excellent new product on its genuine merits, that isn’t manipulation.
But my built-in suspicion is that an awful lot of modern products, and certainly a lot of modern marketing, are a solution desperately trying to persuade us we have a problem. And by “modern”, I mean over the entirety of my life, essentially USA post-WWII consumer culture.
I have a very deep-seated hostility to most forms of marketing and to popularity-based come-ons in particular. That might or not be well-founded hostility, but it is admittedly an outlier position amongst my fellow Americans.
Well, orange growers needed to push surplus product, so, in conjunction with marketers, came up with a plan to sell orange juice, and marketed it to the American public as a healthy part of a well-balanced breakfast. Before that people ate oranges, which is better for you since you’re eating the whole fruit, fiber and all, than mainlining fructose water into your system. Or they juiced their own oranges at home, for an occasional treat.
Convincing the consumer that orange juice was a necessary, daily part of breakfast, when people were perfectly fine not drinking daily morning juice beforehand, seems to me like a classic marketing manipulation. Maybe not the most egregious manipulation ever, but one, nonetheless.
I read much more recently that the whole trend of putting bacon in everything (eg., bacon cheeseburgers, bacon-wrapped everything) didn’t just happen organically. It happen specifically because the pork industry promoted it, because they wanted to create a bigger market for pork bellies.
That may be. Certainly the food industry tries to get us to use their products more, which is why we have things like Rice Krispies treats or green bean casserole (which uses a can of cream of mushroom soup).
I just love all the branded cookbooks put out by the various food conglomerates.
Who knew you could utterly screw up pancakes if they weren’t topped with Parkay® brand margerine as opposed to some other company’s grossly inferior margarine brand. Or worse yet, actual butter, a product that conglomerate doesn’t even make. Etc.
As late as 1979 (possibly 1980), I read the instructions for douching printed on the label of Lysol at the drugstore. (I can’t recall if it was on the bottle itself or an outer box.)
I wouldn’t say it “cures” it, but it definitely helps treat it. It also can’t hurt to gargle with it to try to keep colds away.
I don’t believe masks were of much use during the pandemic, but I did always wear one away from home. Before going out in it, I used a spray bottle to saturate it with a Listerine-type antibacterial mouthwash. The fumes were strong enough to make me dizzy.