Tuesday Try This

For this Tuesday's Try This, try reverse engineering marketing campaigns. I do this all of the time with television and print ads, but you could do the same with place, product and price decisions as well. Basically, I play "name that target market" whenever I see an interesting piece of marketing. I try to figure out why marketers chose a certain slogan/imagery/reference/venue, etc. and for whom. Next time you're cruising the grocery aisles, ask yourself questions like Why is that product on that shelf? Why did they choose that shape for that bottle? Why are they playing that music over the speakers? And who are they doing all this for anyway? You'd be amazed at just how carefully constructed your shopping experience is! Sometimes I'm impressed by companies' creativity, and other times I'm just confused! Marketing doesn't just happen, it's a result of hundreds of individual decisions made all along the way that attempt to shape our perceptions of reality. By deconstructing how these experiences are pieced together, we can learn a lot about which decisions work, and which fall short. Not only does this help to make us more sophisticated consumers, but better marketers as well. Reverse engineering takes almost no time to do, but can be very valuable.

By the way, I should be back 'n' bloggin' regularly by Wednesday. Thanks for your patience and for reading!