October 14, 2005--Friday Feature: Fanaticisms IV
I don’t know about you, but I’m having trouble thinking about myself as a bionic consumer. For certain, I’m dating myself again, but I left off with the Bionic Man and Bionic Woman. But according to the NY Times, though (pathetically, my source for keeping up with trends), the bionic consumer is now the most sought after. The BC is someone who has “access to all information at any place” (see link below for the full article). I suppose especially through all the most ubiquitous media, especially those that are bionic.
Here’s an example—say you are the Grand Marnier company and you want to introduce a new liqueur and sell it for $225 a bottle. How would you go about getting it into the high-end bionic consumer bloodstream? First, come up with a name for it that’s unpronounceable. How about Cuvee du Cent Cinquantenaire? That sort of works—I was a mediocre language student and I don’t have a clue as to how to say it. Second, if you want to charge $225 a bottle, make sure it's French and that, in the words of one creative ad exec, “The more obscure and more expensive, the harder it is to find, the better it is.” Check. We have the French name, it’s unpronounceable and it’s expensive. But hard to find? That I don’t get—how can you make money with this if you can’t pronounce or find it?
Not to worry, reach out to the bionic consumer as she/he, say, is walking by the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue, seeking information with every step. Advertise the stuff on telephone kiosks near the library, to quote again, “in an effort to encourage passers-by to visit the library, expand their use of language, and learn to pronounce the words.” If I had figured out earlier in life that that was all I needed to do, I could have passed high school French.
But what about the French Problem? Where are we now with that? It wasn’t so long ago that we were so pissed (forgive my French) with them that we were pouring fine Bordeaux down the drain and rechristening our favorite fries Freedom Fries. Shouldn’t the Grand Marnier folks be thinking about hustling bionic consumers on their own side of the Atlantic? Not according to Robert Passikoff of Brand Keys, a brand and customer loyalty firm, “A lot of names that were country-based, especially from France, have now become accepted and pronounced correctly.” Here we go with the pronouncing again.
On the other hand, just to give you a sense of how complicated it is to sell a bottle of booze for $225, another marketing guru says, “If you’re going to be prohibitively expensive, you just need to be prohibitively expensive and not talk about it."
Though the last time anyone spoke that way in my presence I was in a Buddhist monastery in Nepal, as long as it gets people into the library I’m cool.
Here’s an example—say you are the Grand Marnier company and you want to introduce a new liqueur and sell it for $225 a bottle. How would you go about getting it into the high-end bionic consumer bloodstream? First, come up with a name for it that’s unpronounceable. How about Cuvee du Cent Cinquantenaire? That sort of works—I was a mediocre language student and I don’t have a clue as to how to say it. Second, if you want to charge $225 a bottle, make sure it's French and that, in the words of one creative ad exec, “The more obscure and more expensive, the harder it is to find, the better it is.” Check. We have the French name, it’s unpronounceable and it’s expensive. But hard to find? That I don’t get—how can you make money with this if you can’t pronounce or find it?
Not to worry, reach out to the bionic consumer as she/he, say, is walking by the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue, seeking information with every step. Advertise the stuff on telephone kiosks near the library, to quote again, “in an effort to encourage passers-by to visit the library, expand their use of language, and learn to pronounce the words.” If I had figured out earlier in life that that was all I needed to do, I could have passed high school French.
But what about the French Problem? Where are we now with that? It wasn’t so long ago that we were so pissed (forgive my French) with them that we were pouring fine Bordeaux down the drain and rechristening our favorite fries Freedom Fries. Shouldn’t the Grand Marnier folks be thinking about hustling bionic consumers on their own side of the Atlantic? Not according to Robert Passikoff of Brand Keys, a brand and customer loyalty firm, “A lot of names that were country-based, especially from France, have now become accepted and pronounced correctly.” Here we go with the pronouncing again.
On the other hand, just to give you a sense of how complicated it is to sell a bottle of booze for $225, another marketing guru says, “If you’re going to be prohibitively expensive, you just need to be prohibitively expensive and not talk about it."
Though the last time anyone spoke that way in my presence I was in a Buddhist monastery in Nepal, as long as it gets people into the library I’m cool.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
2:49 PM
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