Moneywise24 Personal Finance

It is not that I don’t like marketing; on the contrary, I studied marketing myself, and I believe it is a great tool for presenting new and innovative products to the crowd.  But the principles of marketing go much further than simply informing the crowd of a product. One of the goals of marketing campaigns is to motivate people to buy the product, to compete with the competition, and basically to get the consumer wanting the product badly.

But we have to be honest to ourselves: how can a marketeer, or a campaign, make consumers want to buy a product? Is it not our own decision to buy or not to buy a product based on our own evaluations and intelligence? Yes, we do make the decision ourselves, but what is our decision based upon? Is it based upon our true, unbiased objective observation, or is it based on what others make us believe is an objective, unbiased observation?

Marketing has many ways of promoting products to consumers in one way or the other. Below, I have listed a few of these methods. The list may not be exhaustive, and I would welcome comments and suggestions on how to expand the list further in detail.

Creating the need for an emotional state of mind

How often do you happy families, women, men, children, laughing and enjoying themselves in commercials? Depending on the product, marketeers aim at associating a special feeling or situation with the product; on a subconscious level, it means that buying that product would lead to that special feeling. The people in commercials are overly good-looking, confident, smiling, and consumers believe they will get all that when they buy the product. Creating that feeling involves the images, but also the colors used, the music and the sounds, the setting and surrounding… nothing is left out.

This association of a state of mind, or emotion, with a particular product might not lead to everyone running to the supermarket and buying the product. However, having seen that commercial 25 times, what is likely to happen when you accidentally see the product somewhere in the store? Exactly, you immediately associate the product with that feeling, and in a sense your unconscious mind has been conditioned to do so; you are likely to buy that product, even if there is a better and less expensive alternative standing right next to it.

Professional recommendations

“This product has been recommended by…”
“Thousands of people have tried this product, and they say…”

Recommendations from specialists, institutions, or simply people on the streets are a powerful tool to creating the illusion that the product must be good and worth buying, since so many people are using it. Personal skepticism is less likely to occur, since we tend to trust recommendations from others.

Making the product scarce

If a product is scarce, it usually implies that it is either extremely valuable or highly wanted. Many commercials and advertisements create a situation, in which the product is characterized as being scarce. Think about the following statement:

“Buy now, only 2,000 samples left!”

Games with wording

Our own language is often used against us. Marketeers have the fine ability to play with words in such a way, that we give a meaning to it that benefits us most. A great example of this is the expression “saving money”, which could  mean any of the below:

• setting money aside for the purpose of not spending it (and usually gaining interest on it)
• spending less money than planned

The first meaning usually earns you money, while the second meaning still means spending money. In a commercial I saw in Germany, the following statement was made:

“Having saved 10 Euros means having earned 10 Euros!”

This is, of course, an illusion, since you could impossibly earn money while you are spending it. Still, hundreds of people line up at major discount events, buying loads of items they probably don’t even need. They feel good, since they believe they have actually saved a lot of money on computers, televisions, or high quality branded clothing. But what they forget, is that they have still spend hundreds of Dollars, which they might have otherwise not spent at all.

Doing the maths

Consumers are very price sensitive, and therefore companies try to make their products as financially beneficial as possible. When it comes to debt, some companies stated monthly interest rate, making them appear extremely low. Other companies promote a very low monthly fee for a service, which comes only with an annual membership and annual payment possibilities. Some stores might increase the price of their products a few weeks before they start promoting major discounts… sometimes the discount price is higher than the original price.

These are only a few examples of how marketing works, and the methods that companies and corporations utilize in order to make their products wanted. As I mentioned before, marketing is a great tool for the purpose of bringing products to the masses. However, we as a consumer need to be conscious of the fact that many marketing campaigns are manipulative in one way or the other, and that only we can make the right decision, that benefits our needs.

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Yesterday, I met up with a friend of mine for a coffee. As we exchanged some interesting topics, the topic started changing towards career issues. At a certain point, she stated:

“I don’t understand, I am a hard working employee, I deliver the best possible quality, I have been with the company for years, and meet all possible deadlines. And yet, this work is not getting me anywhere. My colleages get all the best options in the company, they get promotions, or new challenges”

Sounds familiar?

As our conversation progressed, I started to develop a better understanding of her situation. Her goal is to be fully committed to her work, and her manager. She wants to make herself irreplacable through the quantity and quality of her work, hoping management will see the great potential that lures inside of her.

The only problem is, that by having made herself irreplacable by all the knowledge she has and the hard work she delivers, management does not want her to leave her current position. She has become so irreplacable, that it has started to work against her. Whereas she has been taking upon all the work, others have had the opportunity to get involved into other activities and build a network throughout the company.

For anyone seeking an interesting career, it is essential to build a diverse network of contacts throughout the company, attend meetings, give presentations, or go for lunch with colleagues and managers. Extremely hard working employees will often skip such events in order to get some more work done. But this is an approach, which will work against you on the long run.

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Languages are said to increasingly gain importance in international business; not only are there still so many countries where English is not spoken as a second language by everyone, there are also many languages which are gaining importance.

My mother’s tongue is Dutch, and I speak an additional four foreign languages, two of which can be utilised in a business environment (English and German). I once worked for a company, which would actually pay an additional amount on top of the monthly salary for each usable foreign language. Up to then I had always seen language as a tool to make myself better understandable in a foreign country, but not as a tool to boast my career and increase my salary.

Today, the world has become even more internationalised, and foreign language is a hot topic. Apart from the fact that learning a foreign language is fun to learn and offers valuable insights in a nation’s culture, some foreign languages are increasingly gaining importance, if this is not already the case. Just consider the fact, that over a billion people on this planet speak Chinese, this is 1/6 of the entire world population. And additionally, many people in Asia speak Chinese as a second language, rather than English. How about Arabic? Hindi? Spanish?

The great benefit for your career and working environment in general is that you are making yourself more competitive by learning new foreign language. Additionally, you are demonstrating your employer, or potential employers and head hunters, that you want to keep learning a life long.

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