rotten bananas

Have you ever noticed that every television show ad features some type of crazily-unrealistic teaser that never follows through? Have you noticed that every time, regardless of how impossible it may seem, you still spend the next week wondering if maybe it will happen? Are they really going to get married? Will he really leave the show? Is Jack Bauer really going to save the world from international terrorism?

Americans love the teaser. We love to have that big fat juicy carrot dangled in front of our faces, wondering. It’s not just television though. Think about when you find a new gadget (or puppy or car or toothbrush, whatever your vice may be), and how intense the desire is while you yearn for it. Up to that moment when you can buy it, whether you’re saving up or planning or whatever, the excitement just keeps building. Until the second you buy it and things start to go downhill.

Television shows (almost) never reach that moment, and there’s an obvious reason for this. Once the problem has been solved, goal has been reached, what-have-you, the excitement is over, and we move on to a new show.

I’m not trying to say this is bad. It’s what drives us. It drives capitalism. It drives innovation. It’s actually quite important that we’re never truly satisfied, and it’s the key to marketing. It’s what fascinates me about the industry. Lots of people will tell you that it’s the product that matters. Create a good product and the customers will follow. While this is true to a point, what’s really important is convincing people that your product is so good that they need it. Once they have it, the relationship is over (granted, this depends on the type of product).

It’s not to say that you can trick people into buying a product that turns out to be crap (*coughvistacough*). If you deceive too many people, the rest will catch on, but since we are often disappointed after the anticipated purchase, part of the game is just the build-up. People may not be telling others that their new PDA is a piece of crap, but they’ll suddenly realize that they have little use for one, leaving a sour taste in their mouth about the purchase.

This is why marketing is often more of a game in certain industries. There’s very little reason to ever buy the best in computers. Approximately .0034% of the population has a use for the latest and greatest in CPU or graphics technology, but that group also makes scads of money on complex black hole experiments and multi-dimensioned barnyard animals. Nonetheless, there’s still a larger group that will waste money on it because some marketer convinced them that MMX technology was the wave of the future.

I can guarantee you that just about anyone who spends six grand on a new “omg ultra-highest-def” Dell XPS 27-inch widescreen laptop with built in surround sound and executive office chair is disappointed shortly thereafter either because it’s quickly outdated or the painful realization of wasted income comes to light.

Either way, the beauty of is that they will do it again because they’ll be chasing the metaphorical dragon. That’s why marketing is an awesome industry, and that’s why I need to find a way to get involved in it.