Pardon me while I put on my marketer/pr/philosophy hat. yes, I am wearing three hats currently.

When you are philosophy major the first thing that you learn to do is argue well analyze. Mid-semester I should not be suprised that most everything that I have read today left me wanting to argue  correct. However, I don’t have the interest to write out incredibly long arguments to anything.

So, Three topics that made me go HEH…

and why they did so…

All Market Research is Wrong

The idea is that you can’t just take answers and apply them to action to get results in marketing. People might be interested in buying a product in the same way that people are interested in going to a gym, quitting smoking, and giving up caffeine. Intention and action are two very different things. This is why focus groups are only valuable in so much as you take the answers for what they are worth.

My Thoughts:

Of course this is right! People will answer a questions differently simply because they are being brought into a room by a brand and being asked to think about that brand and how they assume they might act. Their action is very different in a focus group than if you asked them to go into a store and pick out a product. That should be common sense. However, when developing products and figuring out who your demographic might be focus groups can be extremely helpful.

What is even more helpful?

Well let me tell you!

Aristotle taught us that the way in which we view ourselves within the world is very different than way in which the world viewed us. Aristotle believed that people outside of ourselves could give us a better idea of who we are than we could give of ourselves. For example, I might describe myself as incredibly funny because I told a few really great jokes once. My friends? They might not consider me funny. They might have thought my jokes were awful but they might consider me really smart.

In other words, we usually have a better idea of how a person will act than said person does. As marketers we should have some idea that a person is going to respond differently in a focus group than in a store. We should go out into the world and observe our demographic. How do they make decisions? What did they buy? Why did they buy the thing that they did? What were they thinking about when they walked into the store?

I do this all of the time. Ask my friends :)

Blogs and Web Magazines are Looking More and More Alike

The idea of this article is based on the fact that Gawker is changing their site from a blog site to a magazine style site.

My Thoughts

What does this mean for their site? Well…ahem….a new layout? Oh! And a ton of press from people discussing this revolutionary change. That is probably all that it means.

Gawker and their accompanying websites know how people read articles online. Which is why they have been so successful. They are most likely not going to change the type of content that they are creating. They may however change their layout…so…?

It goes on to talk about how the New York Times one day may only exist in digital form. However, they probably are not going to to call their articles blog posts. This is probably true.

In all reality it is just a change of terms. The Federal Goverment has been struggling to come up with the definition of a blog. It has been brought up into two categories. You can either look at a blog as a medium or as a genre.

If it is a medium, a blog is nothing more than a website you update. But how often do you update this website? If you update it more than twice a year and that constitutes a blog than every single website is a blog? If you must update it more than fifteen times a year than some blogs that began and fizzled out are not included? See the problem..

If it is a genre, a blog has to fit into a category. Maybe a blog is an online journal. Then what are other blogs that focus on specific niches? See the problem..

Yet, we are trying to carve a difference between “blog” and “online magazine” and in reality the difference is that one sounds fancy and one does not. Also, there is a different “look” to the blog.

Why does this matter? It doesn’t. But you learned something new didn’t you?

Counting Up the Mommy Bloggers

I actually came across this article thanks to a tweet stating “Too broad a definition of mom blogger”

Agreed!

Ad Week basically showed the number of “mommy bloggers” currently and the rise we are going to see. A mom blogger is simply a mom that blogs. Revolutionary! I know…

My Thoughts:

So? Why is it too broad?

Don’t all moms need certain things that brands could market to them?

Yes, we need diapers, laundry detergent, toothpaste, crib sheets, etc.

However, the way in which mothers make choices about these purchases is very different. “Motherhood” these days starts as young as 14 (maybe younger) and some women are well into their forties and having babies. You cannot scoop different generations, ages, lifestyle choices, and income levels all into one bucket and sell them stuff. Well, you can try…

The key to reaching mom bloggers is finding the group of moms that are going to receive your message well. If you breast feed and cloth diaper I am probably not going to try and sell you formula. If you are going to school full time and taking care of a new-born I am not going to sell you egyptian cotton baby sheets.

Mom is too big of a category. I am not even upset about the fact that they chose to label the group with motherhood. (as I know that many people are) I just see the number useless to marketers until they are a little more segmented.

I said this was going to be short didn’t I? heh