Plan B Forum

From today's NYT: (I have only copied the first few lines. Scary stuff.)

You See Pepsi, I See Coke: New Tricks for Product Placement

The streaming services have data on viewers’ spending habits and brand preferences, and they’re looking into new ways to use it.

First came product placement. In exchange for a payment, whether in cash, supplies or services, a TV show or a film would prominently display a brand-name product.

Then there was virtual product placement. Products or logos would be inserted into a show during editing, thanks to computer-generated imagery.

Now, with the rise of Netflix and other streaming platforms, the practice of working brands into shows and films is likely to get more sophisticated. In the near future, according to marketing executives who have had discussions with streaming companies, the products that appear onscreen may depend on who is watching.

In other words, a viewer known to be a whiskey drinker could see a billboard for a liquor brand in the background of a scene, while a teetotaler watching the same scene might see a billboard for a fizzy water company.

Oh, how I long for the olden days when all we got were subliminal advertising embedded within the supermarket music that was pumped out through their PA systems. Life was so much simpler then.

And a can of Campbell's pea soup with ham only cost $.09.

Must have Wheaties... must have Wheaties...

Marketing is incredibly insidious and invasive. They know more about you than you know yourself.

As an example people are most likely to change shopping choices going through a major life change like the birth of a child, marriage, death, divorce, a major purchase like a house, etc. Target decided to attract new mothers as customers.

They hired a mathematician to figure out whether or not women were pregnant, Once that was known they sent coupons for baby stuff to the mother to be's address. The problem was that some didn't know they were pregnant while young daughters hadn't told their parents. The interesting thing was that the selection criteria wasn't based on the purchase of baby or maternity related items.

Darren wrote:... Target decided to attract new mothers as customers... They hired a mathematician to figure out whether or not women were pregnant, Once that was known they sent coupons for baby stuff to the mother to be's address...

A mathematician? Like "one goes into one = two?

It was a statistician who ran this marketing research.

How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhil ... 760be26668

That’s creepy. Makes me glad I don’t shop in brick & mortar much at all - I go to ALDI and a couple of other local grocery stores for my food shop and basic household goods (TP, paper towels, dish soap, vinegar) and I drop into Job Lot for bird seed and to check their discount funky food imports. Everything else I need I get via Amazon or other online ordering - I know I’m harming Main Street, but since taking this approach to shopping I spend a hell of a lot less shopping - the biggest way people blow their budgets is by going to brick & mortar stores and ‘browsing’ while getting the few things they actually need and went there to buy. This is also why I don’t do coupons - I don’t buy many big name brands anyway, and in the days back when that I would look at the coupons, the coupons enticed me to ‘save money’ buying things I wouldn’t have bought to begin with if I hadn’t been tempted by the coupon in the first place.

It makes me queasy thinking about how marketing manipulates us even when we’re trying to be vigilant. I hate how we are all just cattle with wallets in the eyes of corporate America.