Saturday, December 19, 2009

marketing past life experiences a la 'Raaz' @ NDTV Imagine

When recent editions of Kotler's 'Marketing Management' included 10 categories of "what is marketed', he described one category as "Experiences" and had various examples. But none, I can bet, can match the promotion and marketing of an experience of visiting the past life through a very unreal reality show on NDTV Imagine called "Raaz

Does anyone really believe that "Raaz" on NDTV Imagine has an iota of reality in it? I saw it only once and found it utterly disgusting program that blatantly promotes superstition and is 'loaded' with supernatural undertones. i think it should carry some disclaimer and must be shown latenight as an 'adult' show!!

Ohh. It sgould be banned!!!


Saturday, December 5, 2009

Marketing and ethics.

sorry for such a long delay.

Recently I was in Lucknow to attend an orientation program (required by UGC for university teachers). Apart from other interesting things that happened there, one feeling was quite common among the speakers whose ideologies varied from extreme right to extreme left. The moment they came to know that I teach Marketing and Advertising, the usual response was like, "so here is the root of all evil existing in the society!!" And they would start referring to Fair and Lovely, McDonald's, and numerous such ads that they felt, created "unnecessary demand, are sexist in nature, and eventually create social tensions".

At times I was not able to respond. Not because i did not have logic to support a pro-marketing view, but probably because i was myself not very convinced with the robustness of such logic. Moreover when a seasoned JNU prof. talks, she would use great disarming rhetoric.

So i was constantly in dilemma. Do I advocate and teach topics that I am not myself convinced with? In the end I realised that on the contrary it reaffirmed my faith in the discipline of marketing as I re looked into the various texts to understand the politics of the language that gave other disciplines a claim to supposedly higher moral ground.

And I found the answer. It's the rhetoric stupid!!

Will post more related things here soon