"Good Morning, Readers. The staff of Tao of Me welcomes you to the 21st century. On your left, you'll find corporates with a heart and soul. And, on the right, is the mirror revealing their true intentions!"
I can still remember the day, I purchased my first pair of Nike's. Just, plain red and black, cost me around $48.00 -- the most expensive shoes I had purchased at the time! I was 11, and it was probably my first-ever major purchase decision.
The shoes were great -- they must've lasted much over a year. However, more important, was the thrill of wearing them. In my own head, I could jump higher, dribble faster, defend better -- I was practically flying...
That was the destruction of a child's simple thought process. The marketing gurus had already contaminated my mind with their "buy this shoe to fly" message! It was still late, comparatively -- today you got kids pushing their parents to McDonalds by the age of 5!
As time went by, though, I tried a few brands, including Adidas and Reebok -- but, nothing did it like Nike. Opinion: Nike did and still does manufacture the best basketball shoes in the industry!
So, since the product was good, and their ads were so inspiring, I became a sucker for Nike. In college, you could spot me from a distance with my Nike bag, Nike track-pants, Jordan T-shirt (still Nike), Nike shoes, and the Nike socks!
I had become a Brand-Loyalist!
My final year in college, I came across a job description for a Brand Manager for the Jordan Brand! Although I was referring to it strictly for a project, the actual description gave me a dream-job! So, this is what people meant when they claimed to have found their calling... A new profound meaning... Life's actual purpose!
I headed for Australia to do a Masters in Sport Management, with one dream in mind -- I would, someday, work for Nike...
Ironically, working on a project during my Masters, I got no help from the people at Nike (strike 1), I came across an overwhelming number of articles regarding the sweatshops and Nike's cruelty (strike 2), and I felt they went too far with gorgeous and fit women, in white meditative outfits, working hard and not sweating (and... strike 3)!
It's hard to explain what went on in my head, because, I don't really remember. I do, however, remember that I lost complete interest in Nike -- and with that, any other marketing stunt the corporations tried to pull off. Of course, Nike doesn't care. It's been 3 years, and I still haven't received a comforting call from Phil Knight -- or Michael Jordan!
Nike started as a small dream - with Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman using a waffle iron to manufacture the perfect running shoes -- but, in time, it became a nice big corporate.
I've been noticing Dove's new campaign everywhere. It's an effort to change people's attitude towards the beauty of women. It's a "Corporate Social Responsibility" program -- such an effort could only make you hate the term.
It's odd -- they take pictures of fairly good-looking women, try to make them look less attractive, and then pop the question - "Big or Beautiful?" - "Plain or Perfect?" - "Grey or Glowing?"
It's a shame how the term, "Social Responsibility" is misused. It's nothing more than another marketing stunt. Does anyone really think they mean it, when they say, "we care"?
The closest a Corporation got to being genuinely responsible is, perhaps, The Body Shop with the No Animal Testing claim! However, at times, even that may not be easy to believe...
Fancy marketing campaigns are merely shows and concerts -- who knows what's going on back-stage?
Posted by: Just Another Consumer...
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2 comments:
An enjoyable read -- a curious sojourn of disillusionment. At the moment, one corporation in the US I've developed some respect for is Whole Foods. This is mainly due to their so-well-cultivated purveyance of valuable foodstuffs in ways & varieties & ubiquities nobody else is doing here. Even so, there was a bit of a dark side seen in how -- it seemed -- early on, they at times [well, in one anecdotal case I witnessed] perhaps strategically moved in near well-established health food stores (managing to close the latter down via the pummel of competition). But that's a dim memory; what I see on pleasant mornings is a rare "corporate culture" of efficiency, general cheer, lots of work at early hours, . . . blah-blah. It's nearly the only case I can think of where I've developed such a general esteem for a big corporation -- though on the scale of Nike & McD, I guess they're small fries [inadvertant pun].
cheers,
d.i.
Dove did take reasonably good looking ppl and justified that their pretty n the viewers go like
'ok we didn't realize that these ppl are pretty until the time unilever made us realize' ... The whole campaign seemed like a marketing than a PR campaign - where the underlying meaning was 'use are products its for ordinary ppl' ... but anyway the company would have us believe that the campaign has created some form of social revolution ... i hope it creates atleast a stir for all the marketing team's 'paid enthusiasm'
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