Your life: brought to you by Budweiser
May 28th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Written by Aza Raskin:
Your life: brought to you by Budweiser
Your past actions are the best predictor of your future decisions. That’s why data about your buying decisions and demographic is so valuable: it enables companies to know what and when you’ll buy. Marketing has focused on influencing your future decisions because changing your past actions, or the memory of them, has seemed impossible. You can’t change the past. That’s no longer true. Marketers now have the technology to meddle with your memories. To find out how, let’s first step back to old-school product placement.
Dr Pepper comes to mind when I hear the word ” Spider-Man”. In the film, as Peter Parker learns to use his powers, he spies a can of Dr Pepper across the room and, after a few tries, gets to enjoy drinking the cold beverage that had been out of reach. Mass-media product placement of this kind works by association and memory. But this is a last-century technique. The goods and services famous people consume will continue to wriggle into our subconscious, but increasingly we live in a world where there isn’t one source of truth. The internet has diversified our communication channels. Narrowcasting is replacing broadcasting; our friends are replacing celebrities.
Read more here online or in print in the June 2011 issue of Wired Magazine magazine
