There are myriad forms of marketing techniques that I studied in marketing management during my PGDM , some of which I remember are direct marketing ,digital marketing ,content marketing , Guerrilla Marketing etc.All of which are relevant and depends on the our product , industry , target audience . These are tried and tested by many marketing practitioners and are effective if implemented properly. Recently a new form of marketing emerged which can be rightly termed as obnoxious Marketing.( Abuse a well known personality to get the required publicity)
The ROI of obnoxious Marketing is directly proportional to the fame of personality and degree of abuse
As Jeff Degraff said “Innovation is messy .It’s about conflict-not agreement. There are twists and turns-not straight lines”. Many of the folks in today’s world are trying to innovate marketing and promotion in a messier way than you can think of.
One example of such downbeat marketing of oneself was attempted by our very own self proclaimed Indian Shakespeare. An article providing his opinion about so called “Bhakts” in one of the mainstream newspaper (you will find more opinions , advertisements and propaganda articles than any worthwhile news ) .I got to know about this article through twitter and just wondered why this guy chose this form of marketing. It struck to me that brands do such kind of things when their product is in decline phase. They make a last mile effort to do things differently and want to piggyback on popularity of few well known figures.
The herd of self proclaimed intellectuals are either brainwashed /influenced by their close one’s or they would act according to the propaganda which they have been following from long due to affiliation with few political parties or certain organizations
The modus operandi of these kind of marketers is methodical and well structured and they prey on the emotional quotient of large number of people (approximately 0.38 billion people) who help them achieve what they desire for – Publicity. India as a country not devoid of any problems or challenges but these folks will choose topics which will get them maximum return on investment.
- They would choose the topic very carefully – topics like stereotyping a group of people, feminism, few of the initiative of GOI or manufactured news from MSM.
- Next step would be to either abuse or belittle the initiatives which are very important from social perspective like #selfiewithdaughter or safety of girls etc.
- Next step is simple – The marketer need not do anything, there would be lots of people who would oppose or show their indifference to the abusive article, tweet etc. There are people who would be more abusive which gives these marketers levy to attack, enforce their propaganda and portray themselves as victim
- Next step – They would render themselves as victims and would be supported by many other like minded people (This is the part of well defined process).
- Next-You either write a blog in leading MSM portals, print media or you write an open letter .You would then see lots of articles being written and published in media houses in favor of marketers and they would invited as guest speakers along with other likeminded creatures to decimate the opposition.
The timing of these marketing gimmicks is of utmost importance for e.g. if movie of some actor/actress is going to be released soon ( Remember – Shenaz Treasurywala’s Open Letter to PM, Bachchan, SRK, Salman and Aamir!) – “Main Aur Mr. Riight” was the movie which was released on December 12 or if your recent books are not being sold at same pace as your previous books.
These are the steps which you need to follow to get lots of publicity though actual success depends on your ability and not on cheap publicity.
These marketers can go to any extent to sell their stuff; they can call head of Indian state as stalker ,lameduck and a leader of ruling political party as killer (without any proof)but if few SM folks do the same to them, hell breaks loose. They feel like how others can do the same to me when I have been doing this from long time. They are frustrated from the fact that they are getting the taste of their own medicine.
You can easily find the correlation between the two personalities of #selfiewithdaughter fame , they have been continuously tweeting about the #VyapamScam . This would have been perfectly all right had they been equally vocal about Farmers death in Karnataka or issue of fake degrees in Bihar . Hypocrisy isn’t it?
Pathological heartedness towards few of the top leaders of India comes naturally to these marketers due to affiliation with few organization and few people. You can check the type of people they follow; you would understand their compulsion to create a controversy out of an initiative by our honorable PM
While few of these folks follow their set agenda, few others are very confused just like the stories in their books. They would write a highly opinionated article on a portal whose credibility is always questionable. They would stereotype all the followers with whatever nonsense that wanders through their head. After reading the article, they themselves get confused whether the article which they wrote was a sarcasm or otherwise.
You can read this piece of opinion here to understand how confused he is? After reading this opinion if you also read his tweets it will like Nolan’s (or Sajid khan’s) movie… More confusion J
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