Monday, December 12, 2005

An Example of Product-Push vs. Market Pull Commercialization: Smirnoff Twisted

In what is arguably the most pathetic demographic targeting/marketing campaign/etc. I can immediately recall (its 2am give me a break), Smirnoff (known for their vodka, for those of us sober to need a reminder), has rolled out a TV, etc advertising campaign for Smirnoff Twisted beverage freaturing "Ari", who is as far as I can tell, an unemployed eastern-european/Russian who somehow attends chic events and makes what I'm sure were intended to be witty, whimsical remarks. Now, run-on-sentences aside, lemme break down why this is a dissapointment. Smirnoff Twisted is a line of fruit-flavoured malt beverages, comparable to Zima or whatever other concoctions are in that category. [Originally beverage marketing of this particular type of libation are, and have been aimed at women, and amazingly, most of these drinks are bought - yup, you guessed it - by women.]
The point is, that I don't know, because what virtually anyone in the male, 18-34 (give or take) demographic will blatently tell you, is that no self-respecting man would even consider drinking a "fruit flavoured malt beverage" instead of a beer while out at a bar, club, etc (or else risk eternal damnation by his chums).

Now, in my never-ending quest for eternal objectivety, I conducted an informal, ad-hoc survey of some friends, acquaintances, etc (that majority of which, admittedly are between 18-24, in the interest of full disclosure), and the overwhelming response seemed to be, as one individual so politically-incorrectly put it, no young man in the aforementioned demographic would voluntarily ever drink Smirnoff Twisted, etc, in his words "at least not one that likes women..." Another, when prompted with the question "If we were at a bar and I asked you if you'd like a Smirnoff Twisted instead of a beer/shot/other drink?", replied with "i'd probably laugh, and after realizing your were serious call you a faggot...because of the feminish persona they have." Before you go out calling me or anyone quoted a homophobe or a stereotype-monger, understand that these are the actual opinions of most young men!

Now, judgements aside, and without first-hand knowledge of the situation (you're all welcome to refute this if you can back it up), lets look at whats going on here. This appears to be a case of a bunch of executives/managers getting together and saying something like "Ok well we need to boost sales/profits/etc, so what do we have laying around that we can repurpose/remarket/rebrand/etc (i.e. spend the least effort to reach our goal)?" The problem with this sort of decision making is that it is simply pushing a product/service onto some arbitrary consumer group/demographic. In this case, the decision likely went something like, "Well we have this drink, but only 1/2 of people (women and a few men?) drink it. We can double our sales if we just convince men that its cool!"
This is an example of a Product-Push approach (the more generic classification of Technology-Push), where in this case, to oversimplify, they had a product aimed at one demographic, and decided to thrust this product upon a completely different demographic, without acknowledging the fact that perhaps, just perhaps, this other demographic has COMPLETELY different characteristics/ideas/opinions/etc.
Contrast this approach to what we refer to as Market-Pull commercialization, in which the 1st steps in product development involve thorough analyses of demographic, market, and industry trends. The product or service is then developed from initial conception to address the specific niche, demographic, need, etc, which was uncovered in the prior analyses. As any Joe Schmo can see, whenever possible (deciding when is a complex and contested discussion), Market-Pull is the way to go! (hey that rhymed, aren't I the cunning linguist)
So I realize an hour after I began this post, and it is in no way, shape, or form, a "quickie", so I'll just summarize what we've learned:
Just because managers and executives get paid thick salaries does not necessarily mean they are good business people (you'd think it would though...). [I'll avoid for the moment my more general belief that eventually, and inevitably, investor activism will result in the elimination of inefficiencies and poor management in all firms, or else those firms will eventually fail (we'll save this discussion for another time folks, dont' worry).] Investors, etc need to be wary of this potential pitfal, and allocate their hard-earned $ accordingly.
I could go on and on here, but its 3:30am, and i've got 12hrs of studying tommorrow (oh hell, thats today, boo). Comments, etc appreciated as always. Party on!

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