FrankenMarketing

Management. Man if there was ever a science that dealt with pure common sense it would be management. I mean you go for years of classes and slave through exams only to come up with what a five year old would say is the the most obviously logical solution to a problem and three years down the line you don't really feel like you've learned anything. You just feel like a coconut. Husk removed, oil extracted, and distributed across several locations ranging from five star hotels to slums to the Everest of garbage that is sitting in Maligawatte; the same coconut, but 'diversified'.

Ok that analogy looks and sounds a bit off doesnt it? No matter. The blunders that big firms make is what actually brought me to write this random one. The story of McDonalds entering India with a beefburgher is probably a folk tale by now to any person who sat through a marketing or management course at any point in their lives over the last fifteen years. I mean here you have a global firm, very experienced, entering a massive market famed for their reverence of cows and how do they go about making their entry? by making a big hullaballoo about how great their beefburgher is. im sick of it.

Im sick of hearing about this chicken entrepreneur who translated their slogan 'it takes a tough man to make a tender chicken' into spanish and ended up with 'it takes a virile man to make a chicken affectionate' or something along those lines. im sick of hearing of this airline who went into Hong Kong and decided to be all innovative and give out free flowers to first time passengers. Great idea right? Wrong. They chose carnations and guess what, Hong Kongese or however you may call them associate carnations with death; the big D word, the one that everyone tries to ignore. How would you feel if someone handed you a miniature coffin or a free voucher to a funeral parlour when you board a plane? Dumbasses.

So what management students and lecturers all over the world do is, they look at these chaps who made these blunders and they snigger at them in a superior manner. They laugh over them during drinks. They use them as examples to describe common everyday events, leaving those not in the loop contemplating dialing the sanatorium. it makes these chaps feel good to think that even global corporate giants can make stupid mistakes like these. it helps counter the constant sense of inferiority that drives them to take up jobs in the world of corporate bum slavery. for evey guy who climbs the corporate ladder, there is another one fumbling and falling down to the endless depths of no return, or simply retiring.

And then we have countries like China that are driving the rest of them up the wall. How can you beat a place where there is enough labor to fill several factories that costs you only about 2 dollars a month to maintain? and that is per-factory. Salaries all over the world are being cut because of the inexhaustible rate at which people seem to be crawling out to work out of the nooks and crannies of China. I think they've got some kinda people producing plant hidden in there somewhere. Either that or they've been planning this for centuries. And perfecting their own brand of top secret Kama Sutra, with modifications designed to focus on the end result and not the actual process of the thing. So if Bill Gates starts driving a Toyota and that hotshot fast rising executive at your Rotaract club pulls into the next meeting on a BMX, you know who to blame. Or thank.

And its all about money. Oh no, don't be fooled by the altruistic overtones. Even CSR is simply alturism furnished with a pair of binoculars (to modify a Helvetius quote). Its all about driving profit. I was initially disillusioned with the whole concept of marketing because i simply saw it as a way of bullshitting, tricking, manipulating and convincing some poor chap to forego six months of his mortgage payments to buy a pair of Pradas to finally feel like a man. Now i know that if that chap was stupid enough to actually gobble it up, he deserves the cardboard box he is living in and he deserved to be tricked and bullshitted and brainwashed. You're just dealing out justice. 'No worries mate, it's all good down under' says the eskimo who just bought the latest LG 'ice machine' three door 'super door cooling' Made in Australia freezer cum kitchenette, and who sold his father's only whaling boat to afford it; plunging his family into a doomed state of polar bear fodder.

It teaches you dog eat dog ness. It teaches you to kill or be killed. If the corporate world is the jungle, then management is the art of survival. Quick on your feet, running before you even leap out of bed, running in your sleep. Stalking your prey day and night. You call him a customer and claim he's always right. But when it comes to the most important things in life, he's only right if he agrees with you. You can hear the thunder before the storm but you can't hear the marketer as he stalks you while you innocently watch Prison Break, or foolishly read hit-ad while sitting on an empty wallet and a soon to be declined credit card.

Its sick, its disgusting, yet i am almost triple qualified in it. Im a disgrace. But im out to get your money, I won't warn you again. Or i will if you buy these Pradas, go on treat yourself, you're a man that needs them. Your family deserves them. Your career depends on them. Your daughter's marriage prospects depend on them. Buy them! You're feeling sleepy, when i snap my fingers you will wake up and pay me and go home and ignore the repossessors and love the cardboard box that you end up in because you're a loser and im the king and the world is a moneymaking jungle. I'm too classy for an evil laugh.

More subjective shit - Nice guys and coming last

Ah! so through my meanderings and random stopping by's through the blogosphere i came across quite a thought provoking item done by Papare Boy (sorry, i cant seem to get that little line above the 'e'). I of course, use the word 'shit' here merely to quantify, and not to degrade. Think of it as if i was saying 'stuff' instead and not 'shit'. As a matter of fact, i could have just gone and changed it to 'stuff' and saved myself all the trouble of explanation but i am in a rambly sort of mood, and will indulge myself.

So Nice Guys, do they really finish last? several ladies opined on the topic among them the Goddess and Makuluwo who by her own admission (read, blog URL) is slightly mad (:p - sry, couldn resist doing my own tame MoB). Makuluwo raised quite an interesting point when she said "I think the definition of NICE, goddessofvileness, is always relative!"

Hmmm.. okay, now before we delve into this little study of ameteur sociology, i suggest you read the full thing along with the whole riveting discussion which can be found here.  If you're interested enough that is, otherwise stick around here lets see what we can dig up.

All right, so first of all what i do is a google the term 'nice guys finish last' right? and obviously i straightaway head into wiki. dont even know why i google most stuff anymore, i inevitably go into wiki from the search results.

One main thing we've got to get clear. We are strictly talking about matters closer to the libido and heart here. Since it appears that it really doesn't matter what kind of man you are for the whole world to accept you, the main problem area seems to appear when it comes to being accepeted by the oposite sex.

First, what the devil is a nice guy? is he, as Papare Boy postulates, someone who doesn't beat you over the head when you mess with the remote? With all due respect to PB however, i think expertise lies with the infe superior sex (on the topic) so why dont we go straight to the source?

Actually, Harold and Millhausen (1998) have already done this so lets just save ourselves the trouble and have a look at their findings shall we?

They found that women associate different qualities with the "nice guy" label:

"Some women offered flattering interpretations of the nice guy, characterizing him as committed, caring, and respectful of women.

Some women, however, emphasized more negative aspects, considering the nice guy to be boring, lacking confidence, and unattractive."

There is also a negative phenomenon associated with the "nice girl" in the same respect. She may be considered to be a prude, boring and submissive. (this is not really relevant to the topic so lets just disregard this)

The bad boys were also divided into two categories, "as either confident, attractive, sexy, and exciting or as manipulative, unfaithful, disrespectful of women, and interested only in sex."

Hmmm so according to Harold and Millhausen basically you can look at nice guys in one of two ways. Positively or negatively. Am i safe if i say that? no arguments there? So if you're 'committed, caring, and respectful of women' it makes you nice and if you are 'boring, lacking confidence, and unattractive' well IMO that just makes you a wimp.

And if you are confident, attractive, sexy, and exciting that makes you Bad (but bad like Russel Crowe) whilst if you're manipulative, unfaithful, disrespectful of women, and interested only in sex that also makes you bad but this time somewhere along the lines of Commodus (Joaquin Pheonix in Gladiator) or maybe Jack (the Ripper).

So women like nice guys (lets call them honorable guys) but dont like wimps. Women also like heroic chaps but also dislike the more perverted variety. Simple as that. You have to be nice but you cant be a wimp. You've gotta be bad, but you cant be an asshole.

There we go, problem solved.

I think it will be a while till even i come to terms with the magnitude of it all. For what we have accomplished here boys and girls is nothing short of phenomenal. It is the answer to the age old question that has baffled all men since Adam, ever since he discovered that part of his rib was missing and that he was no longer alone up there. The perplexing conundrum (not the blog) that all men inevitably think of when they gaze at the stars or when they look out the window or when they eat, sleep, wake up,jog, work, study etc. What do women really want?

And ladies, dont think that this day is no less important to you, because through empirical analysis you have finally been shown what you really want as well. Because if there's one thing we guys have instinctively known since the beginning of time is that; while we have no clue as to what women want, women, have even less of an idea about the whole thing.

So start thinkng ladies. You know what you want now. Just go out there and get it. Im right here. hyok.

*disclaimer - this post was written on a lazy monday afternoon, so by default, is justified in all its implications. And that includes the marginal meaninglessness of this 'disclaimer'.