Sherlock Holmes Marketing

In previous editions of this ‘Blog’—and one still wonders what a ‘Blog’ is, there have been discussions about what was in comparison to what is now.

There was, for example, a comparison between the life style, customs and traditions of a World that existed two thousand years ago and the World that we inhabit now. Things changed little for the next fifteen hundred years so that it would be difficult to label King Henry VIII as a paedophile for marrying a very young girl when, in those days, there were no laws extant that prescribed the age at which people could get married; indeed, the trend at that time was to marry off girls when they began menstruating because that signified when they were ready to breed.

We could, equally, label Rudyard Kipling—one of the World’s greatest ever writers, as a racist. Some of his views on the inhabitants of the Indian Subcontinent were, by our standards, pretty condemning when it came to the darker shades of skin. If you complained to him about it he would look askance at you; he would fail to understand what you meant because, by the mores of the day, he was just following what everyone else did. Slavery was already abolished but that did not mean that the common perception of coloured people changed very much. He lived by his lights as we live by ours.

Shakespeare, Chaucer, Bacon, Dickens, they all described life in a very different way to the life that we are accustomed to living now. Does it make them wrong? No. Does it make them despicable? No, of course not.

Society has changed. It has changed very little in its roots but there have been changes. Not all for the better.

Another, more recent change has been the predilection for soap manufacturers to use pseudo-fruit scents in our toiletries instead of the more traditional floral, conifer and sea-spray. If it is changed then it must be better.

More perception.

Change is almost constant now. It took thousands of years to promote basic changes to our perceptions, this was whittled down to hundreds of years and now we are into a period where change is almost a daily routine.

“Buy New Improved Glob For a Whiter Wash!” This is actually incredibly sad because my short was blue before I washed it in ‘New Improved Glob’!

Of course we have to wonder what was wrong with the old ‘Glob’. Why did it need changing?

It needed changing because sales were beginning to slump. The ‘Bell Curve’ was starting to drop into the ‘zero sales area’.

With food it is much easier. Tinned food, especially, can be immediately improved by adding more salt and sugar. This will spice up its taste. We are living on salt and sugar because we are taking in more and more preserved and pre-packed food.

We learn about this food because we are inundated with messages from marketing and advertising people through the popular media every time we turn on the television or radio; every time we go to social media on the computer; every time we open a ‘newspaper’ or magazine; every time we get in the car and drive past posters, billboards and shops.

It is a blitz. It is a constant blizzard of visual noise oppressing us at every possible opportunity.

How much propaganda is slipped into this maelstrom of sales information? Can we tell? Do we know?

The manufacturers know exactly what we want. They use data mining from things like loyalty cards and credit cards to let them know precisely what we are buying. From this they work up the plan to decide which products need improving.

Research groups know where we live, how we live, what we drive, where we spend our money, where we go on holiday—everything about us. Nothing is left to chance.

In this digital age there are no secrets. Pretending that you are exempt because you use no plastic cards is like King Canute commanding the tide to recede.

You are surrounded, you are awash with spyware of all kinds.

Genetics will modify your vegetables. There may be ‘Monsanto’ based genetic modification in the laboratory or the produce that you eat may be modified in the old fashioned way—the way that gave us cabbages and various potatoes, chickens and beef cattle for our gustatory pleasures.

It is modified so that we, the consumer, will buy it. We will buy it because it is ‘new’, it is 'improved’.

There is nothing you can do about it. You are trapped in this situation, like it or not.

As Sherlock Holmes said, “Alimentary, my dear Watson.”