RE: [projectvrm] OK, I give up. Marketers can do what they want.

["T.Rob" < >]

> Most folks buying it knew what they were getting and got the joke.

 

Yeah, it is like back in 2010 when 7500 people accepted the Gamestation.co.uk's TOS on April Fools day with a clause surrendering their immortal soul.  Someone commented that there were at least 7500 idiots and my response was that conclusion wasn't supportable by the details in the story.  Some of those people might have read it, decided the game was worth it and signed anyway.

http://iopt.us/1sz4sSo

http://boingboing.net/2010/04/16/video-game-shoppers.html

 

In my post below, I was hoping the proposition of reversing my position on marketing 180 degrees adequately marked it as satire.  I didn't actually believe that all 30k people were surprised, especially given the aftermarket in previously owned poop in eBay is fetching $30 per cow patty.  (There's a string of words you don't see every day.)

 

However, the notion of doing EVERYTHING right and being 100% truthful yet still ending up with dissatisfied customers was the on-topic aspect of the post.  It is a dimension I personally haven't paid much attention to in VRM discussions.  If a VRM system gives more power to the consumer, how would consumers such as the ones in the article wield such power?  Depending on how much a VRM tool amplifies that power, the portion of customers in this category it would take to make life miserable for a vendor might turn out to be quite small.  Or maybe it is insignificant.  But it is a dimension worth looking at as tools are implemented.

 

 

Dan, Mark - As a teen I had every FT album I could get my hands on, had memorized them all verbatim, and could do all the voices pretty accurately.  (Albeit with the shade of a south Florida redneck accent which added an…interesting…dimension.)  Over the years I collected a near-complete collection of FT vinyl, including in most cases one still-sealed album, tapes, most of the books, and a smattering of FT ephemera, including all the solo and outside work.  (Phil Austin's "Tales of the Old Detective" is priceless!)  My prize FT collectible is a Firesign/Allan Handelman CD that I produced while working for East Coast Live/Rock Talk, in which I rolled tape during the commercial breaks and captured the off-air discussion then dropped out the commercials and stitched this in.  A limited edition of those were sold on MP3.com.  Sadly, I have forgotten much of the dialog other than the most memorable lines.

 

Ghosts?  Methought you spoke of *goats* upon the battlement!

 

Neeeeeeeigh.

 

All FT replies, off-list please.

 

Kind regards,

-- T.Rob

 

T.Robert Wyatt, Managing partner

IoPT Consulting, LLC

+1 704-443-TROB (8762) Voice/Text

+44 (0) 8714 089 546  Voice

https://ioptconsulting.com

https://twitter.com/tdotrob

 

From: Shannon Clark [mailto: ]
Sent: Tuesday, December 16, 2014 21:51 PM
To: T.Rob
Cc: ProjectVRM list
Subject: Re: [projectvrm] OK, I give up. Marketers can do what they want.

 

Most folks buying it knew what they were getting and got the joke. The folks behind Cards Against Humanity do something similar every year. 

 

Shannon

Sent from my iPhone

On Dec 16, 2014, at 5:36 PM, T.Rob < "> > wrote:

"To protest Black Friday, makers of the popular party game Cards Against Humanity removed all of their products from their online store on the day after Thanksgiving — instead offering only a box of what they said was actual “bullsh*t” for $6. Despite the fact that it was made quite clear that customers were literally just buying sh*t — Cards Against Humanity founder Max Temkin tweeted “if you buy the poop expecting it to be something else that’s not poop, you’re actually buying a valuable life lesson for $6″ — the boxes of sh*t sold out by day’s end. All 30,000 of them, grossing Cards Against Humanity $180,000."

 

"And now as the boxes of poop have come rolling in over the past week, people are somehow still surprised that their packages actually just contain sh*t, as promised."

 

http://iopt.us/1sy9f6C

http://uproxx.com/webculture/2014/12/people-who-bought-boxes-of-sht-from-cards-against-humanity-were-actually-surprised-to-receive-sht/

 

Here's a case where the advertising could not have been more truthful and yet people bought the product fully expecting they would receive something else.  They didn't even know what, exactly.  Apparently, it didn't matter.

 

Tonight I have 30,000 new reasons to reconsider all my arguments on behalf of VRM, privacy, whatever.  Tonight I'm prepared to believe that the majority of people would lack the interest, the means and the competence to use a pencil sharpener.  Tonight I'm prepared to believe there are some people so far gone that tracking them both online and offline cannot confer anything other than a net benefit in their lives because they have no place to go but up.

 

I'm sure it will wear off tomorrow.  In the meantime, please enjoy this brief moment of simulated acid trip as my holiday gift:

 

Mrs. Presky: "Er....ahhhhh....I'll take the bag."

 

Announcer: "You mean your gonna trade this four foot cube of 18 carrot Swiss Bouillon and the snake knives, Mrs. Presky, all for that little bag ???"

 

Mrs. Presky: "Yes!"

 

Announcer: "Well alllllright!! Open it up!!"

 

Mrs. Presky: "Why. . why . . this is a bag of shit!"

 

Announcer: "But it's really GREAT shit, Mrs Presky."

 

-- Firesign Theatre, Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers

 

<image001.png>

 

Kind regards,

-- T.Rob

 

T.Robert Wyatt, Managing partner

IoPT Consulting, LLC

+1 704-443-TROB (8762) Voice/Text

+44 (0) 8714 089 546  Voice

https://ioptconsulting.com

https://twitter.com/tdotrob