Transparency is an Internet Buzz word these days. Any curious kid with access to a search engine can price shop, product compare, and peruse quailty reviews with a few clicks. All this leads some to believe the Internet has somehow empowered the consumer, putting them in charge of finding the best of whatever they want for the best price. Any lies will be routed by the power of the social media! All false promises will be exposed! The masses will not rest until their voices are heard! The truly democratic media has arrived.
But anyone who’s lived in a democracy knows it has very little to do with transparency. Transparency is a myth. Bias is ubiquitous. Just read Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell. Decisions are frequently the result of a steady exposure to whatever cultural cocktail makes up your daily diet of sight, sound, taste and touch. You know what you know because somebody told it to you. Maybe not in words, but your ideas were communicated to you by your environment in some capacity. Blonde is beautiful. Tall is powerful. Red is tasty.
What does this mean? Consumers are culturally biased. They are not necessarily in control of what they think. Consumers believe what sounds right, and the facts, the multitude of facts found via the Internet, can usually agree with them, in sight and sound if not in words. Because as much as consumers online may value transparency, its the packaging that they buy.
Let me explain. One of the most ubiquitous biases in all attractive Western media these days is the athlete–the lean, sculpted, healthy body dedicated to the pursuit of sport. In the age of the sedentary office lifestyle, practicing sport is a passionate past-time that is reflected in any successful advertising campaign. Think of the popular Mazda6 campaign only two months ago. Acrobats flipping and flying around a sexy speeding car. As a product, a car may be far from aerobic (consumers can’t burn calories pressing a gas peddle). But the fastest selling cars in all the European markets are the “sportiest”.
A car can be efficient, economic, eco-friendly (another contradiction in cultural understanding) and rank high in consumer-reviewed online blogs, but it is the “sporty” vehicle that draws the consumer’s eye and subsequent word of mouth. Yes, we even describe it to each other in our cultural lexicon. The Fiat drives like a sports car. The Kia c’eed has a “sporty wagon” to carry all the buyer’s potential athletic equipment (rather than groceries).
Logically, consumers know that not since the Flintstones have cars required athletic stamina, but our subconscious is so inundated with the importance of sport that we will gravitate towards the illusion. Marketeers are quick to pick up on this, photographing and filming car ads the same way sports reporters and action films shoot matches or breathtaking stunts. Of course successful marketers use the social web to corroborate with consumers and then everyone should get what they want…