Well, it’s not enough that I coin up the experimental marketing term, I came up with another silly one. Hypocrisy marketing… What is that? Well in this world of mass media, sometimes it is good to have a good standing with the media. So what does having a good media relationship got to do with marketing at all? Well first of all, the media is a third party, meaning that people often believe third, fourth, fifth, and so on party better than the first party… Confused? Well, so do I.

First party off course is the brand principle itself, by doing marketing effort, it is trying to portray a good image of itself and are trying to sell something to the audience. The second party is a brand ambassador, a person which the principle uses as a medium to sell more products because usually people are suckers for believing other people than the principle itself. However, even though people are suckers for this kind of things, they are not stupid either. Off course, people recognized the brand ambassador has connection with the principle and thus his/her arguments are not valid enough to push sales more. However, a third party, or usually the media, are portrayed as independent, therefore more believable than first or second party.

Case in point, which would you believe, your friend or a stranger talking on the television? Well, I’ll be damn if you believe straightaway some stranger talking on the media; just like that college professor who got swindled by a scam, and he lost US$140K because of it. People lies, and marketers are the worst kind of liars, but off course out of self defense they will say not saying the truth is not lying… But still, for me, not telling the truth = lying. So psychologically, people will resort to whomever the closest person for telling the truth, for a second opinion. But in the professional world, can we rely on just friends? Because the more source of information we use, the valid the data is (according to statistic).

The media is the best third party medium around that displays non sided news, or is it? Well, this is where hypocrisy marketing came in and blows some dirt on to the media itself. Good media relationship, is just that, to garner favorable write up from the journalist/editor which the principle chooses to befriend with. When your product is a bad, without good media relationship, your product is bad, period. But if you have a good relationship with the media, your bad product suddenly became something like… A jewel in the rough, or unpolished gem stone, or it could be better in the future, any phrase that softens the blow to the product itself.

Just like a news, when a principle does not have a good media relationship and there’s a horrible accident, most often the principle will be at blamed. For example, when Suzuki launches SX-4 in Indonesia, there are 2(two) units that tumbles upside down because of a driver error. How the hell it did not get into the news is beyond me, really… There are multiple cameras and I believe the event was filmed by a local news channel.

Does the above example indicates good media relationship? I do not know personally. But good media relationship can be seen most often on an IT/end-user products magazine. The reviewers/editors are often invited to lavish lunch/dinner/any occasion to win the favor for their particular brand. Some marketing staffs are even assigned specifically to the media to maintain good relationship, with unlimited budget to “entertain” the media staff to garner favorable reviews.

This kind of act really disgust me… If you have a good product, why would you need to even go far to have a good media relation? A good media relation is important, but in my lifetime I had saw disgusting practices done by the principles to “entertain” the media so lavishly, the media staffs always says nice words for the brand principle and say otherwise to their competitors.

I am no saint, I am a sinner, but assigning marketing effort to buy a review is just beyond me.

 Whew… Wow, I really did blow some steam away… It seems that I’m a bit upset about everything… Well, I try to make the entry more make sense sometimes this weekend if I’m cool enough.