PERSONALIZED ADVERTISEMENT AGENCY (PAA) – a bit of science fiction In this corporatized contemporary life, since advertisement and marketing have become a part of ALL life, and not just commercial life, people are coming up with innovative ways of advertising every day. Recently I was visualizing a weird, out-of-the-box approach to advertising. Here it goes. It’s called Personalized Advertisement Agency or PAA. The underlying principle of PAA is as follows. If a billboard, a pamphlet or a TV commercial asks you to buy a product, you’d take it with a pinch of salt. But if a friend, who is a user of the product, says it, you’d take it more seriously and probably even buy the product since you trust your friend. Now imagine that the friend is actually bought out, unbeknownst to you, and is actually a “salesman in friend’s clothing”. Next imagine the same thing happening on a large scale, through a large network of “sales-friends” controlled by well-established PAAs operating remotely and invisibly! Scary? Non-digestible? Let me explain … Let’s consider the possible stages of PAA’s origins and evolution. The PAA head (PAAH) must be a chap who has a natural knack for networking. He must be a smooth talker, a party animal, an inveterate broker, a fellow who can gauge the needs and more importantly weaknesses of a fellow human being in a single glance. Now assume that this PAAH wants to start a PAA. Since the whole operation rides over an established network of friendship and trust, it makes eminent sense to recruit the workforce of PAA from the society of young people, say, college students. Young people form friendships easily and are also the most gullible. Now the PAAH begins to look for an entry point into an educational institution. The PAAH himself may be an older chap with no direct connections with a college or a univ. So what’s the best way to enter? Catch hold of party animals among students, like e.g., those who have largest number of friends in fb? Or those who are present in every popular social event. Now these first picks, the forerunners must be groomed by the PAAH, a priori, in the traditions of PAA. How to make a lot of friends in a short time? How to win their trust? How to quietly broach the topic of various products in a casual conversation? How to demonstrate products to a trusting, caring and unsuspecting community of friends? and so on. Therefore the first recruits, the PAAH-kids, must also be perfect actors, party animals and smooth talkers themselves. These first recruits will become seeds around which PAA-local (or PAAL) networks form by a process of social nucleation. The PAALs also evolve and consolidate over time. Every time they go out to eat, every movie they watch together, every joke they share, every picnic they go to strengthens their bonding. They are now all set to penetrate an unsuspecting populace and begin their insidious, invisible work of advertising products. How exactly does this product pushing work? Some gedanken experiments - a. A chap who is into tennis needs to peddle this new brand of racket (no pun intended!). This chap takes his brand of racket to a group of his tennis friends. He raves about it on and on, day after day, until a few of them buy it. b. Or this other chap needs to push jeans of a certain brand. He wears it day in and day out, flaunting it to his friends, stooping at the right times so that the friends get to glimpse the brand tag on the rear. Sooner or later there will be purchases. (But then how does a PAA sell underwear? No clue! Any ideas?) Now one can think of other dimensions of this PAA activity. Imagine the possibilities when a person, the PAAH, has access to a large number of young malleable minds, ready to do his command, for a small price. Once the PAA grows in membership, small parts of it can be directed towards other purposes. It’s a kind of Corporate Social ResPAAnsibility!!! One possibility – a. Suppose some devout person wants to conduct a large scale “bhajan.” Even with offerings of prasadam etc people may not show up in good number. So the Bhajan Head (or BhaH for short) calls up the PAAH, who in turn supplies a gang of well-dressed, well-behaved, pious youth who will willingly join the bhajan and make it a big success. I wonder if PAAs really exist out there! Probably not. But you never know. What is sci-fi today, might become a sci-fact tomorrow. As for me, it has become a PAAstime these days, to conjure up vague scenarios, “Castle-like”, and annoy my super-tolerant FB-friends! PS1: PAA could be an excellent subject for a novel, youth-oriented film. I can’t think of a better director than “Kris” who is good at making offbeat movies like Gamyam and Vedam. PS2: Obviously I’m not endorsing a PAA kind of approach to advertisement. The undercurrent of sarcasm must be too obvious. Because the most precious thing in human relationships is TRUST. Anything that breaches it must be treated as evil.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 13:45:15 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015