The Marketing taint

Considering what Abhijit Dasgupta states as 'consumer oriented copy', helps decipher why at times consumers don't want, what you think they want. Instead they want you to give them whatever it is you came up with. And that's without asking them what they wanted. It also goes to reveal why the latter's better.

Take 'News' for example. News channels by choice can either churn out 'consumer oriented copy' or they can belt out analysis that's not 'diluted' by any marketing imperatives. The latter's bound to work in the long run because the latter's 'original', without 'taint'. The former is 'marketing-tainted', and so isn't original, and is also up for grabs when it comes to imitations. That is, along comes another channel that too provides consumer-oriented copy and so finds itself belting out 'news' that's uncannily similar to the earlier consumer-driven channel.

But note, this doesn't mean that being original requires abandoning study of consumer needs/wants. It only means that consumers don't always tell you what they want. In fact what they tell you is what they don't want. They just don't know it, yet. You, need to spot the difference.

Note Abhijit: 'It is these managers like Buchanan and Jardine and various corporate honchos who make life miserable and complicated for the simply talented. I remember when we were greenhorns in the profession, we had an editor who had no MBA degree but one third eye which we later understood was vision: even when he was drunk up to his eyeballs, I remember him banging out page after page of sheer typed disaster for the corrupt netas of his day which took the newspaper to dizzying heights or may be, feel him slither behind you with the whiff of an alcoholic snort and snatch the page being made on the block, tear it up and redesign the same page with pen and paper with headlines and copy which made us look like pygmies. No manager in these so-called days of MBA journalism and fawning non-editors with a feel for only "feel-good" consumer-oriented copy have ever made me feel so foolish and inadequate.'