Marketing: The Other Side of Technique

I bought an Ipad Air today to help with some diagrammatic needs for my PhD; drawing diagrams for brainstorming purposes with multiple shapes and arrows using a mouse and keyboard is torture. I find reasons to spend money to feel better, believing a tool will service my ends and propel my creativity and progress like the ads promise. Boy do I want that.

The first Apple attendant offered help and noticed my perusing, saying “Continue exploring and wave to us when you need help.” This is a marketing technique. The technique of “the appearance of independence in choice and control over one’s exploration and decision making.” Things done for reasons other than the thing itself often contain an underlying motive. To leave me exploring because it creates comfort, instead of because one truly wishes I explore demonstrates that underlying motive. Fostering a sense of trust helps market the product at the final stages of purchase, when the fool has already been convinced to walk all the way from home to the store, and is now at the crucial moment of paying for a material object with time stored as money (another object).

When a service member “lets you explore”, they’re desiring to plant a seed of emotional comfort – like kindness and warmth – by using (and giving you) space. I may sound like the grumpy old dad but why should I enjoy being treated pleasantly only because I’m about to pay for something you want me to buy? I feel this to be quite devilish. To the toilet, I say.

Soon after came salesman Mr. #2. No salesman wants to appear as such, but a thin veil is nevertheless a veil, and a veil helps us notice some truth is being masked.

He began his shtick and frankly he was only barely bearable. In the middle of our talk, his serpentine co-worker slid up behind him to hiss drivel into his ear. Within seconds Mr. #2 offered us a once in a lifetime experience. “Since we’re talking about building dreams and creativity, how about a free-ninety-nine 30-minute test of Apple Vision?”. He stuttered as this sewage eeked its way out of his mouth because no person could utter such things and truly hold their integrity at the same time.

Trying something is always free – none are charged to test drive – thus again the thinly veiled technique of manipulation to send my attention to another product. Why? All companies want are to have the time of your senses. Your senses are the primary targets for marketing as its the only way to trigger emotions at a distance. See a product in action, smell a nearby bakery, hear a speaker set, test taste a food article, touch a couch. Once your senses are activated, so is your mind and memory. That’s why you finally start to fantasize about the product, get to a peak desire obsession, then decide to make the thought into a reality and buy the damn thing.

His (Apple’s) feeble attempt was in hopes that A) I may consider purchasing Apple Vision later because I could not forget it, and B) I may speak and inspire (market) about it to others. I quickly brushed away the offer. My mind cannot be sold that easily. It makes me terribly sick to see how these manipulation techniques are used under the guise of “an opportunity to try something great”, just like taste testing frozen pizza is meant to have you later purchase it.

That’s not to say there are no beneficial marketing techniques or strategies, I deem them somewhat more acceptable if a product is related to wellbeing and health. However making attempts to trigger the pressure points of the mind through marketing techniques is odd and downright unacceptable. How can we both accept a wish for mental peace, clarity, and equanimity and pursue it our entire lives, when we also accept and push marketing? I believe that to be highly unexplainable. Almost similar to wishing to breathe while holding your breath. Back to Mr. #2.

To show the awesome magnetic strength between the Apple Pencil Pro and the iPad, Mr. #2, like a true snake-oil salesman who drinks his own creation and shits his pants, knocked and punched the iPad. Poetically, the pencil went flying in his failed demonstration. Two tools.

I said “No Apple Care please” (notice the word choice; don’t you just want mommy to hug and care for you?), to which Mr. #2 responded “Well what will you do without Apple Care?” I responded, “I’ll do what you did and punch the screen.” Don’t try redirecting me to an explanation of the reasoning behind my choice, you worm.

What does it matter to Apple or Mr. #2 if I break the device and have to pay for a new one? Wouldn’t it actually benefit Apple if I paid for a full new product because it fell on the floor? Well what happens if I break my iPad and can’t afford a new one, then I’m using one less Apple product, aren’t I? What additionally benefits Apple is a warranty purchase because most won’t ever use it; sound like an insurance company to you? In 2021 Apple sold over $8 billion in AppleCare services, so don’t give me this feigned look of concern when I don’t purchase the service. Let me screw myself on my own terms.

Several other silly things were said and done, and I grew tired of our Mr. #2.

We had a mediocre appearance of a conversation. Shortly after, I purchased the damn thing, wanting out as quickly as possible. My girlfriend took a photo of me and I quipped, “What are we, marketing this moment?” to which Mr. #2 responded “Do you think a post of you holding an iPad is going to help us sell?” – yes it could if I weren’t a Montreal nobody (product placement is within Apple’s repertoire), and second, no I don’t want to play a larger part in furthering a one-level-removed marketing ploy for corporations (the marketing power of spreading through social media); I’m already prancing around with their logo stuck to my forehead whenever I pull out any one of the four Apple devices I carry on me at all times. My response was, “No sir, but I don’t like anything to do with this type of marketing. I don’t like being on the other end of a technique.” Doctor knocks knee, foot flies up. Idiot watches commercial, ends up with iPad.

Finally, after the long awaited purchase towards a better life was undertaken, we made the grim mistake of speaking of our personal lives. When I opened up about how myself and girlfriend met, he quickly turned his head 180* behind him to see what else of interest was flicking about. I cut the story short and as I left, with an immediate turn of heel he began with a new customer. Good, I made the purchase, I fulfilled the Goal; now I’m out of sight and mind.

When you’re marketed something, your mind is being played like a drum to ring out certain emotions, then thoughts. This is always happening anyway of course, but marketing targets the responses and thoughts of their interest through yours. When I speak to a salesperson I get the opportunity to know what it feels like to be the receptor of a technique, an illusion. I am receiving one message that is an illusion, standing for some higher and veiled truth. This is exactly what Advaitans believe this universe is; the perception of an illusion, standing for some higher reality. Once you know the perception is an illusion, you become dispassionate about it and at that precise moment it no longer controls you; and this is their definition of enlightenment.