Money Grows On Grapevines

BY Diana Jenkins

Pssst… Have you heard? Word of mouth is the new black. Pass it on. That sound you hear is the sound of cash registers everywhere ringing up sales off the back of you, me, and everybody else, and the work we do every day that we don’t ever get paid for. Power to the people, perhaps, or are we just the gullible lemmings leaping off an ever more precipitous consumer mountain?

Think about CROCS. (I’ll keep putting the brand name in capital letters. That way, it will stand out, and hence enter your subconscious subliminally… see how easy it is?) Why are people wearing them? And why are they doing so in such huge numbers? CROCS have currently arrested the rise (and rise) of the Havaiana thong, whose own domination in recent years requires some attention. I never saw a single advertisement for Havaianas, but one day, they were everywhere. Havaianas (see how I keep repeating the brand name?), in those attractive, bold primary colours, swiftly delivered the humble thong from the Three Plugger Hall of Shame straight into mainstream acceptance in the Centre of Cool. The same thing has happened with those devastatingly hideous CROCS. Friends of otherwise impeccable taste stare fondly down at their absurdly attired feet and say, without fail: “They’re just so comfortable.”

They’re just so comfortable. This is, verbatim, the CROCS mantra. This is the “cheap talk” that earns big, big bucks for the manufacturer. This is word of mouth in action. This is sales (not to say fool’s) gold. I look at my friends, then I look down at their ugly plastic shoes, and all I want to say in response is my own mantra: “You’re just so suckered.”

Cheap talk is basically buzz. If PR, marketing, and spin gurus can just get the consumers to do the talking, their work here is done. It’s a strange and disconcerting thing. The very fact of the media savvy consumer has turned that same consumer into a bleating salesperson par excellence. People know about advertising. They know about product placement. They know about cash for comment. They know about promotions, and freebies, and goodie bags. These days, we’re all so suspicious of everything we’re told, and every way we’re told it, that we now rely so much more on each other for our information. “A friend of mine had a pair and I tried them on.” “A friend told me this brand was excellent value for money.” “My mother has always used them.” “My colleague brought one in and showed me.” “I hope you don’t mind, but I noticed you had one in your bathroom. What’s it like?” “I bought one for myself and I thought I’d get you one, too.”

Even the phrase ‘guerrilla marketing’ says something of the bloody trench warfare of the modern day sales scene. First, people don’t like to say the word ‘sales’ in relation to anything anymore. It’s got a bad vibe around it that is the precise opposite of great buzz. But the truth is that everything that requires marketing depends on sales, even when no money changes hands. Second, it is the new and constantly evolving job of guerrilla marketing to tap into your world, your social and economic milieu, without your knowing what they’re doing. It requires enormous stealth and skill to do this well, for the simple fact that the average consumer is now an above-average expert on sales and media manipulation.

A friend of mine used to share a flat with the marketing manager of a coffee producer. Naturally, it was the brand of coffee they drank at home. And it only takes one person – me, in this case – to ask what brand of coffee they’re drinking, for a possible new purchaser to wander into view. Just by the simple, seemingly innocuous act of accepting a cup of coffee at a friend’s house, I had walked straight onto a stage set up for a sale. It’s a subtle process, yes, but unmistakable, and all the more powerful for its namelessness.

Last year while working for a magazine on an extended freelance assignment, I brought a copy of the latest issue home each week. I’d leave them in the bathroom for my husband and visitors to flip through, and I know they did because they’d often emerge wanting to talk about what new horror some celebrity or other was doing/wearing/shagging. At the time, some of my friends started buying the magazine simply because I was working for it. And by leaving copies in one of the most heavily trafficked rooms of my apartment, I did my small bit to promote the mag and extend its reach.

I always look at what people are reading on public transport. Always. And if I were a guerrilla marketer, I would be swift to implement a campaign that made the most of people like me. If, on some psychic level, I like the look of someone, and they’re reading a magazine or book that also catches my eye, there’s no question in my mind that the chances of my seeking out that same magazine or book increase. I have also asked perfect strangers outright where they acquired something – some piece of apparel or trinket or food or whatever it was that caught my eye – before going looking for one myself. That’s soft marketing, and it sells.

There is an art to knowing who wants your product, your information, and your skills. And then there is an art to finding them. But perhaps the new art lies in persuading them by proxy that you have something they need. Look, Mum, no hands…

Is it paranoid to believe that there are people sitting around with vast sheets of butcher’s paper, constantly brainstorming new, sneaky ways to part us from our cash? Or is this mutant grapevine just another sign that the consumer jungle is Darwinian in character, and only the fittest will survive?