MARKETING, THE PROMOTION, A MUST-DO

     Ever since people that had something to sell was marketing. 

     
     To do marketing is to meet the needs of the consumers and encourage them to come back and buy again. In the past in order to attract or to make your surroundings pay attention to what you were selling, yelling the good features of the product would seem obvious and normal. And yet it is already a marketing technic, a way to promote the product. With the price, the added value on it, its uniqueness, its technicity, or even its freshness (in a case of a fish), communication is the key. Actually, it is the key to make customers understand what kind of service they are going to pay for. Therefore, the image of your brand product needs to be well perceived and remembered because it is the design of the brand, its logo that will communicate afterwards the quality and the originality of your product.

    During the Middle Age in France a marketing technic was created with the support of a science: the heraldry.  A language more than a science which helped the knights to distinguish themselves thanks to a codification of colors and shapes that create what we call escutcheon or coats of arms.

So it was a method of identification at first, then it gave a true property title to the knights, lords and nobles and also to the lands or the regions where they came from.

The understanding and the perception of the arm coats combined the legal person and the identity of its owner. As a proof the seals used on some letters at that time.

Moreover, in most cases these coats of arms became a legacy and are passed down generations after generations. An endless marketing promotion loop!

       Nowadays influence of heraldry can be seen on the logos of some brands. As examples of sigils or coats of arms branded nowadays we can relate with Ferrari, Porsche, Alpha Romeo (cars). Even at the university level for example the BDE at the University of Oxford markets goodies with their arm coats on it (cloths and more). Even “le Président”, the French brand presents 2 escutcheons (cheese). Under certain conditions creating your own coat of arms is possible too. 

For a statement that further underlines the importance of codes, symbols and images in the marketing communication, I would like to introduce my personal experience regarding promotion and the use of a fiction. An usual image for an usual product…

      When I was abroad as an exchange student in Yokohama in Japan, I usually went grocery shopping. One day I discovered in one Don Quijote department store in the hygienic products area, that manga characters were displayed on bottles of body wash. The creators of this body wash used 5 Hokuto no Ken’s characters among the most iconic: Kenshiro (known in France as Ken le Surivant), Raoh, Toki, Souther and Yuria . It might not ring a bell to you but for a 30-year-old-Japanese male or woman and above who grew up with stories of these characters the impact is really strong. Thanks to the marketing knowledge I gained during this 1^st year of Master I realize how cunning this targeting strategy used by Japanese sellers is. They pinpointed this segment of population as the main potential customer by using this manga reference.

After I looked into it, a pharmaceutical company named Rohto specialized in cleansing products, everything related to the use of cosmetics for body care, was behind this 80’s wave I felt back there.

 Later on I saw a Japanese commercial for this product on TV broadcasting an actor using the fighting style of the North Star “ATATATATATAWOUATAA…You don’t know it, but you are already fresh”. Really funny because as the manga depicts the context, it is a post-apocalyptic world so finding clear water and even to have the luxury to wash oneself is really something !

       As technology and communication device breakthroughs emerged, marketers had to adapt and widen their field of application. In our consumer society new products need communication strategy. Promotions through advertising on TV but also on the streets with billboards above the roads or posters at bus stops, in big panels or in subway stations work and nobody can argue with that. However nowadays since the Internet takes a major part in our daily life with the eruption of the fibre-optic network and low price phone contract other technics appeared with Web marketing. Short videos on web social media or Instagram models called influencer taking photo shoot wearing cloth products have become ways to promote. So the notion of communication of a brand based on iconic symbols are assets for marketing.  What could  appear next… ?

LAYEB H.