Maybe if I'm witty enough you'll want to buy my blog?

Happy Thursday!

Using my Twitter account, I looked up a local company which I like and actually buy from fairly regularly: Herb Pharm. If anyone is not familiar with Herb Pharm, they are an herbal tincture company (ie. they make medicinal plant extracts, usually in alcohol). I have personally known people who worked there and never heard anything but amazing things about the people who run it and their processes. I thought they would be good to analyze because of three things: 1) although we view successful companies as usually having litle integrity, herb pharm appears to have a healthy dose of it but is still highly successful. There is obviously some serious marketing going on because they have outcompeted all the other tincture companies, winning the most prominent spots not only in health food stores, but even regular grocery stores like Fred Meyer. 2) I am well trained in herbalism, so am aware of its nuances. Tinctures are the most convenient and shelf-stable preparations for plants. For many plants, they are also the strongest and most effective. For other plants, they are much less effective than water extracts (or in some cases, even eating the plants). Herb Pharm still makes tinctures of many of these plants, such as nettle, reishi, and turmeric, because they are popular and convenient for the consumer. 3) regulations forbid that herbs and other supplements claim to treat, prevent, or cure any disease. The bottles only mention very vague uses (usually just a body system) rather than actually giving the user much of an inkling of what to use it for. Most products have the luxury of being able to extoll all of their supposed virtues. Herb Pharm has to cater to people who already wants their products, say "you should buy our products because you like us!," and hope that nobody kills themselves. (Not that that would be likely, but you never know)

They try to remedy some of this on their website (so not social media) by talking about plants in as much depth as they can get away with in their blog. Then they talk about all of their practices and every little detail about their business model. A place on the internet dedicated exactly to them, all about them.

Their Twitter is a little different. In fact, I didn't see a single picture of a tincture bottle there. I saw people and I saw plants. Specifically, when I saw people, they were with plants. Herb Pharm has non-descript, honestly not especially attractive, expensive little tincture bottles (if you take the herbs at their normal doses, then taken daily, you will have taken the contents of one bottle within a week or so, depending on the herb. Echinacea I've downed in a matter of days, when needed.) If you're following Herb Pharm on twitter, or any social media, they're no longer trying to convince you to buy their product - you probably already have. They are reminding you that each of those little bottles has a story - a human story, a plant story, a story of mindful harvesting, a changing the world one bottle at a time story. They're inspiring you to keep up your journey with herbs - and likely buy some of their product along the way (the fact that it's at my local grocery store here in Albany is seriously convenient if I'm ever in a pinch and really need something, even though I personally could grow/forage and make preparations I'd feel better about). But how can you not smile at the thought when you see a picture paired with the caption, "Mark gently massages the root ball of a Lavender start before tucking the plant in the soil for the growing season." Gently massages? Tucking in? What beautiful euphemisms for ripping apart the root ball of a plant before burying it.

I think this campaign is very effective because the target audience is people who are mildly interested in to even well-versed in herbal medicine. They are Oregonians (mostly - we actually even had Herb Pharm tinctures at my local co-op in Indianapolis - so 3,000 miles away) who are still part of the back to Earth movement, likely will eat food which is organic, are concerned with sustainability and other environmental issues. We want to see beautiful gardens worked by people with vision. I think the second half of the efficacy of the campaign is not just that it effectively reaches the target audience, but that is comes there from a genuine place. Coca Cola doesn't care about connection and togetherness, they care about you buying a Coke with your name on it. Dawn doesn't care about wildlife, or they wouldn't have been a dish liquid company. Honey Nut Cheerios does not care about honey bees, or they wouldn't use pesticides which harm them. Herb Pharm, on the other hand, does care about the legacy of herbal medicine, the quality of their products, and the sustainability of their operation. Their success is rooted in truth, even if that truth has a marketing division.

Here is their Twitter so you can see all the pretty pictures: https://twitter.com/herbpharmoregon

If I were the product manager, I would recommend that they market to naturopaths and, if they're feeling gutsy, MDs. They may already do so - I know that they supply herbal education programs with their tinctures, such as the one which I attended in Portland. I would recommend that their label not be such a garish mustard, though it seems to be working anyway.

TOPIC 2: PERSUASIVE TECHNIQUES 

Advert 1: WORKS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShwRCbnw6Sk

 

Ok, ok, I know, it's a little "cheesy," but you have to forgive me; I don't watch TV. Of course, I am exposed to ads, but mainly flipping as fast as I can through them to get to my youtube video or otherwise tuning them out. Nothing really came to mind, so I thought of the ads I liked back when I was a kid (you know, back when having a jingle was considered the ultimate marketing strategy).

1. In this ad, a cute little kid sings a blues song about macaroni. She says that if her dad wants to make her happy, he'd better get her Kraft mac n cheese. Of course, that is a very bratty thing to say, but her singing-dancing-smiling self and the pictures of delicious mac n cheese are enough to make any kid not really notice that. This one also mentions a new kind with ABCs. Maybe parents are supposed to think this makes it an educational food. The part which stands out of course is the jingle, which sticks in your head. I always remembered, and sometimes even would sing, the version that the dude with the saxophone and the louis armstrong type voice would do, but I couldn't find them.

2. The target audience has to somewhat be parents of younger children, since they are doing the buying, but I think more-so it is the children themselves. The image of a house made of furniture that looks like cheese wedges and the silly jingle appeals to kids. This is in line with their other commercials, which included dinosaurs, the flintstones, etc...anything which they could feasibly put in a fountain of cheese.

3. Persuasive Techniques: 

a.) Plain folks Pitch: everyday families with everyday kids on an everyday budget. You can give your kid something they will love - cheap, fast, easy! It is hard to say who that's more appealign for - the parents or the kids.

b.) irritation advertising: ok, this might be accidental, but any jingle played ad nauseum is going to get, well, irritating. That doesn't mean that it won't stay in your head though. It might not even be the TV itself, but your kids singing the jingle, irritating you all the way to the grocery store.

c.) association/stereotype: i put these together because it is a bit of a chicken or the egg thing. This is associating dads as the "fun" parent, so the kid knows that when mom is away and its just her and dad, she can get mac n cheese (maybe also implying that dad is lazy and wants to make the easy meal). Adults oten already hold some of these stereotypes, so get them strengthened when TV programs present them as universal realities. Kids make new assocations (maybe they had never thought of dad as the mac n cheese parent til now, but now they're going to try it out), so the stereotype lives on.

4.) These techniques worked because they make sense. Kraft is not trying to use snob appeal because it isn't a high quality product. I think they DO have a line of supposedly more "gourmet" products, but we all know what a block of kraft cheese looks like. None of their higher end products outsell the original thing in its little blue box (except maybe shells and cheese - I would dream about the lucky times I got to get the shells and cheese instead of the powder and noodles - what opulence!) The plain folks pitch fits the product. Jingles fit children (who rarely tire of anything, even the "song that never ends") and the era. And associations/stereotypes...well, it is hard to tell how well they work across the board, but for people who already agree with them, yes, they work.

Advert 2: DUD

1. In this Tidy Cats ad, the cat is having a hard time finding his little box because he can't smell it
2. The target audience is cat owners
3. Persuasive techniques: 
   a.) "Famous-person testimonial" ok, this is a bit of a stretch, but in American eyes, all cats are famous people. Have you seen the internet? Portlandia had a "marketing campaign" for art of "put a bird on it." That may work for the more artistically cultured, but for the masses, put a cat on it.
   b.) Bandwagon effect: "Cats everywhere are having a hard time smelling their litter boxes" implies that many people are already on this wagon and are having...desirable?...results
   
   
   4. Ultimately, this is one of the dumbest advertisements I've seen. I am a cat owner and have lived in multicat households before. This ad gets two things very, very wrong. 1- cat's don't find their litter box by smelling it. In fact, if their litter box is full, they are more likely to go elsewhere. 2 - if they did find it by smelling it, why on earth would you want them to have a hard time with this??? The image of a cat "holding it," on the verge of letting loose on the floor, is a horrible thought which most cat owners avoid at all costs.