Midterm Assignment

A Speculation on Marketing

One future product that I think has a great deal of potential is the memory pill. Especially from a marketing standpoint, the product has the potential to positively affect people’s lives and the possibility of creating a brand culture and using emotional branding means that creating an effective campaign should be relatively simple. Memory in itself is something that people often associate with family and friends. However, due to the unforeseen final use of the technology they’re starting to discover as well as its uncertain application to human brains, I will assume the product I am trying to market is a memory enhancing drug which is what they seemed to be striving for in the video.
Assuming the drug would augment your memory, people will want to see that it is not just another scam drug and that it actually works. Besides that, people will be more interested in this product if they can be persuaded that they’re forgetting valuable information every minute that they aren’t picking up their phone to order the memory pills.
The exact demographic that would be interested in this drug is unclear because no one ethnic group or gender has more problem with memory than any other. Except however, the elderly, who even without Alzheimer’s have trouble remembering things all of the time. Marketing to the elderly seems more daunting than almost any other demographic, for one because they aren’t always plugged into a television or computer like younger people are. This is all the more reason why today’s forefront of marketing techniques might prove effective.
Firstly, emotional branding is a must. To play on the emotions of those who have memory loss, know someone with memory loss, or just smoked too much pot in college, you need to inspire feelings related to what it means to remember. Nostalgia and warm, fuzzy memories should be incorporated into the campaign. Maybe a scene at a Thanksgiving table, with most of people’s faces and food blurred out to insinuate memory loss, with a catch line like: “Who wouldn’t want to remember?” or “Remember this? You can.” Being able to relate this product to nostalgic feelings like that would be beneficial in infiltrating the family life and trying to become part of it. If you can convince people that your family won’t be the same without your product, then you are going to sell that product.
Another new technique that could be incorporated to help sell this new product is across media product placement. Being able to have consumers see your product in places where they are likely to be more receptive would allow you connect on a deeper level with potential customers. Product placement will also help to associate the memory pill with a functioning, successful lifestyle, and make it something that people feel like they can’t live without. If consumers start to see the memory pill as something they need to have in their medicine cabinets, then you could even begin to form a culture around your brand.
I chose to make this particular ad because, as I said previously, the elderly will most likely be our largest demographic. It is a nostalgic scene in which some of the faces are blurred intentionally to communicate memory loss in a not so subtle way. Hopefully this will trigger feelings of sympathy or remorse in thinking about the memories that they might be forgetting because of not using our product.