Video Streaming Services

Hello fellow bloggers, my name is Chris and I am an Environmental Studies major at St. Michael's College in Vermont, with a minor in business. For our marketing class we have been tasked with creating a blog and posting in it for eight weeks. I am sick and tired of present day marking because they purposely use empathy to manipulate us into thinking we NEED to buy this. Over these next eight weeks I will jumping from industry to industry breaking down their marketing schemes and helping to educate the public on the evil trickery corporations use to make us buy things.

So maybe some of us are not sure what empathy even is. Here is the literal definition of it from the Oxford English Dictionary "the quality or power of projecting one's personality into or mentally identifying oneself with an object of contemplation, and so fully understand or appreciating it." In more simple terms it means to put yourself in someone's shoes and feel what they feel.

For this week I am targeting the video streaming industry, like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon. Let's take a look at this ad for the Amazon Fire TV.

First let's examine the four P's of marketing (product, place, price, and promotion). The ad does a good job clearly telling us that this if for the Amazon Fire TV which can stream TV shows and movies instantly. We have enough common sense to realize that since amazon is an online shopping site, which that is where we can purchase one of these, but they do not list the price here. The real problem I have with this ad is that they are using empathy to make us think how they want us to think. They came up with this term "show hole" to make it seem like we have a problem that we don't know what to watch anymore. 

This next ad is your typical ending to a movie where the guy chases the girl to ask her something important, but there is a twist. 

This is an interesting ad because they really do not explain what the product is, but rather assume that people already know what Netflix is. The empathy in this one is not as strong as the amazon one, but yet it makes me wonder "would someone actually do this?" They draw upon a classic love scene in most movies to make it comical so you will remember it. Comedy also plays a huge roll in the next ad about Hulu. 

Hulu makes it very clear in this ad that their service is free, and even though this ad is a bit dated, yes Hulu does offer some free shows. But you will get bored very quickly and want to pay the $7.99 to have access to more shows and movies. They make it very clear that we can use their service anytime and anywhere on your TV or computer. Within the ad they make jokes about how this will turn your brain to mush and then they will eat it all up. Hello! They are clearly telling you that they will rot your brain, so they can take control of you, so you keep watching more and more, so that way you keep paying them monthly. However no one sees this because the ad is funny, so the real meaning gets hidden, but hey, that's marketing.