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Use of Student Plants to Pitch Products Rising
theodp wrote to mention a Seattle PI article about software and niche companies using college-age hucksters to get the word about their product out. From the article: "Microsoft is among a growing number of companies seeking to reach the elusive but critical college market by hiring students to be ambassadors -- or, in more traditional terms, door-to-door salesmen. In an age when the college demographic is no longer easily reached by television, radio or newspapers -- as TiVo, satellite radio, iPods and the Internet crowd out the traditional advertising venues -- a microindustry of campus marketing has emerged. Niche firms have sprung up to act as recruiters of students, who then market products on campus for companies such as Microsoft, JetBlue Airways, The Cartoon Network and Victoria's Secret."
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
I don't mean to be rude, but don't you think the problem might be your attitude? You're referring to people as "the slobbering masses." I think you'd do better if you tried not insulting the people you're reaching out to.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
A guy goes into a small business convention and gets roped in by some huckster trying to get him into a Multilevel Marketing company. After sitting through his lecture about how great the opportunity is, how it's can't miss, how he can just get everyone around him to buy the company's crap at outrageous prices, and there isn't much investment, the guy gets asked "Come on! What have you got to lose?"
His answer: "All my friends".
"Push marketing" types, also known as salesmen, keep trying to push crap products onto people. But generally, good products sell themselves.
Here at the University of Florida I've seen the Microsoft ones. They're heavily promoting OneNote, figuring college students probably would have use of note-taking software. Except that most people don't go to class, ergo they don't take notes, and those that do generally buy the note packets from local copy stores (professors put all of their slides or outlines of all of the lectures together and the stores print and bind them). There's no need for OneNote when you have the slides on paper.
They also wrote a URL for how to download a free trial in sidewalk chalk all over campus, which is technically regarded as graffiti and as such is against campus rules. Fortunately a combination of UPD and the outer bands of Tropical Storm Tammy took care of that. I haven't seen them since.
This is called Astroturf. (movements that look their grassroots, but in reality are sponsored by a company).
Microsoft does make signifigant student discounts, though they certain could make more, Office is still quite expensive for those of us who are broke.
I'd love to see *ADOBE* really cut their prices for students... God forbid an graphic design student actually want to buy a copy of Photoshop...
MoM++ - A Classic Expanded - [Master of Magic 1.5]
http://mompp.sourceforge.net/
If people only bought things that were of high quality and good value for money that they actually needed, the world economy would grind to a halt.
Consumer based economies rely that most of the money that people earn will be spent, thus keeping allowing more things to be produced, employing more people and round and round we go. Of course, the government takes a chunk of every dollar when its earned and then again when its spent. Its fun to watch how much of a dollar goes to the goverment once its been spent and earned a couple of times.
Times have changed since your Granpa's day. Globalisation means that this cycle is undergoing a readjustment.
Take Wal*Mart for example. Everybody wants goods at the cheapest price, but locals want living wages. The net effect is that manufacturing is moved off-shore to produce cheaper goods that local people can buy, but as they is now less money in the local economy, there are few jobs, meaning on average have less money to spend, meaning they want even cheaper goods. There are some economists who predict that Wal*Mart will cause the biggest change in US standards of living in the history of the country.
The trick is, of course, that we are simply shifting to a new equilibrium. If nobody has money to buy goods, Wal*Mart will suffer, so they won't let its prices drop too far. Eventually prices will stabilize to a level where local people and local industry will live in harmony with outsourcing to cheaper countries. Notably, these cheaper countries will slowly become less cheaper. Outsourced and Local wages will eventually meet in the middle (in some industries, they already have).
I know many of us have been bitten by out-sourcing to India, but we (as a society) have shown time and again that, despite all the lip-service, saving that few dollars on the cost of weekly tinned food bill is more important that local jobs.
You can't have the benefits of globalisation without the downsides - its part and parcel of the same model.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
I think there's a difference between "unreasonably low prices" and "prices students can afford".
Clearly, if they have to be that low for students to buy the stuff, there's a reason for lowering prices. Unless they're making a huge loss on every sale.
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.