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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."
Please confine all "clever" jokes about female college students promoting Victoria's Secret products to this thread and this thread only. Thank you.
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
Make your stuff cheaper. In all the colleges/universities. This idea is more for Microsoft, since I don't want Cartoon Network to make their shows cheaper.
I've tried marketing voting at a University, and people weren't interested. The problem was I wasn't handing out ballots with a pen, and a ballot box down the hallway. Kids will take what is pushed into their hand, especially if the pusher is attractive, and they don't stand to lose money immediately on the free product. I may not be attractive enough to market democracy, but isn't it a shame that Coke and Microsoft have that kind of appeal, but the fricken government that can take your money WITHOUT tricking you with marketing, holds no interest with the slobbering masses.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Apple's been doing this for years. 3 Large campus' in this Metro area all have CR's that work to promote Apple on campus. It's all about the viral marketing baby.
It's happening already. Check out this forum on a Purdue student messageboard. This idiot is plugging some sort of notetaking software.
What reminded me was that in the book, they have people who go up and pitch things directly to other people, and they have watches that listen for audio cues, and when they've successfully pitched someone, money is deposited into an account for them.
And while I should know this since I'm in advertising.....how do these companies make sure these kids are actually pitching? How do they know they're not just paying them to go dick around with their friends and not do anything? There's no real sort of metrics for this sort of thing nor is there much control.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
If they have to market it on commercials, its probably not worth what you have to pay for it.
... and then there is that other venerable vocation where most participants are 'working their way through college' (wink wink)
I would think that "word of mouth" advertising would work quite a bit better if your product was worth paying for? Perhaps I'm just cynical, but I am thinking that this is no better than commercials, but you can't switch the channel...this is more "in your face"
Arrggg I'm having memories of people selling household cleaning stuff door to door while "working their way through college"
Seriously, how does this help companies that already have GLOBAL brand name recognition?
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
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.
"I dream of a future where marketing has no bounds....Billboards, TV and radio commericals, fliers, even people!"
-Satan
This is called Astroturf. (movements that look their grassroots, but in reality are sponsored by a company).
Title 15, chapter 2, sec 13a of the US Code (Part of the The Clayton Antitrust Act) says it's illegal to:
to sell, or contract to sell, goods at unreasonably low prices for the purpose of destroying competition or eliminating a competitor.
I have seen Apple use a lot of college plants here at Northern Illinois where I go to school.
Not only that, but I have, myself, been approached by Apple. Last year I ran a film festival for amateur film makers, they approached me about running it again, and changing it to use only Apple products and the iMovie format.
I have heard from a couple of dissatisfied members of the Mac support group here on campus that it has become little more than a sales convention every other week when it meets.
That same group had an event on campus called "Who is your Mac Daddy", which was basically just a tupperware party for Apple products.
It's sick...
MoM++ - A Classic Expanded - [Master of Magic 1.5]
http://mompp.sourceforge.net/
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/
a license to shill
(check this if you don't know what I am talking about)
Now you might say that I am biased against Microsoft (where you would get this idea I don't know), but hey, consider that I have had to put up with wormy networks and teach people how to configure 14 different versions of Outlook for years. "Daaahhh.. I can't print! ...". When I made my switch (mid 90's, thanks) I had to learn a little more (how inconvenient), but at least I have a lot of free time and cash now. You have to really admire an Operating System which you can set up and forget about for months if not years at a time. I know, very inconvenient.
The idea of sending out armies of college students to market their product is of course what one can expect from such an unscrupulous company. I wouldn't be suprised if Microsoft made these people tattoo the butterfly on their asses as a marketing ploy. At least the butterfly would get maximum exposure given the type of people who it would sport it... I know this one guy who uses his free time to write code to send to Microsoft as if anyone there likes him or even knows him. "Camel Balls" we call him, he walks around shoving his nuts out wearing pants that are too tight, ranting about how my firewall is pushing traffic out the wrong interface because someone told him how to use 'iptraf' and now he is a UNIX Expert. What a douche bag. Like alot of MCSEs he tries to tell me things about Linux and computers in general that have no basis in reality whatsoever. Incidentally he was incorrect about the firewall - he had no idea what he was looking at anyway.
The point is, whoever comes up to me better have a nice rack or I'll ruin their day. I'm just being honest. I don't like greedy companies and I can't stand people who support them for free. WTF is that??? Just give up your free time to work for Microsoft so they can make more money off of your dumb, broke ass. Give ME a break! At least OSS is given to the WORLD, not directly to some prick's pocketbook.
Warning: Do not mod me down or I will find you and hide a Windows ME box in the false ceiling on your network!
You are about to give someone a piece of your mind, something which you can ill afford...
Just today I was reading a copy of a New York Times Magazine article that had a pretty similar theme. There is a company out there (I'll call it "Bzz", because I don't remember the name but Bzz is pretty close) that works with unpaid volunteer "agents" to promote its customers' brands. People sign up, get product samples, then they're given talking points and told to go out and generate buzz for the product. The agents talk to their friends, fill out suggestion cards, call supermarkets/bookstores/etc. to ask whether they carry the product.
The reporters were surprised at how enthusiastic people were about doing unpaid work on behalf of these companies. Though Bzz offered a reward program, not many people cash in on it. The reporters came up with quite a few (mostly complementary) explanations. First, Bzz claimed that it only marketed 20% of the products that came to them, leaving the impression that their agents were only being asked to pimp the really good stuff. Then you have that eternal desire to be "in the know", to suggest a product or a restaurant to your friends and having the suggestion stick (see Linux advocacy). Finally, it seems that if you ask people to choose among basically equivalent items, when one of those items is somehow "theirs", they tend to value that item more highly. So just by giving agents a sample of the product, the marketing company can create a positive impression.
Officially, Bzz doesn't require its unpaid agents to spin the product in a positive light. All they ask is that people talk about the product. This helps sell people on the idea of being advertisers, since they're just being asked to talk about their opinions, rather than slavishly following the party line.
I think this is a small step up from some forms of astroturfing (for example, hiring beautiful women to go to bars and order Drink X), but not a big one. The worst part about these techniques is that they constitute an abuse of trust. Such activities allow a big corporation to sneak their "message" into what people assume to be a candid exchange of information. Whether the messengers are being paid in dollars, "points", sexual favors, or pats on the back isn't terribly relevant to me. The issue is that one party to the conversation has a hidden agenda that the other party isn't going to be on the lookout for.
Look at it this way: the marketers advertised so incessantly at us that we mostly tuned them out. We turned instead to the people around us for information. Now the evil bastards want to exploit the one remaining source of "unbiased" information. I mean, sure we're all biased, but the point is, we're plugging for our own biases, not those of the product manufacturer. They've finally found ways to exploit our trust in each other for personal profit, and they give fuck all if they're damaging that trust as they do so. Fight this.
The activities in the article are shameless in their own ways, but at least the targets have a better chance of discerning that the people plugging the product are paid product pluggers.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
I think it's pretty silly that Microsoft has to resort to offbeat tactics to win more supporters. After all, if they had any quality products to offer, they would be popular without feeling the need to brainwash the next generation of leaders in the computer and buisness world, right? /. community, I think it's safe to presume you're cheering.
Since this is the
Oh wait, replace "Microsoft" with "Google", and that's what I meant to post...
http://www.google.com/jobs/studentsg.html
(Not exactly the same, I know...but in college, free pizza wins loyalty)
On a related note, I go to BU, and this past week, while crossing the street, I noticed a Microsoft OneNote ad chalked with a stencil on the pavement between the T tracks (the T is what Bostonians call their subway, i.e. train or tram).
From the article: "Many [student representatives] are specially trained, sometimes at corporate headquarters, Gossett said, as in the case with Microsoft."
The T runs above-ground through BU, but the first stop after the campus is underground. So if you are crossing the street and see this chalked advertisement (which is quite blurry and in fact barely legible, because, hey, it rains a lot in Boston and chalk runs), your natural response is to stop walking for a moment so that you can look down and and actually make out what it says. Specifically, you need to stop on the T tracks...50 feet from where the T goes above-ground. Perfect conditions for getting run over with a 20 ton subway car.
That's some nice training, there, Microsoft.
they're usin' greenery to sell this crap on campus nowadays? sounds damn healthy to me. i'd buy stuff from some co-ed who wanted to give me a flowering plant.
So how many of the people posting on Slashdot are CRs and what companies do they represent?
It's too big a forum for marketers to ignore completely, so there'd have to be a few either monitoring or contributing. Any brave enough to come out of the closet and tell us about it?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Almost two years ago, I did this for Idea (now Orange) - one of Poland's 3 cellular services providers. While working for the Red Cell network, we ran this program in 8 cities on 8 campuses, with some 300-400 ambassadors working for us at once.
The ambassadors would make a couple of bucks (I can't remember how much, I'm thinking 20PLN) for each contract they got and were able to give their clients deals they wouldn't get at the salon. There were clearly a couple of stars, people who would get 30-50 contracts/month, while a lot of them worked just enough to pay for their own cell phone usage.
At the end of the program, a lot of the stars were offered steady work - why would we want to get rid of a good salesperson?
Vector Marketing, which sells Cutco knives, has been recruiting college students for years. They sell knives by having people do in-home demonstrations, but who wants to let a salesperson in their house? What if instead of letting a salesperson in you were helping out your friend/neighbor's college student put themselves through school? Also they claim you "get paid no matter what" so that you can try to convince them when setting up the appointment that you're not a salesperson. Its a pretty evil system and seems to work well. Since nobody would actually want to sell knives in people's houses, they use very tricky wording to get the students in there. Check out this site which is their student recruitment site. From reading the site, what do you think the job is? This use of college students isn't a new trick by any means, but it seems to be an effective one.
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
I dunno, considering most college students I know border on being broke almost all the time, $400 is still a lot of money. It leads to pirace when we need to use the software, can't get to a school lab that has it, and can't afford to buy it even with a 66% discount.
I don't care what youre doing so much as the idiotic way you're doing it.
Part Two of the program is a $500,0000 per year site license, as noted here, which brings the Microsoft Tax to everyone on campus. This is a program that eats up 1/8 of the $150/year student tech fee for the ability to download the most basic of software, productivity software, email client and this goofey one note. Someone on the thread does the math and estimates Microsoft will pocket about $300 per software set they distribute, which is well above the usual Dell rip-off. Of course, it is much much more than a download of Mepis, which has more and better applications.
In typical Microsoft style, they are touting the rip-off as "free software". They spammed every student on campus with an email that mentioned a commitment but no costs and had the nerve to stand in the middle of free speech alley and proclaim "free" downloads. What a turn off.
Surprisingly, it has not worked very well. People are outraged when they learn the cost. Few people want to risk their only working computer to "upgrade" software they already own, as free software advocates can tell you. Most people walked by the barkers at free speech alley and could care less. Did they really think people care about Outlook? I was one of the few people who bothered to talk to them and I agree with the BRLUG poster above, the reps were poorly trained and did not know their product. Spam backfires. Most people are going to look at the Microsoft dream play, where a fellow student tries to hawk a program, as weird and disturbing.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.