Marketing to selfish idiots.
|
 |
By Marie D in Anything about Everything Published: Monday, 09 July 07 - 07:06 PM (GMT) Last Updated: Monday, 09 July 07 - 07:23 PM (GMT) |
| ||
Warning: you might find yourself falling under the selfish idiot category, but I am one, too, so I'm not saying this to be mean.
We had this conversation at lunchtime at work today: one of my colleague said he is going to buy a new dishwasher. The one he has had so far needs 33 liters of water for one service. But he saw one brand new model that only needs 16 liters. But this one costs much more. So he did a little calculation, and considering water is cheap, he would only save a few hundreds of dollars a year, and his conclusion is that buying the expensive model is not worth it.
I said ok, but if you save a few hundred of liters a year, and another million people does the same by buying this kind of dishwasher, we could save billions of liters of water every year, and that makes a difference.
Yes, he said, but I am willing to save the planet only if it saves me money, too.
That thing about the collective effort being worth it, I wouldn't have said it one week ago. But I read an article on Seth Godin's blog about how hard it is to market for that kind of cause, because most people think in terms of immediate advantage for themselves, and never see the big picture.
For example, they would calculate that buying the expensive, more environment-friendly car, would only save them 300$ of petrol each year, so they think it is not worth it and go for the other fancy cheaper car. They never think of how much petrol could be saved if another millio people chose the "clean" car.
We all act this way. We might take a collective transportation to go to a "live earth" concert that will make us environment-aware for a couple of days, but then, are we going to make efforts to save water and electricity in our every-day life? Probably not, because we think our very own little effort does not make a difference.
Well, it does. You just need to look at it from a broader perspective.
Have your say on this article:
<-- Back
