Dean Esmay writes about taste tribes and the idea that marketing controls public opinion.#

While I have no real use for [Britney Spears'] music, he's making a fundamental error: believing that marketing money makes people buy things they wouldn't particularly like under normal circumstances.

This view is widespread, and it's false.

Look at last summer's two biggest box-office phenomena: The Hulk and The Cat In The Hat.

What do these two movies have most in common? 1) The studios spent literally tens of millions of dollars promoting them, and 2) they stunk so bad that people who saw them ran screaming from the theaters, warning everyone else off. Almost no one saw these movies as a result.

Some years ago, a group of economists did an in-depth analysis of the most financially successful and popular movies of the previous ten years (running from about 1987 to 1997, if I recall correctly). They concluded that there was absolutely no correlation between how much money was spent on marketing and the success or failure of any movie. Some of the least expensive, least-marketed movies were monster hits, whereas some of the biggest bombs of all time had spent some of the most marketing money.

I'm not sure this thesis can be applied generally because if there were not a positive effect after marketing then it would not be done. Of course, Dean does indicate that it is essentially to have a little bit of marketing to get the word of mouth started--how much, it seems, is not clear.

Ryan Overbey writes about the Presidential race and the idea of "thwarting" the media machine.#

This race has a long way to go, but it will be disastrous if we let CNN and Fox News control the message and shape what this election will look like. This year's primaries are our elections- not theirs.

James Robertson replies, relating this to product marketing:

Actual users of the products play a role, as they speak out (press, blogs, one on one, user groups). All of that plays out in ways that are not under the control of the marketing group - just as in politics, a marketing campaign plays out in ways that are not fully under the control of the campaign team.

In any marketing effort, the best you get to do is set the initial tone. After that, you have to adapt to what the rest of the world says and does - if you steadfastly insist on staying 'on message' when the rest of the world is reacting to something else - you're sunk. The funny thing is, developers sometimes recognize this in product campaigns, and then get all idealistic about it in other domains (like politics). It's all marketing.