Sup. A question I get a lot is, "What is your job?" Y'all know I work in video games. Y'all know I am QA turned product marketer. I just don't think you understand what a product marketer is. I don't hold that against anyone. I mean, a person in sales obviously sells things to people directly. A person in advertising tells a person to purchase a product through audio, visual, or whatever way they can make it happen. So what room in that comfy set up is there for a marketer? Well, the fact people still ask this question is the reason marketing continues to thrive.
Marketers deal in the art of suggestion.
It's the secret war being waged somewhere between convincing someone to buy something face to face and telling someone to buy something over a loud speaker. A marketer will never ask you to buy anything. It's a marketers job to convince the consumer to buy the product they are selling, without ever directly engaging with the consumer. That's the suggestion part. A marketer figures out what a person wants, or better yet, whatever desire needs to be fulfilled for them to buy a product, and gives it to them. Wanna feel sad? Wanna feel happy? Ya horny? Want a formerly horrible thing to be a feel good thing? We got you. It's like that cup game, because ball is wherever the marketer wants it to be, or not there at all.
Another way to do it is for instance instead of telling the consumer to buy something, they will give that something to someone the consumer trusts. That someone the consumer trusts will then use that something, and act like he just thought to use it him/herself. It's a silent agreement sealed in payment, be it product or money. The consumer then turns on their thing that allows them to see other people, and they see that person they like using that something. So the next day they go out and buy that something, and now they are cool by proxy. All that persons friends see them using that something, as well as that person they like on the viewer thing using that something, and now they have to get that something. And so on and so on... Until it's time to sell another something.
There are many other ways to go about it, and there are many other disciplines. That's just the most common one. The other ways get exponentially more complicated and manipulative. And it's not just video games. It's everything.
Anyway, hope that helps clear things up a little bit _NeZt0. We are the dark magicians and puppet masters blah... blah... blah. You know what? Fuck it. I'll just get it off my chest. People's willful ignorance makes the job easy mode. People pretty much believe anything anyone presents them no matter the evidence to the contrary, if it's something they want to believe. And people want to believe E-R-E ting...
It's one of the saddest events to watch play out over and over, and the worst part is they always feel like they are making the decisions themselves, when for the most part the only decisions presented to them were fabricated by someone else. There really is no trick to this gig, and it is not as special or as clandestine as Marketing/PR wants you to think. The hardest part is your first assignment, which is not to convince someone to give you a job, but to convince them that no one else could do the job but you. Good luck.
I hope information doesn't puke in the cab at E3 this year! All y'all skrippas swing by the booth and say waddup if you are in the neighborhood. Also JERBZ! Also thank the folks from creative heads if you see them. They are awesome for putting up with my shit, and helping everyone out. Also an extra long mixtape because I'm binge watching Orange is the new Black and can't be bothered.
