Deception in Marketing

Marketing and advertising are typically perceived as deceptive. Companies advertise what makes them better than their competitors and upscale those features hoping that consumers will dig more deeply into the product. It's understandable. It is imperative for a marketing communications agency to establish what makes the product the best. Although false advertising is illegal, there are ways to get around it and I have experienced this first hand.

As I have wrote about many times before this blog post, I have worked at Kmart for 5 years now, this being my fifth holiday season. Oh what joy! It isn't fun. The chaos, rude customers, sales not ringing up on the registers, and registers crashing do not make a 10-hour shift on Black Friday all that enjoyable. Aside from that chaos, I never thought I'd see the day where I'd learn from my experiences in regards to learning more about marketing communications. How do all of these customers know what the sales are? It all links back to Kmart's marketing efforts. I think I've previously mentioned this, but I specifically work in the Jewelry Department. This department, aside from Electronics, holds the most expensive items in the store. We have products from 10K White Gold engagement rings all the way to $12.99 sterling silver stud earrings. Anyways, I was so bombarded by all of the people and what I found most interesting is when I would get sentences like "I saw that you're selling [insert item] for [insert price], where is that?" I am firsthand experiencing results from Kmart's marketing efforts.

You must be thinking, where does deception come into this? Well, I said that Kmart's marketing efforts got people into the store, specifically the Jewelry department, but what happens after is where the deception comes into play. I take a look at the flyer they developed for Black Friday deals and looking at the pictures, our jewelry is described as great quality. Trust me, I thank Kmart for providing me with a part-time job for the past five years, but I would not exactly say that our Jewelry is of the best quality. (Sorry!) So, the customer sees these pieces of jewelry advertised looking so pretty and then they come in the store disappointed. This isn't an illegal practice of false advertising, however the advertisements are a little deceiving.

Another example of this is when I was in charge of making announcements about Jewelry sales over the PA system. The announcements overly described different pieces of jewelry trying to get customers to come on over to the counter. A sample is something like: "Attention Kmart shoppers! Today in our jewelry department we are featuring a beautiful, shiny sterling silver heart-shaped pendant for just $19.99 originally priced at $99.99!" And so on. The cool thing is that these announcements got multiple shoppers to come look at the necklace, but when I took it out of the showcase for them to see it, they quickly passed on it. This just shows the power of marketing. I used the sense of hearing to influence the consumers to paint an image of this necklace in their heads, which made them head on over to please their curiosity. Although the item was not what they imagined, I firsthand experienced the influence of marketing through the sense of hearing. This is something that radio commercials yearn for. In which, now, I understand more thoroughly.

I never knew how much a part-time retail job would actually teach me in terms of relating my experiences to class material. Deception in marketing and advertising is something that I have heard from family and Kmart customers. Ultimately, it can affect sales, just like it did with that sterling silver necklace. If I could say one thing to Kmart's marketing agency it would be to be more real in their marketing efforts.