The Joneses is a film that illuminates the darker side of materialism in our society, but within this surreal buy-and-sell dynamic are openings for crucial marketing discussions. The Joans are a family whose sole purpose is to sell products, managed by a larger organization that uses families like them to promote goods. These fabricated, seemingly atomic families are made to possess the latest goods and sell them to others within their communities through social interactions.
I would categorize how the Jones live as personal selling due to the organized and strategic shadow elements that were puppeteering them. This week’s reading taught us that the “personal seller” is the “connection between the buyer and a company.” As the Jones were the middleman in this operation, paid for by a larger company, they were acting as sales representatives without the knowledge of the buyers.
There are several similarities between the sales tactics employed by the Jones family and real-world brands I admire. An excellent example of this is Chobani, a brand I hadn’t known much about until taking this course and developed with a similar ripple effect technique. However, Chobani organically employed these by offering a self-marketed product, gaining mass popularity on social media, and higher-ups paid the Joneses to promote the season’s hottest products for a living. The practice of placing a product in the hands of famous/likable community members is increasingly present in the wake of social media; we now have PR, influencers, celebrity culture, and a mass of more strategic tactics with similar motifs.
Because of the prior sentiment, I don’t feel that the marketing strategy the Joneses practices was unethical if we were holding them to our society’s standards. It may have been extreme and bizarre, but at the end of the day, they were doing the same thing other companies have: presenting a product to people who would likely be interested (creating a ripple effect.) The movie’s dark ending may convince viewers otherwise, but I feel that the negative repercussions of this family’s lifestyle speak more to the problems within our materialistic society. Larry’s suicide reflects his mental health more than anything. He saw a family that had everything and fell into a deep well of jealousy. A similar dynamic could quickly emerge from a parasocial relationship with a celebrity or an overwhelming amount of product ads and marketing on Instagram. If we let companies pay influencers to promote products, and similar dynamics occur naturally, my question would be: why can’t a company pay a family to do the same full-time?
If I were friends with someone in the Jones family, I would be excited by all of the possessions they had, and honestly, having someone who could hand-pick products for me would make life easier. However, it would be highly draining if I couldn’t afford to keep up. Upon discovering their secret, if the friendship truly only centered around materialism, I would be alarmed at the fabricated nature of their family. Still, depending on its depth, I am unsure if that would signify an end to the friendship.
