Marketing- week H
I would categorize the way that the Jones family lives as personal selling from the reason that everything they are trying to do in their everyday life is selling their lifestyle to the people around them- which leads the other people to want to buy the same things as they have to be like the Jones family. The movie’s title was aptly named after the phrase “keeping up with the Joneses.” They are using all of the techniques of personal marketing to sell goods and products, from lipstick to a car. The movie presents all the “Personal Marketing” techniques, such as sales presentations, conversations, demonstrations, addressing objections, field selling, retail selling, door-to-door selling, consultative selling, and reference selling. They pretend to be a perfect family, wearing the best clothes, living in the biggest house, driving the best cars, and using the best products. This way, they interest the people around them in the neighborhood. The people get to see the products, try them, get familiar with them, and eventually want to buy them to be like the Jones family.
I can see the similarities in the marketing and selling tactics between the Jones family to the brand “Revolve.” Revolve is a large online clothing store company that sells high-quality clothes and designers for every occasion- from jeans to black tie events. Their most common marketing tactic is sending different clothes to famous models/ influencers with many followers on Instagram. The girls are wearing the clothes and posting pictures wearing the clothes and tagging “revolve” so all the followers will know where they can get the same clothes themselves. They choose good-looking girls with good taste and style to make their followers more interested in the clothes and create the thought in their heads that if they get the clothes, they will look like them. The Jones family is also a good-looking family that creates a “perfect life” to make the rest of the people in their neighborhood interested in their lifestyle and want to be like them. They used good-looking people to wear certain clothes and use certain products in order to make the products more attractive.
I think the way products are sold in this movie is unethical because the Jones family’s marketing and selling method is to rely on their “friends” insecurities and weaknesses and capitalize on their hobbies. Their way of selling starts by making “friends,” asking and learning about their needs, concerns, and wishes, and knowing exactly how to talk to them, what to sell them, and when. They use their “friends” weaknesses to sell them the goods that will fit the situation and will respond to what they are seeking and make them think they need certain things that they don’t actually need or desire before.
If I was a friend of someone in the Jones family, before I found out about their secret, I think I would be feeling a lot of pressure to keep up and a little bit frustrated that I am not good enough and that I don’t have enough. It would make me feel jealous, uncomfortable, and insecure, and it wouldn’t matter how good my life was and how much I had because they would always be better than me and have more than me. These people are getting everything they want, always look good, always look happy, have fun, and appear to be more successful and better than everyone else. After discovering their secret, I would feel that I was fooled and misled by a fairy tale the whole time. The revelation would explain everything to me, as it doesn’t make sense that life is perfect without any problems. I would feel dumbfounded that I was letting the Joneses affect and disturb me because no one is perfect. Not everything is as it seems – and social media can be a daily reminder of this. People post the highlights of their lives, leading to everyone only seeing the good things in their lives and not the whole situation. This causes people today to feel the same insecurities as I would feel if I was one of the Jones family friends. This poses the question – if everything is so perfect all of the time, then what am I missing that they might have?
