Abstract
Three separate products (content; one each: personal, commercial, and service) are reviewed within the context of a marketing consideration of time, space, or self/other.
SEO - service
The "product" (actually a service) of SEO (search engine optimization) resides in the domain of Web services. Whether entry-level or a seasoned professional, at the individual level, or a general IT service provider (such as GVS InfoTech), this particular marketing consideration of bringing eyeballs to your website is more science than art. According to GVS InfoTech:
Almost 8 billion searches are made every month
Google had more than 69% market share in 2008 and Yahoo 19%
3 billion searches are for local businesses alone
62% of search engine users click on a first page result (GVS InfoTech, 2009)
Clearly, this has a direct and enormous marketing implication. However, as a service, the first layer client is not the end-user. Therefore, from the considerations time, space, and self/other, these issues are resolved within a larger package of negotiation; including pay schedule and completion date benchmarks.
San۫at /(product: illustration & the people of Palestine) within Contemporary Art of Palestine: Development Issues – commercial (NGO-style e-zine)
A word of note: the only graphic connection that the Palestinians have to the Uzbeks’ is a shared funding from Russia.
The online magazine San۫at is the Uzbek word for art, and a communication of the Academy of Arts of Uzbekistan. Presumably being a not for profit, one could argue its commercial posture. However, from an idea, culture and nationalistic perspective, please suspend judgment and accept that its goals are every bit as commercial as the Sears and Roebuck's catalog (Al Asad, 2010).
Similarly, this applies to one article in particular, from a column devoted to culture elsewhere, Contemporary Art of Palestine: Development Issues. Here we find a well thought out, well-documented article on an entire people in the position of refugee status. We find that life during wartime does not readily lend itself to full freedom of expression; most creativity finds channeling toward utility, crafts. However, the article does contain one illustration, a beautiful and haunting work, at first splashed with sunshine and joy, and yet clearly an underlying wrestling of seriousness and concern. There is no artist credit or date. Only that it is in the collection of the Academy of Arts of Uzbekistan. There is bright and cool on the right side where the persimmon fruit is prepared under the shade of its own tree (a metaphor for any of the successes of its own people). It is glaringly bright and more than warm on the left near the roiling sea. Throughout the background we find various passageways, ostensibly empty, and without any order.
This is a highly sophisticated illustration, and the narrative of the Palestinian people is clear. That was the point of the illustration, as these people cry out for help and understanding (regardless of anyone's political investment). Had this illustration been for the New Yorker, Der Spiegel or L'Espresso it surely would have been a month’s wages.
As regards marketing considerations of time, this work (the product) is timeless, or at least suspended in time. Even as it finds its way to our attention, we have no idea as to its date. Given the circumstances, we have no idea how long it took, either. Any detail that would normally confess remains timeless as well, the swimming clothing, the same boats used for millennia. While the lack of the date and creator may be separate unfortunate accidents, suspended in time is conscious for this product, a part of what it sought to communicate!
Its marketing perspective seeks to draw you in, and it succeeds there, as well. You readily find yourself hot, standing on the beach, or concerned as you trod dank centuries old passageways (perhaps wondering what the architectures’ story is). You in the space – that is powerful marketing!
Designer Men’s footwear – personal
There very few products quite as personal as apparel. We have now evolved to a point where there is a significance spread on price, and not nearly as big a spread on style. Indeed, if a man is looking to emulate the best designer footwear available, and save money, it is possible to come close for a fraction of the cost (unless, of course, one happens to be under the scrutiny of a seasoned fashionista).
Let us look to the Mecca for the fashion industry, Italy. Names such as Emporio Armani, Moschino, Alberto Guardiani, Cesare Paciotti, Salvatore Ferragamo, Prada and Raffaello, to name a few, all offer conservative male footwear and it all clocks in right about $400 a pair. Who buys such footwear are the people for whom such a price tag is relatively meaningless, or the minority of those who are in a position where having the right footwear is mandated (presenting/pitching a new client in Italy, aspiring to rise to the fashion industry etc.).
So, if you are an Italian designer men's footwear, and there may be a purist or so among them, you recognize that the days of the artists and cobbler are long gone. Designing footwear that transcends time and space sounds lofty. It also sounds like a bad business decision. All of the men mentioned are not only also designing sneakers (generally clocking in between $100 and $200 apiece), but many have formal footwear that are essentially fancy sneakers!
Clearly, the time and space thing here is as fleeting as anything ever is in fashion. The marketing here is to the self. And to that end on either prides themselves on familiarity with mail designer footwear or you're simply buying someone's logo (Raffaello Network).
Conclusion
There was a conscious effort to address the inquiry both as diversely as possible, and yet within a related universe; in this case the applied arts. I see no thread, and in marketing, that is the thread. To use a cliché as a metaphor: “never say never”. There may actually be a better cliché uses the metaphor, this one from politics: "all politics is local"; e.g., marketing is about knowing the entire playing field, but it is specially knowing your audience. In closing, there is a universal truth: “in order to be heard you need to speak to an open listening”.
References
