Following a sharp rebuff of Nestlé by the undisputed top female blogger in Spain Fatima Lopez @fmlopez48 , there's been an opportunity to rethink how we all need to be thinking (and talking) about our Mothers.
The controversy issued from email, twitter, and YouTube advertising campaigns in the run up to the Spanish Mother's Day Event celebrations this coming weekend urging people to tell their mothers something. It includes personalised emails sent to prospects, including Ms Lopez. She therefore objected to Nestlé's lack of research which resulted in what many perceive as insensitive marketing.
This is a flawed and sort sighted strategy at best. This event is a difficult time of remembrance for all people who have lost (or simply lost contact with) their mothers.
This campaign also represents for many a commoditization of the most fundamental of human relationships. Not only are our lives basically designed for production, for proforma, to enhance others' wealth, including giant multinationals such as Nestlé, but now we're being instructed about how to behave towards our own mothers?
This could be perceived by many as further evidence of advertisers' attempts to socially condition us to foster particular values and demonstrate "love" in a particularly contrived way.
Effectively, there's an attempt to imbue the festival with clear, marketable and sensory cues for consumers to buy into purchasing symbols and behaviours.
It can't possibly be that they've harnessed our spending habits and now they want our feelings, can it?
When Nestlé finally withdraw this ridiculous twitter campaign using the misguided hashtag "#MamaQuieroDecirte" (literally "Mamma I want to say to you.") it'll be a victory for commonsense and they'll have realised that some people simply cannot anymore tell their mothers such deep sentiments.
As Fatima Lopez urges that before launching such misguided email, twitter and YouTube campaigns, Nestlé employ "social media Intelligence" to better research their customer to find out if their mothers are dead or not. Rightfully, the call is for common sense, because as Ms Lopez suggests, many are left with hole in their heart at this time of year.
I think Fatima Lopez isn't the only person who's tired of cynically and insensitively being told what to think, how to feel and how to behave in the name of big business profits. She just says it better than all the consumers her point of view represents.
Check out the Spanish blogpost by Fatima Lopez :
Spanish Mother's Day controversy due to marketing campaign by #nestle - questioned here by top blogger @fmlopez48 http://t.co/W6ddsbZDJ4
What do you think about this?
1 comment:
Ms. Martinez made a valid and important point which has then been explored further with your thought provoking post.
She is adamant that it is unnaceptable to do email shot without thorough research being conducted first. Now most would say that that is unrealistic but, she had been targeted in a select campaign which only was served to the elite of the blogging world. Fatima Martinez Lopez is in the top 50 bloggers in Spain and undisputely the top female blogger for tourism and events, a well in-demand public speaker who was a forerunner for social media on the Iberican Peninsula. So, a marketing campaign which includes her as a key player should have been better researched. She was asked, as one of the famous TwitterClub, one of the first 10 people in Spain to use Twitter, to use a Hashtag “#MamaQuieroDecirte”, Mum I want to tell you something, so all the Twitter using public would be encouraged to use the hashtag for Mother’s Day which always falls on the first Sunday of May in Spain. This is where your post and its rightly and justified questioning of the whole concept of Emotional Marketing being viewed as acceptable in our society comes in.
The email shot was a follow up to a Youtube and social media campaign which had been targeted to the general public. Ms. Martinez agrees that the video is beautifully made, it floors us with its emotion and evoques in us a sentiment of…. hang on a minute, is this aceptable? Is Marketing marketing? Is any publicity good publicity even if it’s bad? Maybe we should ask Max Clifford (following post) if the current publicity that he is receiving is good or not?
We live in a world where some go hungry, some have their hair done every Friday, some fight for basic humans rights whilst others view theirs as having gel nails on both hands and feet. Okay, but are we so stupid as to start to allow PR men to tell us how to feel towards and what we should say to our own Mothers? No, it has gone too far, we have to stop this consumerism and say no to this, right now.
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