You already know everything in this post. You may not look at it in this way, though; this is a play on perspective, not a presentation of new facts.
- Category Awareness: The knowledge that a kind of thing exists at all; that there are such things as glasses of milk, or songs, or smart phones. Ads don't usually focus too hard on this aspect of marketing; it's implied in any ad.
- Category Desire: That you want something in a given category. Advertisements for "Got Milk?" are category advertisements, rather than one-brand advertisements. This is generally an attempt to create a fantasy of 'how your life will be better (if only for a moment) with such a thing'.
- Brand Awareness: This is awareness of a specific brand of good. Not just smartphones, but the iPhone 4. Not just milk, but Lucerne. Not just songs, but Britney Spears songs.
- Brand Desire: Again, that you want this specific brand. This is, again, an attempt to create a fantasy of how your life will be improved by the giant app market, the wholesome calcium, the thumpy beats and sexy lyrics.
- ????
- Profit!
Yes, there's more to it. Loads more. But for purposes of my point, that'll do. Now, here's a few things you already know, recast from this perspective:
When a company uses sex (images, terms, whatever) as part of marketing, they aren't just selling you the product. They're also selling you the sex. That is, the beer ad is selling you a cold Miller, but it's also selling you the hot babe, the fantasy of the hot babe, and the definition of hot-babeness that's been concocted for the ad.
Really great, highly competitive marketing for a product makes the competition seem less interesting by comparison. I'm totally sold on my PS3, and the 360 seems less engaging as a platform to me as a result of this. Getting seriously sold on the sexiness of a Katy Perry could make my actual relationship less engaging if there was competition between them. And 'competition' here includes redefining the category: If "hot women" as a category in media excludes a large number of very real women, then those women have a concern with being defined right out of their actual appeal....
...Women know this, of course. Maybe they wouldn't put it that way, but the idea of being in competition with other women is loaded heavily into culture. The idea that men are competing with other men for the beautiful ladies is, of course, also on the table.
The other thing that's loaded heavily into culture, even though we know it's bullshit, is the idea that winning the competition is absolute. Your partner doesn't only have eyes for you; it's a romantic overstatement, a piece of gross flattery, and it's lovely - but don't go thinking that it's a deep truth. Your partner is just as complex a being as you are, with just as many stray thoughts, just as great a degree of liquidity. But being at the dead center of how they define sexy is not a guarantee you'll stay there. And, equally, that your partner is dead sexy to you today doesn't mean that they'll stay that way to you; the categories in your head are susceptible to marketing, too.
So, if all this is true, then what?
Well, as with absolutely everything I talk about around here, we aren't actually passive targets in this process. We're active participants. We choose our media, and we choose how we engage in it. We can control our own fantasy lives, choosing which moments of internal desire to keep on the playlist, and which to reject.
So how do we deal with this?
- You can market yourself to your partner harder, of course - and that's always the solution proposed by the commercial to follow. Cosmetics and fashion, as industries, have solid foundations in this tactic.
- You can have flat requirements for non-competition. The general cultural package for a relationship comes standard with physical sexual fidelity. Hearing "I don't let my husband put up nudie pics in the garage" isn't a rare thing. In some open-relationship circles, there's a rule of "You don't touch one person while imagining someone else", which may seem odd, but has it's own kind of sense. On the exact opposite end, if the fantasy is of a person that doesn't actually exist... Well, if I get a request to put on a Thor outfit, I'm not about to turn it down, y'know?
- You can accept that the competition isn't an absolute game; you don't get to be in charge of your partner's mind, and we'd all be better off discarding the idea that our partners are in any way owned by us.
- Possibly the most important, which is almost never coherently discussed, is that you can (and should) market your partner to yourself. Writing sappy poems about your partner, buying them nice underthings, and similar such acts, didn't get a good reputation as ways to woo women simply out of thin air. Those acts are tangible proofs that you've been busily selling yourself on the idea of your partner, that's one of the reasons why they're so hot.
