The Men Who Made Us Fat

I watched the final episode of the programme "The Men Who Made Us Fat" on BBC2 last night and did get very frustrated about the continual criticism of marketing throughout it. Whilst in principle I can agree with the contention that the food industry is concerned with making money for shareholders (it is their primary responsibility, after all), I do not entirely agree that is all down to marketing that people buy the high fat foods, and as ever that is using the word marketing for promotion rather than the broader aspects it should cover.

It does seem potentially short sighted of the food companies to produce products which can cause obesity and therefore reduce the life of their customers, however. Surely they should want to help the customers to live longer and therefore make more money from them over a long period of time. But is it really the fault of marketing that people want to buy quick and simple to prepare, tasty food at low prices even if it is very processed? Isn't the marketing response one of providing that to meet the lifestyles people lead rather than convincing people it is what they need?


The problem comes with the potentially misleading labelling which suggest things may be healthy when they are not particularly so, but again, if people want to see that something has fruit in it and it does why not state that? If everything else is on the label is it not the customer's fault for not reading it and seeing the reality? I am a believer in freedom of choice provided the customer is well informed rather than the regulation which was being suggested by the programme, but that does rely on educating customers as to what things really mean and that is where I do think the food producers and retailers are failing. 


But it isn't all the fault of marketing!


For the moment the programme can be viewed here - BBC iPlayer

The Apprentice 2009

I wasn't intending to mention the programme The Apprentice again on here, but after watching this weeks episode - rebranding Margate - I changed my mind. Prior to this episode the series has had less misuse of the word marketing than previously, but in one episode that maybe changed. There were numerous mentions of "marketing" which should have been "promotion", this coming from the teams, Sir Alan and the clients of the activity - the agencies and the Margate councillors.

This type of use of the word marketing has come to be expected on the programme, but the real issue I had this week was that the task was billed as "rebranding". I don't think it was re-branding, the requirement of the teams was "repositioning". In deciding which market to appeal to they were creating a position for Margate in the holiday destination market, their slogans being designed (hopefully on their part) to make Margate attractive to their selected audience. Rebranding would have required a lot more work than could possibly be achieved in a two or three day activity - true rebranding would involve many of the businesses in Margate and could take two or three years to achieve.

As for the output of the losing team - trying to associate a half empty leaflet and a picture which required, rather than painted, a thousand words as a poster with "marketing" was a true crime against marketing.