TV Media, Marketing and Consumption - By Yagna Pant

Earlier in July 2010, after attending one of my relative’s wedding, we took a tour of the Coca-Cola factory. Despite a $15.00 entry fee, high heat and humidity, it was surprising to find many people lined up to purchase the ticket.  It was intriguing that the power of a company that just sells junk beverages: carbonated water + sugar + flavoring . Coca cola had $3.1 billion dollar revenue in 2009!

Later that afternoon, we went to eat at a local Taco Bell. The customer in front of us had probably ordered a 1200+ calorie food and a diet coke. We ordered a few tacos and asked for 4 cups for drinking water. The waitress looked puzzled and amazed that we did not order any drinks. As if it was just socially unacceptable behavior to go to a restaurant and not order any drinks! It is a high-class norm that if you go to a restaurant to eat, irrespective of what type of food you order, you must always order a drink.

After pondering for a while, I wondered the marketing power of a company that “simply sells” pure junk beverage. Consuming Coca Cola is now an inevitable and normal part of our high-class society — the beverage with high sugar content that could probably create a lot of health hazards including diabetes, weight gain and teeth cavities!! A quick reference check at the wikipedia reveled that for 2009; Coca cola spent nearly 2.5 million dollars and had 38 lobbyists at 7 different firms lobbing on its behalf.

After I returned from Atlanta, I was invited by one of my friends to watch the final soccer game between Spain and Holland in a large screen TV. When I reached there, a few of my other friends had already gathered there. The first question they asked me was whether I was going to support Spain or Holland. I tried to decipher to meaning of “..supporting a team …” in this context. What does it mean to support a team? What catastrophe would happen if I support Holland and did not support Spain? If I support Spain, how would that impact the performance of Holland? How does the winning by a team would affect me, my family and my community?

Don’t you believe that the TV is such a wonderful thing? Comcast offers more than 200 digital channels, Dish networks and ATT u-verse offer similar number of channels as well. One of the advantages of the availability of so many channels is that you always realize that there must be something “more” interesting happening in other channels and you flick through the channel list. If it takes around 30 secs or so to go through a channel, it would take nearly 1.5 hours to go through 200 channels!

But what is the main purpose of TVs? One of my learned friends argues that the main purpose of TV is to create a pool of very loyal consumers to which companies can sell their products. TV networks like CNN, Fox news, ESPN, animal planet, food networks, etc. is for targeting mass advertising to different group or segment of people: who are interested in world news, politics, sports, animals, etc. He further argues that the TV networks need to create “sensation” to attract people, but their main goal is always to create a solid consumer market base. Even there are a handful of channels for the kids! It is good to let the kids hook to the TV from the very early age such that they can start consuming from a very young age and become a loyal consumer when they grow up! Another of my friend always tells me that there are referred papers linking academic excellence with “consuming toys”. Not sure if this is based upon real facts or simply a biased report endorsed by the Association of Toy Makers.

I vividly remember growing up in the village of Chisapani, Tanahun with scarcity and poverty in everything: be it food, toys, shoes, clothes, school supplies, etc. But our family was one of the few “better families” (in the top 25% percentile) in our village of 100 to 200 people. Even though we were better as compared to most of my peers, we used to get only one pair of clothes, one shoes, etc. for the whole year and that too during the Dashain festival. Purchasing Toys would be a great luxury for us. When I was around 7/8 years old, I vividly remember one elderly uncle giving me a little rattle when he came from India. He might have paid one rupees for the rattle. However I saved the rattle till I was 11 or 12 years old keeping it in a secret place such that no other siblings would be able to find and play with it.

I try to compare this with the mass consumption behavior of our kids. When a new toy is purchased, children would be interested in it for the first 30 mins or so till they see another toy advertised in the TV. After seeing the new toy, the kids would bug their parents to immediately to go to the shops to purchase the new toy. They would play for the first 30 mins or so and the saga continues. One of my friends had sarcastically suggested donating the toys (in its original container) to charities immediately after purchasing it from the super market. Kids will be happy as they have just purchased the toy, toy maker and the store can profit from the sale, you will be happy as the house will not be cluttered and the charity will be happy to receive a brand new/ unopened toy. What a smart idea to create a win-win situation for everybody!!

Around 4 years ago, I along with one of my friends went to see a Tax agent for preparing my tax return. On a casual side chat he mentioned that he did not have any TVs in his house. He tried to explain how the big players in this country try to influence the middle class for mass consumption. And what could be a better mass consumption media than a TV? He further went on to say that TV is slowly poisoning our society. At that time I considered the tax agent to be crazy from different planet to not to own any TVs in his house. However after seeing and understanding a recent TV ad about “…consulting my doctor to find out whether the advertised drug would be beneficial for me”, I am thinking that the tax agent was probably right. However I leave the final judgment to you!