neviiven's: on marketing and shoes

well - I fell for this pair of shoes.

I cannot afford these shoes right now but this fact doesn't upset me. I like them, they are comfortable and sexy but I can appreciate them anyway.

This is because I learnt something. The essence of marketing is not selling things but selling ideas.

This is the reason you buy not a watch but a rolex, not a skirt but a valentino, not a portable music device but an apple product.

Every good brand stands for a good idea. The vision of coolness, of wealth, of being smart, being sexy. Good marketing messages provide not information on the product but a feeling of experiencing something you don't have really.

Buying the product can provide us with that desirable idea and we can actually feel it but this perception won't last long.

Do you remember a happy moment you have and associate it with an object? A car, a fridge, a jacket, lingerie?

I'm pretty sure not. The moments you can qualify as happy are moments of experiencing something, of having someone in your life, of an activity, a feeling, a flow.

This is the reason why so many people are unhappy nowadays - bombarded with marketing messages of ideas we keep buying stuff and hope that this would help us be happy.

Trying on the shoes I had instantly an idea in my head: a summer night, italian flair, the swoosh of the sea, music, wine, someone inspirational, something unsaid, me sexy and sweet, the beginning of a journey.

I had to laugh in the fitting room. Well the vision was great but buying the shoes and being on that italian beach with someone I admire doesn't have much in common.

But beyond visions and feelings like these there's something more. The happiest moments in my life were those in which I experienced a spontaneous amazing chain of happenings which came from the ocean of possibile occurrences in the best, most magical way possible. A miraculous flow born from the chaos. Like a beautiful melody where every note is a different happening in your life.

Well this is something which certainly has little to do with brands and products.

And with shoes :)