This Is Marketing: You Cant Be Seen Until You Learn to See

What’s a car for?
More specifically, what’s a teenager’s first car for?
It’s not simply a need for transport. After all, when the teenager was
fifteen, he didn’t have that much of a transport problem. And plenty of
teenagers make it through the college years without a car. This is a want,
not a need.
Few purchases cause more change than this one, and in this case, we’re
seeing different changes for different people.
For the teenager, a car enables a change from dependent child to
independent adult.
That’s a shift in status, in perception, and in power. It’s far bigger than
four wheels.
For the parent, it causes a change from dominion over someone to
offering freedom and responsibility. And it leads to significant discussions
about safety, about control, and about status.
What will the neighbors say? What will we tell ourselves about safety?
About independence, opportunity, and coddling?
All of these changes are at the heart of the car decision. When the
designer, the marketer, and the salesperson see these changes at work, they
provide more value, because they can design with these issues in mind.
Too many choices

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Old-fashioned industrial marketing is built around the person who pays for
the ads. It’s done to the customer, not for him or her. Traditional marketing
uses pressure, bait and switch, and any available coercive methods to make
the sale—to land the client, to get the money, to sign on the line that is
dotted.
When the customer has no choice but to listen to you and engage with
you, when there are only three TV channels, only one store in town, only a
few choices, the race to the bottom is the race worth winning.
But the newly empowered consumer has discovered that what looks like
clutter to the marketer feels like choice. They’ve come to realize that there
are an infinite number of choices, an endless parade of alternatives. For the
marketer, it’s like trying to sell sand in a desert.
A million books published every year.
More than five hundred kinds of battery chargers on Amazon.
More coaches, courses, and clubs than they could ever consider, never
mind hire or join.
Surrounded by this tsunami of choice, most of it offered by folks who are
simply selfish, the consumer has made an obvious choice. Walk away.