Location, Location, Location!
we’re very proud of our ice here
Posted Jan 22, 08:39 am in consumerism, human nature, marketing
I am a fan of comedy, and I tend to watch a fair number of comedians on TV, attend live comedy shows, and listen to comedy albums. One recurring theme that I see consistently among unestablished comedians is the way they open their acts by referring to the city in which they are performing.
It’s good to be back here in… NEW YORK!!!
Cue screaming, cheering audience. Instantly, the comedian has won the respect of this crowd because he’s one of them. Okay, maybe he’s not really, but he is in spirit. He “gets” them. He understands who they are and what they’re about. Right?
We’ve seen a lot of this over the years, in a lot of different venues. It’s not just comedians. Musicians, politicians, and marketers do it too: Cheap Trick opens their Live at Budokan record with the immortal words “ALL RIGHT TOKYO!! ARE YOU READY?” John F. Kennedy’s attempt to rally American allies in Europe were marked with the words “Ich bin ein Berliner” (“I am a Berliner”) in West Germany, greeted with proud applause.
Playing off geographical pride is something that I’ve seen to an increasing degree in advertising the past few years. This morning as I was heading to the office, for example, I saw an ad for some liquor that said, essentially, that it was great over ice; oh, and we hear there’s a lot of that here (Wisconsin). I’m supposed to, at this point, run out and buy that vodka.
This approach to advertising does personalize the ad more; after all, it’s now a message that has been modified for a certain geographical mindset, instead of being a cookie-cutter message that everyone from rural Georgia to Seattle is supposed to imbibe with equal interest.
It’s interesting to consider why this works. Dividing people up always has the interesting effect of simultaneously bringing people together and tearing them apart. If you have a room filled with people, and then divide them into As and Bs, it wouldn’t be too long before the As hated the Bs, and vice-versa. This was one of the effects shown in Zimbardo’s infamous Stanford Prison Experiment. Us and them.
People in Springfield hate people in Shelbyville, until they find someone they can both hate from out-of-state. Then these two warring states can duke it out until they come together to face a common enemy abroad. Then it’s suddenly a case of Americans vs. some other country.
Ronald Reagan astutely pointed out, “What if all of us in the world discovered that we were threatened by a power from outer space, from another planet. Wouldn’t we all of a sudden find that we didn’t have any differences between us at all, we were all human beings, citizens of the world, and wouldn’t we come together to fight that particular threat?”
It’s easy to capitalize on that local pride. Even if that pride only means you’re talking about how much ice is on the ground.
Springfield rules!
— Joe · Aug 22, 01:34 pm · #