Marketing Gimmick is a tactic or innovative idea that helps to increase the sales of products or services at a higher price. However, there is no value-addition to this strategy and thus, it is a temporary marketing campaign that gets instant sales and doesn’t establish a long-term relationship with customers. Marketing gimmick should not be confused with marketing segmentation as both are two different things altogether. Brands or companies make product segmentation so that varied types of requirements of customers can be met.
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For example, making varied products or services as per the quality will have a different pricing strategy. Marketing gimmicks give a kind of special feeling to the customers that make them fall for the product or service and make the purchase decision immediately without thinking in-depth. However, if the product or service doesn’t deliver value to the customers in reality, then such marketing gimmicks can create a lot of chaos in terms of the reputation of the company in the market.
Marketing campaigns are simply marketing campaigns that make a lot of noise when they are launched in the industry. Such brands get a lot of attention for running such marketing gimmicks that help them get the attention of the customers for a short period of time and even spread a lot of word-of-mouth publicity. Media also helps such marketing gimmicks get a boost by hyping about the product or service as if it has not been done by anyone else in the world. We will take today an example of a marketing gimmick.
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The company called Pan Masala launched a campaign Class never goes out of style. This campaign that was launched on print, social media, TV, digital, hoardings among others created a lot of buzzes all over because of its controversial nature. The brand features the former James Bond actor Pierce Brosnan that itself made the campaign get a lot of media attention and trending hashtags on social media.
Many people really enjoyed the ad whereas there are various others who mocked the ad as they didn’t expect such a Hollywood actor to endorse a pan masala brand. Eventually, the actor cited that he was not much aware of the ill effects of the product and expressed his sincere apologies to the masses. But the brand got quick fame and recognition compared to its competitor brands such as Pan Parag and Rajnigandha.
A simple example of marketing gimmicks can be found in magazines. In fact, magazines are themselves sold for the advertisements that it features. If you take any magazine, you would see 40-50% of its pages are filled with advertisements and brand stories only and there is hardly any actual content or journalistic reviews on the booklet. You may feel like a customer who has been fooled by the companies as your intention was to read the magazine but all you are bombarded with is all the product or service information of various brands.
Well, in this world of marketing, there is no right or wrong way to find out if the product that you intend to buy after seeing an advertisement will give you the desired results. Paid reviews and biased editorials are all over and thus, as a consumer, you need to have a trusted source of information who has tried the products and services before you make the purchase decision.
