The Scream, not by Edvard Munch

By Ariel Peeri
Founder, ArielStudio.com

As the page begins to unravel, I am settling in a comfortable state of mind eager to read what I agreed to click on the page before. There is still a sort of satisfying thrill from the motion of scrawling and pointing, and the sound of clicking and the sensation of surprise when you are being transferred to the next unknown link.


Suddenly, an advertising square appear at the lower corner of my right eye, and begins to show signs of life; its content begins crawling and moving and shaking up the page, while I try to keep my eyes from turning my head the other direction. I look for the handles of the text column and try grabbing one to narrow its width, and push out the live square ad, but it joins so stubbornly the ranks of pro-life movement and refuses to abort itself. It becomes harder not to try to catch even a glimpse of that moving square, which by now, is moving faster, reaching the speed of 30 frames per seconds, shaking my page violently and trembling my desk top, and I begin to stare at that intruding ad, trying to find who can be blamed for transferring me from a peace minded person to a short tempered warrior filled with unleashed anger.


All I can do is click away to another page, on another story on another web site. I promise myself that I will never become a member of a loyal customer base of that moving brand in the square, and I will boycott the product by uniting all readers of America. But for now all I could do is

No thanks, I have no demand for your brand

It is wildly believed that you cannot brand a product, if there is no need for your product. Last week I received an invitation to attend a webinar presented by the American Marketing Association on "Surviving and thriving with demand generation: how to win more sales-ready leads“. It did sound like a good topic, very timely, since we can all use more sales in a down turn economy, even though I did not receive the official word from the Bush administration that we are in a recession, yet. So I went on reading that marketers across B2B and B2C businesses alike, are essentially concerned with demand generation—they must create demand for their product, service, and brand.

Demand generation? Sounds serious and impressive. New names for marketing techniques are popping every year. It is a trend taking place in marketing: Find a new angle to an already established idea, give it a new buzz title, and you’ll instantly witness the birth of several new specialties, some I found while surfing the web:
Line extensions
Experiential marketing
Influencer seeding
Drip marketing
benefit segmentation
Advertising elasticity
Loss leader
Bleeding edge

If you have good reasons to believe your customers need to buy your product or service, think again: your customers will buy for their reasons. No yours.

The invitation promised that I will learn how to create demand for my product, service and brand. I guessed that if there was no demand for my product, service, and brand, at the end of this webinar I will learn how to create one. I will walk away with a plan that will show consumer that with very little, mindless effort, he/she will soon realize that in fact, they want the product, service, and brand that I offer. Soon they will realize that not having a need does not mean that you shouldn’t be demanding to have the product, service, and brand.

It is a popular practice of many well-established advertising agencies; As for me I say: Thanks, no, I have no need for your client’s product, service, or brand.

by Ariel Peeri
My Bio | About Me
See my work: Ariel Studio.com