I wish I was this cunning ...

i only took 30 seconds to turn me from naive to cynical. 

It happened a few years ago while watching the episode of the West Wing where C.J. Craig, the president's press secretary, decided that rather than having a nice, polite official inquiry into the president's cover-up of his multiple sclerosis they should let the inquiry be run by the most vehement republic possible.  Why?  Because no matter what a Bartlett-hating republican concluded Bartlett's supporters would simply say "what else would you expect?" and Bartlett's detractors would simply say, "we told you so".  In other words, nothing would change.  I lost my innocence when I realised that they were referring to the whole Clinton / Kenneth Star / impeachment thing .  I gained a lot of respect for Clinton that day because I would never had thought of something so cunning and I never spotted it at the time.

Some time later, when I saw the stuff going on at Guantanamo bay, my first reaction was "Why aren't they hiding that sort of thing? Why is all this stuff on TV?  Oh, because they're hiding something far less palatable".  I might be wrong - but don't forget, I'm cynical now.

And then today when I read about Sony's plans to charge customers $50 extra for laptops which DIDN'T have "bloatware".  They've subsequently retracted the charge ... and made all the papers.  Sony must be terribly disappointed with all the free publicity for their range of "bloat free" laptops.  Perhaps it is just the jaded, cynical part of me ... but they couldn't have engineered this could they?

And then today I see a letter from Jeff Bezos on amazon.com's home page apologising because the new kindle ebook reader's have proved so popular that they've not been able to keep up with demand.  The cynical part of me says "Apology?  That's not an apology.  It's an advert using the age old influence techniques of social proof (everyone is buying them ... therefore ... they must be good) and scarcity (they're in short supply ... therefore ... I must have one)."  It's clever marketing.

Or am I just being cynical.

Comments

[graeme]

Welcome to the dark side. Having said that, it is not 'clever marketing', it is blatant manipulation of the common people. Even more so than Dan Brown, because you expect fiction from a novel. All that these companies achieve by behaving like children (you've seen a 5yo lie straight to your face and think she's clever because she got away with it, when in fact you just can't be bothered arguing with her) is to destroy the trust that has built up over the years.

Amazon were taking pre-orders for many months before they had the Kindle in stock. Probably even before they started manufacturing them. They knew the level of demand, and this 'apology' was probably written at the same time (12 months ago?) that they deliberately chose not to meet it. They should be apologizing for the false advertising.

When I recently bought an eBook reader the process went something like this:

Sony Reader - too expensive.
iRex Iliad - too big/heavy (for my needs).
Amazon Kindle - not in stock.
Bookeen CyBook3 - small, light, multiformat, delivered next week, sold.

The big boys 'clever marketing' is costing them sales. They only get away with it because the majority of people fall for their deception. I think it is sad that they make a lot of money by telling lies, and are so greedy they don't realize they could make a whole lot more by telling the truth.

As for the bloatware, be assured Sony will not be missing out. What they lose on the swings they make up on the roundabout. And the public will pay through the nose. Thank goodness for www.pcdecrapifier.com