and all is forgotten? It seems like every couple of years now these service providers can change their names and come up with a new list of lies about how great they are and people will buy into it. And oh, I left out insurance companies.

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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

Marketing technologies are far more sophisticated to tap into generational gap or tapping into emerging trends or stimulating the profitable trends to dig your pocket through educated robbery.

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Mandtugai!

Which is why they hate shoppers like me....have shopping list, get items on list & bugger off (after paying for said items of course).

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And of course the 'veteran' consumers demonstrate such hysterically good judgement as well....

We need to remember that every 5 years or so a new batch of consumers leaves school and start becoming customers in their own right, not just using their parents facilities. They will make their own judgements and not neccessarily follow their parents lead.

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One way it is likely that brilliant social engineering techniques that co-invented by street criminals and conartists got picked up by corporation marketing departments and then repolished to even more sophisticated level to not being filtered with common legal frameworks hence successfully empty your pocket.

Which is why this mass credit card burning plague wiped out those of sophisticated consumer geographic regions.

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Mandtugai!

Cable Companies and Cell Phone Providers can just change name after a few years, yes!!! in fact is all part of their marketing strategy, they just re-brand themselves to became more appealing to the new consumer and the old ones.

Yes in one way we are stupid, as these rebranding strategies are based in behavior studies.

So don't feel bad if you acquire new products to the same provider after he change is name and making a nice advertising effort.

Cable Companies and Cell Phone Providers can just change name after a few years, yes!!! in fact is all part of their marketing strategy, they just re-brand themselves to became more appealing to the new consumer and the old ones.

Yes in one way we are stupid, as these rebranding strategies are based in behavior studies.

So don't feel bad if you acquire new products to the same provider after he change is name and making a nice advertising effort.

Doc, it is our own faults here for we love to consume and allow ourselves to feel inadequate if we don't. It's down to mind set and the advertising agencies have mastered the technique in making us feel we are loosing out if we don't keep up to date with the latest trends, fashions, models etc. One technique used to fool the consumer come via that of re-branding, as already mentioned in other posts.

I've got everything, a house, a car, a hi-fi, a computer, a washing machine, a vacuum cleaner, a gas stove, an electric kettle, a microwave oven, an electric can opener, an electric lawn mower, DAB radio oh and two mobile phones. The newest out of all these is the washing machine, now almost three years old.
The oldest of these items, bar that of my house, is the hi-fi unit, now over 20 years old. My car is 11 years old, my microwave is 15 years old, my vacuum cleaner 12 years old my mobile phones both about 8 years old. I am a nightmare for the consumer supply industry for I only consume when my units gives up the ghost. I have just not permitted myself to fall foul to consumerism Skulduggery and to this end I witness first hand the financial benefits to be gained here.
But hey!! I don't have a television so perhaps this is the advantage I have over all the other consumers....the advertisers can't get at ME!!

Micahel, the reason that most of us here are immune from the usual marketing and advertising crap, is that we are of at least average, or above average intelligence.

The average oik in the street is as thick as two short planks. The reasons for that are being discussed elsewhere.

Thanks Chris, good to know that I'm not an 'oik' (he-he-he)
But Chris, there are so many people who are well above average intelligence who do fall foul to this mass media marketing exercise, ploy, call what you like. To the point where they go broke and loose all in the end.

Do not forget that we behave different alone then when we are in a crowd.
Is not a question of being smarter or dumber, is just human nature.
If someone think he is different, well then good luck....

Yup, we are really that stupid -- we have two political parties that didn't change names, but changed politics. The 'Republicans' are still 'Republicans' but espouse the Norquistican Tea Party policies. The 'Democrats' are still 'Democrats' but espouse what used to be Republican policies.

And most voters haven't seemed to notice.

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Micahel, the reason that most of us here are immune from the usual marketing and advertising crap, is that we are of at least average, or above average intelligence.

The average oik in the street is as thick as two short planks. The reasons for that are being discussed elsewhere.

...who are you calling average..I'll let you know I'm short as a thick plank, thank you very much!

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Do not forget that we behave different alone then when we are in a crowd.
Is not a question of being smarter or dumber, is just human nature.
If someone think he is different, well then good luck....

Doc, some of us are different for we make sure that we don't get caught or trapped in a crowd.

Micahel, the reason that most of us here are immune from the usual marketing and advertising crap, is that we are of at least average, or above average intelligence.

The average oik in the street is as thick as two short planks. The reasons for that are being discussed elsewhere.

...who are you calling average..I'll let you know I'm short as a thick plank, thank you very much!

Sirius!!...get serious !! We're all trying to keep straight faces here? I'm not having much luck, I don't know about the others though??

..sssh..you never know...some of these crunchers could be bankers or CEO's.....

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Or, *shock* *horror* Civil Servants ....... :-O

Infamy.. blasphemy...Christopher how could you!!...Young children may have access to this thread?

Or, *shock* *horror* Civil Servants ....... :-O

Infamy.. blasphemy...Christopher how could you!!...Young children may have access to this thread?

"infamy..infamy..the buggers have it in for me..."

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New rules -- we should only have Uncivil Servants .. oh wait....

Or, *shock* *horror* Civil Servants ....... :-O

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Just because you are paranoid, doesn't mean they are not out to ...

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It's good to be back amongst friends and colleagues

It also needs to be remembered that there are a whole raft of dodgy Avertising Agencies that regularly convince Companies and enterprises, that their Company Logo and marketing strategy is out of date in the 21C. And of course, a slick presentation to the gullible board of directors, by corporate speak chaps in sharp suits seals the deal.

"We need to think outside the box gentlemen, and take a helicopter view of our corporate vision. We need to leverage our assets, and fast track an integrated solution. The key enabler will be to take this off-line and own an in depth re-structuring of the Teams metrics.

In other words, we can offer you a value added resource that will allow your team to up-sell your product to the market place, in a win-win situation. This will be achieved by a phased implementation upon roll-out"

Cue round of applause, and finance director signing check for $2 million.

Translated: We are going to outsource the incoming calls to India, fire a bunch of people, and screw the customers that have no choice but coming to us. Then we pay ourselves obscene amounts as the rest of the stockholders get burnt in the meltdown.

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Janice

Isn't that how the Banks act ... after all they are international corporates, and they have to behave like them.

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It's good to be back amongst friends and colleagues