And now, baby gyms

Last week I got two press releases that made me sit up. One talked about a product that would “disrupt the hydration category”. And the other introduced me to a world of baby gyms.

What a bad mother I have been, I thought, as I read through the pitch notes on the baby gym product. I had never put my toddler on a baby jogger or a baby trainer, ergonomically designed or otherwise.

Fifteen years ago, she just crawled and walked on the floor. Hope that will not set her at a disadvantage as she negotiates the treadmill of daily life.

Anyway it's too late to go out and buy baby gyms — my kid is a teenager now. But I can make up and get her nutrient-enriched water. That's what the hydration disrupting product was all about, incidentally. Once I had waded through the jargons, it appeared that we could soon get zinc and chromium enriched water. Hurrah.

We don't need vitamin enriched water. Just make her eat sensibly, my husband said.

But we don't need rose-flavoured face sprays either, I pointed out. We might as well splash plain water on our faces.

So that's about the size of it. As I look around my house now, I see how full it is of products that we can very well do without. From fabric softeners to power-packed cleaning agents, the grocery list has trebled or quadrupled with a list of items I had never even heard of a decade ago.

There was a time, when we were content to stock two or three varieties of tea — Assam, Darjeeling and perhaps Nilgiris. Now, my kitchen shelf is stocked with some 15 variants of the brew — some as bizarre concoctions as they come, from orange cinnamon to citrus spice. Whether we like them or not, we have to sip them.

Marketers are getting rather good at the art of demand creation. And so long as there are gullible souls such as I, easy preys of persuasion, the products will continue to roll out.

Take magic straws, which a bunch of food importers recently said they will be getting into the country soon.

These apparently are straws that when dipped into cold milk will change the taste of the milk. Cocoa, strawberry, you name it, there are straws in every flavour.

I can see that it's going to be a must-have item in every milk drinking urban household, including mine. Soon, these straws will become indispensable, I bet.

Adrian J Slywotzky's recent book, Demand, lays bare the tricks of the trade. He says most consumers are usually indifferent — sheer inertia, scepticism, and habit will keep them from reaching out for new categories.

But successful marketers find the trigger to break this inertia and make the product's appeal so magnetic that they are irresistible. “Capture the emotional space,” he exhorts.

Reading through the book, you realise how Apple's marketers are the most successful demand creators in recent times.

They have got the whole world addicted to their iPods, iPhones, iPads — and what's more, they keep coming out with newer and newer versions of the same product.

It's all to do with planned obsolescence. There was a time, when we used the same pen for five years, and the same watch for 70 years — products were built to last. But in the capitalist scheme of things, products are engineered to last only a limited time — so that you make a beeline to the market for replacements within no time.

Is this ethical? In some countries, planned obsolescence engineered into products is regarded as a breach of consumer rights.

But marketers have found an answer to that one too.

If the product doesn't become obsolete or wear out, then they make it unfashionable. What, you are still hanging out in your boot cut jeans? Dump them, don't you know this is the age of skinny jeans?

Also, get rid of that heavy laptop; it's time to move over to the sleeker notebook or tablet, silly.

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