THE MALKETEERS
When you speak to healthy people you realize - they’re not indifferent to sweet beverages and crappy food - they dislike them. They see these products as destructive enemies. They’re your enemies too.
You’re now a Daycart, a member of Team Descartes. Our enemies are Malketeers, short for malicious marketeers - when they win, we lose. We defeat malketeers by thinking. We study them and their products. We see through their tricks and propaganda. We make good choices.
You despise malketeers the same as a rival sports team or political party. You don’t like them. You don’t wear their gear. Our team is good people and they’re rotten bastards. You doubt their dogs like them.
Marketeer’s Goals
A marketeer goal is to increase profitable consumption of what they are promoting.
Profit = (# of units) X (Profit per unit)
Win = Higher profits = More units or more profit per unit.
Marketeers often have limited control of profit (revenue minus cost) so they focus on increasing consumption.
In most markets a small percentage of people, heavy users, make up a high percentage of sales. The Pareto Principle, aka 80/20 rule – applies to consumer. The general concept is that - 80% of sales, comes from 20% of users. Marketeers want to capture or create, then retain, these heavy users. They want raving fans, repeat business, addicts, lifetime loyal customers. This is the case for hack markets:
It’s easier to get an occasional smoker to smoke more than to get a non-smoker to start.
The heaviest 10% of alcohol drinkers, drink more than the other 90% of the US population.
Casinos pay for the travel and room of heavy gamblers to get them on-site.
To identify a harmful hack market, ask - are heavy users glad to be heavy users? Do the people smoking 2-packs-a-day, drinking a 12-pack-a-day, or gambling 1/2 their annual salary, “happy” that they’re making this “choice?”
Companies selling legal hacks - cigarettes, alcohol, gambling, gaming, cookies, ice cream, soda – don’t want moderation, they want consumption. They’re not focused on the long-term best interests of their customers. Efforts by companies to get people to use a hack with restraint is public relations flimflam, anti-lawsuit ass-covering, and reverse persuasion bullshit.
Example: “Please drink responsibly.” We naturally focus on the first part of phrases, in this case the very clear “Please Drink.” Responsibly is a vague term, for many drinkers it means, don’t drive if you’re drunk. It’s a great PR and CYA phrase for alcohol companies. When people get drunk and do dumb dangerous things, they failed to heed the good advice of Budweiser and Jack Daniels.
White Hat or Black Hat
Are these good companies?
.
Marketeers use the same tools and techniques to promote their products. What separates a normal marketeer – who is trying to control the behaviors of other people – from a malketeer is the potential for harm and the amount being promoted.
Is the amount being promoted harmful?
In some cases – illegal drugs like meth, crack, and fentanyl, enticing gambling addicts to gamble, and alcoholics to drink – any quantity above zero is harmful.
White hat marketeers promote a healthy quantity of something.
Black hat malketeers promote unhealthy quantities that harm people.
Example: Slimy soda execs say a little soda (6-8 ounces) each day is okay for everyone – even if true - they sell 20-ounce bottles, promote huge fountain cups at convenience stores, and free re-fills in restaurants. Big sodas contain more sugar than a person should consume in several days.
Example: Almost anything can be harmful in extreme. Yoga’s great for people. A studio that encouraged people to do yoga 4-8 hours every day, could be considered harmful if it pushed people too far and made them neglect important parts of their lives.
Team D Terminology
Hack - A thing that gives a person pleasure or lowers distress – could be good or bad, or only bad in excess.
Lever - The means a person gets a hack.
Lies - A thing that’s dishonest, meant to deceive, or bullshit.
Malketeers - Malicious Marketers – People who uses hacks, levers and lies to promote a harmful level of consumption. They want make people Bubbas, because Bubbas are profitable.
Bubba – Customer Persona - A customer who reacts and harms themselves through too much of a hack. The Bubba mascot is a tired, overweight and stressed rat. He is often in a gauntlet or maze of hack-levers-lies.
Team Descartes – People that succeed and want others to succeed by thinking, eliminating harmful hacks and using positive hacks.
Daycart – Customer Persona – A customer who thinks and avoids harm by identifying and opposing the hacks, levers and lies created by malketeers. Daycarts seek to use hacks strategically as a positive tool for diet-exercise-sleep.
Public Enemy #1 - The Coca-Cola Company - The USA would be a healthier and better place without soda and other sweetened beverages. Coke has sought to avoid all responsibility for the illness and deaths of their customers. Coca-Cola belongs in a Museum.
Hack - Their liquid hacks with sweetness, salty, designed flavors, bubbles and caffeine create intense taste experiences and short-term energy rush.
Lever - Every place a soda can be picked up, drank, and purchased.
Lies – The taste of soda is a lie – it combines flavor hacks to create a more intense taste experience that nature ever created. The bright colors used to promote are designed to look like fruit. Ads use music, sex appeal, and role models to make soda attractive. Ads use persuasive slogans.