{"id":343,"date":"2009-05-18T18:35:25","date_gmt":"2009-05-19T01:35:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/?p=343"},"modified":"2009-05-18T18:35:25","modified_gmt":"2009-05-19T01:35:25","slug":"buddy-can-you-spare-a-viagra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/?p=343","title":{"rendered":"Buddy can you spare a Viagra?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>First we had the Hyundai ads.<\/p>\n<p>Buy the car and if you lose your job they&#8217;ll take the car back.<\/p>\n<p>They used to call that &#8220;reposession&#8221;.\u00a0 I guess they now call that marketing.<\/p>\n<p>Then Ford followed suit.\u00a0 They did one better.\u00a0 Buy the truck and they&#8217;ll let you hold off on payments for awhile (then they&#8217;ll take the truck back!).<\/p>\n<p>Mortgage companies, banks, and insurance companies have also gotten into the act.\u00a0 &#8220;If you&#8217;re in trouble, call us,&#8221; they say and we&#8217;ll work out a deal.\u00a0 The not-so-subtle marketing message is one of empathy.\u00a0 We feel your pain.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-344\" title=\"viagra\" src=\"http:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/viagra.jpeg\" alt=\"viagra\" width=\"147\" height=\"147\" \/>Now comes Pfizer.<\/p>\n<p>According to <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.walletpop.com\/blog\/2009\/05\/18\/things-are-looking-up-free-viagra-for-the-unemployed\/\" target=\"_blank\">reports<\/a><\/strong>, if you&#8217;re a guy and you lose your job they&#8217;ll float you a year&#8217;s worth of Viagra.\u00a0 Yup.\u00a0 Sound both salacious and stupid?\u00a0 I thought so.<\/p>\n<p>Wait!\u00a0 It gets worse.\u00a0 For the cars, trucks, banks, etc., this recession marketing effort was all about getting people to do something they otherwise wouldn&#8217;t do.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/warren-holstein\/free-drugs-for-the-unempl_b_204325.html\" target=\"_blank\">Warren Holstein<\/a><\/strong> notes that part of the strategy appears to be an effort to keep folks from switching brands or going to god-forsaken generics.\u00a0 Better to give something away for a little while to maintain brand loyalty in tough times than risk people wandering off and looking for some alternative.<\/p>\n<p>Because hard times shouldn&#8217;t mean the end to hard times.<\/p>\n<p>At least there&#8217;s no chance of repossession.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>First we had the Hyundai ads. Buy the car and if you lose your job they&#8217;ll take the car back. They used to call that &#8220;reposession&#8221;.\u00a0 I guess they now call that marketing. Then Ford followed suit.\u00a0 They did one better.\u00a0 Buy the truck and they&#8217;ll let you hold off on payments for awhile (then&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[156],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=343"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":345,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343\/revisions\/345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerrysjuicebar.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}