June 16th, 2009 by lindsay
No such thing as altruism, but is sure does sell a car.
Endless studies on individual behavioral motivation have pointed towards selfishness time and time again, including behavior that benefits the greater group. In those cases, it turns out the individual benefits long term from the support of the group. Darwin would call it survival. Ayn rRnd would call it selfishness. Either way it’s a personal long term investment. Apply this principle to marketing, consumerism and the human’s destruction of the earth and you get what we have now: conspicuous environmental and social consumerism. With the increased interest in sustainability, the Prius sends a more appealing message to the world (read: potential mate) than a Hummer, even though the Hummer is considered a “luxury” vehicle and the Prius is not. So prius sales are up. And the Hummer? Dead in the water. The Prius owner’s social cache? Skyrocketing. The Hummer enthusiast? RIP, good buddy. And good luck avoiding key scrapes and curse words. As a co-worker pointed out, it is like we have transcended class (or at least the division between middle and upper) and moved into a new paradigm where as long as you can afford to be green, you are gold. So. Why are we REALLY buying the Prius, Product RED and TOMS shoes?
A great, albeit lite article in TIME a couple weeks ago discussed just this.
Cited in it is a great study on altruism by Hardy and Van Vugt, University of Kent at Canterbury. Most interesting:
“Study 3 showed that as the costs of altruism increase, the status rewards also increase. These results support the premise at the heart of competitive altruism: Individuals may behave altruistically for reputation reasons because selective benefits (associated with status) accrue to the generous.”
But. What i find more important – and more interesting – is does it really matter?
If someone buys a Prius to gain social status, who cares? It still benefits the group, right?
If wealthy philanthropists are competing for social status through out-giving one another, who cares? It still helps others, right?
…or does it?
like most things, what you see depends on where you stand. Socio-political models and theories of change will probably determine your opinion on this, but it seems everyone will agree that selfish altruism has never been more evident than it is right now. Well, maybe it was in the 60′s. But now it seems we’re more open to admitting it in ourselves, recognizing and accepting human inconsistencies, keeping both our selfish interests and the greater good in mind – and in marketing, using all that to get people to do stuff.
Speaking of, did you see our new ads for AWEA?
July 10th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Great food for thought. While idealists may dislike the idea, it seems that the popularity of altruism is directly dependent on the ratio of personal sacrifice to the visibility of these good deeds. I saw this relationship demonstrated over and over again when I worked for a luxury car dealer. Our most luxurious model was available as a hybrid, which was a great improvement on the non-hybrid version, but had nothing on smaller models with less power and fewer bells and whistles. In fact, the gas millage really wasn’t much better than the average, non-hybrid SUV (20c/22hwy). But this car had a V8 engine, could pump out 438 horsepower, and even included a massage chair, providing the bragging rights that come along with that hybrid decal without any sacrifice in luxury or performance. It’s like saying, “I’m going to buy a big, wasteful luxury vehicle, but I don’t want anyone else to think that I’m completely selfish, so I’ll buy one that’s slightly less wasteful than the standard model.” Needless to say, they sold like crazy.