The "We Get It" Movement

A marketing movement that's been building for a few years now has finally reached the mainstream. I call it the "we get it" movement. Sure, it's probably geared mostly for the so-called Digital Native consumer population, but it actually has a much wider appeal. It goes like this:

For decades, advertising has lived in the Patronizing Age. This is the time when advertisers surely must have thought you were stupid. They assumed that you would buy whatever they were selling without realizing what's actually going in their ads. And the ads were, in retrospect, ridiculous.

The We Get It Movement says, "Listen, you and I get it. We see through all the B.S. the other people fall into. We're smarter than they are. (Wink.)"

The first ad that I can remember with this tone came from the Target Market anti-tobacco campaign. A series of kids looked into the camera and delivered blisteringly sarcastic lines to the tobacco industry. I can't recall the specifics, but I picture a kid looking into the camera and saying (with all the mock sincerity in the world), "If you show me a cartoon camel smoking a cigarette, I'll think it's cool." The campaign was shocking for its absolute rejection of the "Just-Say-No" marketing that dominated the airwaves at that time. The strategy was completely different: Instead of talking AT people and trying to demonize an entire industry, the idea was to let the "victims" speak, thus emasculating an industry by showing how the target market sees through its infantile tactics.

Now the idea is officially mainstream, because Kotex is running its high-buzz UbyKotex campaign not only on YouTube, but during American Idol. If you haven't seen the spots, they're quite hilarious. They achieve the "we get it" factor by basically making fun of the entire history of feminine hygiene product advertising. But the strategy is more than satirical; it's really about complimenting the audience and ushering in a whole new inside-joke vibe with the super-marketing-savvy consumer. I'm not exactly the target market for Kotex, but I'd be surprised if the strategy (and its resulting tactics) aren't paying huge dividends in the aisle I usually avoid.