Monday, August 28, 2006

Brand imprinting should be done with heated metal.

I find it moderately frightening how effective brand recognition is in practice. There are myriad times when someone will specifically ask for KY when they are looking for lube. In and of itself, this does not sound so bad. It's great when customers are confident and knowledgeable enough to have a specific item in mind that they like.

Unfortunately, in this case it seems to be substitution of "KY" for any use of "lube" in conversation. Much like the phenomenon often seen in the Deep South where you may hear a request for a "Sprite Coke" or "Pepsi Coke". Just as not all soft drinks are Coca-Cola, not all lubricants are KY. The wholesale replacement of words with a brand name sets my teeth on edge. It muddles the clarity to which verbal language strives and sets the stage for aggravation.

Assisting some people is like unto a drunken conversation with a Smurf. "Hey smurf, do you have any smurfs where the smurf is smurfing her in the smurf before smurfing all over her smurfing smurf?" There’s a very good reason so many words exist. Deliberately inflating the degree of uncertainty in a discourse seems counterintuitive to me. If you aren't endeavoring to forge comprehension of the concepts you are imparting to the other party, you are just polluting the air with noise.

There's a good reason so many varieties of lubricants exist, other than making lots of money. A thick, semi-sticky water-based cream is not going to be ideal for all sexual uses one might want. In fact, it's a bloody medical product designed more to facilitate insertion of instruments than insertion of a phallus (or whatever you're poking inside for recreational purposes). They do make respectable lubricants, but they aren’t the whole industry. None of the brands on the market are. It doesn’t matter what you pick up, there are going to be areas where it is less than ideal. Some are superlative in their area of designed intent, many are adequate, but they all have a “weakness” or two in how well they work in concert with some of your potential sexual activities.

Some lubes are better for use in self-lubricating areas of the body. Some are better in less moist areas. There's such a spectrum of viscosity on the market that there is no reason for anyone to not be able to find something that will work for them. So, why do people insist upon decimating their choices so abruptly?

Probably because marketing works. The brand saturates the market, no pun intended. Many people only exhibit enough cognitive function to wrap their meager faculties around that precious brand-name like Torquemada to the concept of heresy. They don't know any better, but they also don't want to expand their knowledge either.

Anyone that has spent any time in retail is very aware that the usual customer gets horribly confused and disoriented when presented more than about three options. I have somewhere on the level of ten times that number of options for them to select from. Sure, it can be rather daunting to take in, but that's what the sales person is there for. We know it so you don't have to.

Consequently, I want to howl with rage when I have someone looking for "lotion" or "oil" when they're really looking for lube, let alone when they have a brand that they insist on brandishing blindly.

Trust me, it serves little but the manufacturer for you to cling like a limpet to a familiar name solely because of familiarity. You may not be happy with the performance of what you get, and chances are, it's going to be me or someone like me catching the brunt of your dissatisfaction. I'd rather such occurrences were on the rarer side of the continuum.

4 Comments:

Blogger Trouble said...

wet platinum, baby. that's the stuff.

8:17 AM  
Blogger Lanius said...

It's not bad stuff, but if you haven't checked out Eros Woman or Sytem J/O, you might like it. The silicone is refined to a greater degree giving it a smoother feel. They also do a water-based.

8:48 PM  
Blogger Trouble said...

oo cool. I'll have to pass this tidbit along to the chef.

8:59 AM  
Blogger Lanius said...

Delighted to be of service.

6:48 PM  

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