Introduction and Background

"...marketing is the backbone of capitalism.

 Without it you'd be dead in two days."

 -New Girl 2013

Hi! My name is Amanda Marburger, and I am a senior at BASIS Tucson North. Like many of my peers I have been given the opportunity to participate in what our school calls senior research projects, srps, where seniors are expected to choose basically any topic of academic interest, obtain an internship relating to that topic, conduct personal research that will our expand our knowledge of this topic and allow us to answer our own research questions created specifically for the topic. At the end of the research and internship process we, the seniors, are expected to deliver a final product in the form of a paper or some other creative means as well as give a presentation that illustrates what we have learned through the entire experience. 

For my own srp I have chosen to study, as the initial quote suggests, the essential and influential field of marketing. More specifically, through the research I conduct in this project I hope to study the psychological effects that marketing and advertising have on our society in order to discover how economic empires were built on a seemingly simple technique. I plan to research how exactly happiness, luxury and life styles are sold though they are abstract ideas. Some questions I plan on answering are:

1.How has happiness been defined through marketing, and is there a difference between happiness and luxury?

2.What types of triggers do consumers look for when trying to buy the American dream, and how do agencies target specific demographics?

3.Even though luxury is obviously unnecessary why do we all fall for advertisements anyways?

I acknowledge that the success of capitalism and materialism is heavily effected by economic factors, which I plan to address briefly, but I am more interested in the equally influential psychological side of the industry.

 Being born into a family of salesmen and as an active participant in our materialistic society, I have developed a keen interest towards the idea of capitalism and materialism despite their negative reputations. I find it fascinating that individuals are able to literally sell intangible ideas to one another. For example, I was originally fascinated by the way that Disney was able to distribute the idea of happiness in such vast quantities. I then began to think about the broader picture and how the American economy was built almost solely on the advertisement of the “American dream” and the “American lifestyle”. In addition to my initial interest, the art class and psychology class I took in my junior year fueled my curiosity towards the power of advertising because they showed how basic elements such as wording, color, and structure can easily influence an individual. The final and perhaps the most influential personal experience I have had with this topic comes from stories I have heard from my grandfather and his career in the advertising world, which have played a role in my long term career choice because he has shown me that advertising and marketing is not as easily executed as previously thought and is actually a time consuming and expensive process. Through all of these experiences I have gathered a great interest in marketing as well as the desire to learn the incredible craft, which I hope to begin to do through this project.

In order to research I will gather data from a multitude of sources. To understand the psychology of buying and selling I will consult scholarly journals and other various internet research tools. To study the process of advertising I will be interning at a local marketing agency where I hope to gather information on how groups of people are targeted and what exactly it takes to sell various products. In my internship I will be shadowing a partner at Dark Horse Media, where I will be allowed to observe the entire advertising campaign process from the original client’s need to increase their exposure,  to the final product that is distributed throughout the community. I will be introduced to office data collection systems that are used to target specific demographics, as well as be allowed to possibly participate in various client events outside of the office where I will be able to observe more client interactions. To study the effectiveness of advertisements I will be conducting interviews with a broad spectrum of consumers. 

I am so grateful to have been given this opportunity to research something that I have become incredibly passionate about, and I am eager to begin this experience! Thank you for reading.