Evidence of decommodification to maximize profit
But, as mentioned before, decommodification is usually a better profit maximizing strategy. In case you didn't believe me, here is just a little more evidence!
So, businesses have an interest in decommodifying their goods and services--meaning they try to associate them with "humanizing" and interpersonal feelings. In advertising, decommodification (called decommoditization in business contexts) often does this by sending messages about fitting in, belonging with a certain group, or feeling a certain way about yourself.
"Unilateral" decommodification by businesses
These are all attempt to make more money by differentiating a product. I have called this, provisionally, "unilateral decommodification". It is a sort of Potemkin Village, set up to make the consumer believe they are consuming something that is humanizing in some way, even though at the end of the day, the business person knows that drinking a name-brand vs. a generic soft drink per se will not impact your social status at all. (Another issue is what Appadurai called the "social life of things". Name brand soft drinks can take on a sort of life of their own and have real social consequences if enough people see the soft drink in that way. Although that is not my main purpose in today's post, so it will have to wait...)
Esurance is doing this with the "sorta" commercials. The message is that there are certain people that you depend on in society, be it a pharmacist or a valet, you are trusting them with your health, your car, or something important to you. Is it enough for that person to just be "sorta" the right person? Or does it matter who that actual person is?
Of course the answer for most people is that it matters who that person is. You are turning something you trust over to them, so you want to have some kind of relationship with them.
This was discussed in my post about bank tellers. People just are not happy with a bank teller that is treated like a commodity (fungible, mechanized, impersonal), they want to have an interpersonal relationship with the person taking care of their money.
SIDE NOTE: Interestingly, businesses use the term decommoditization in place of decommodification. I suppose they may truly be distinct terms, with the former having the meaning I am discussing here of a deliberate attempt to decommodify something in the eyes of a consumer!
Esurance's decommodifying message: You matter for who you are!
So, basically, the Esurance message is that people want to matter because of who they are! People matter to you because of who they are, so you should matter to a company in the same way. Then, implicitly, the idea is that Esurance is dedicated to treating you like you. You won't be reduced to a bunch of numbers: miles driven per week, number of accidents and tickets in the past 12 months, and so forth. Of course, I suspect that would be exactly what would happen if I got an Esurance quote: they would reduce me to a bunch of extrinsic measurements rather than giving me a quote based on our interpersonal relationship (which we do not have).
But in practice...
Ergo, at the end of the day this looks like another form of unilateral decommodification. Esurance is not going to really give me a quote based on who I am as a unique individual or based on my (non-existent) interpersonal relationship with them--they will give me a quote by commodifying me--treating me as an object that can be reduced to measurements of my extrinsic qualities. However, they want their consumers to believe that their interaction with Esurance will be more interpersonal and more humanizing than they might expect.
I still love these commercials, because the world does feel just that commodified sometimes!
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