Raiding the inarticulate since 2010

accelerated academy acceleration agency AI Algorithmic Authoritarianism and Digital Repression archer Archive Archiving artificial intelligence automation Becoming Who We Are Between Post-Capitalism and Techno-Fascism big data blogging capitalism ChatGPT claude Cognitive Triage: Practice, Culture and Strategies Communicative Escalation and Cultural Abundance: How Do We Cope? Corporate Culture, Elites and Their Self-Understandings craft creativity critical realism data science Defensive Elites Digital Capitalism and Digital Social Science Digital Distraction, Personal Agency and The Reflexive Imperative Digital Elections, Party Politics and Diplomacy digital elites Digital Inequalities Digital Social Science Digital Sociology digital sociology Digital Universities elites Fragile Movements and Their Politics Cultures generative AI higher education Interested labour Lacan Listening LLMs margaret archer Organising personal morphogenesis Philosophy of Technology platform capitalism platforms populism Post-Democracy, Depoliticisation and Technocracy post-truth psychoanalysis public engagement public sociology publishing Reading realism reflexivity scholarship sexuality Shadow Mobilization, Astroturfing and Manipulation Social Media Social Media for Academics social media for academics social ontology social theory sociology technology The Content Ecosystem The Intensification of Work The Political Economy of Digital Capitalism The Technological History of Digital Capitalism Thinking trump twitter Uncategorized work writing zizek

A case study in the contrivances of marketing: The @NPowerHQ Price Promise

Watching channel 4 this evening, I encountered the NPower Price Promise which communicates their guarantee to always let consumers know the cheapest tariff available to them:

Except this ‘Npower Price Promise’ isn’t a deliberate policy to ‘stand up for customers’. It’s a requirement by the regulator that came into force on 26 August 2013:

Give all their customers personalised information on the cheapest tariff they offer for them. This information will appear on each bill and on a range of other customer communications.

https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/information-consumers/domestic-consumers/understanding-energy-bills

This was required to be implemented by March 2014. So the self-congratulatory advertising campaign the company has launched seems in actuality to be an announcement that they’re belatedly complying with legislation.

I’d love to know more about how these adverts came to be made and how much was spent on them. Should we expect more of this in the future? Large companies presenting regulatory requirements as beneficent corporate policy is certainly in keeping with the spirit of the age.

, , , , , ,