Do these types of people exist?

I'm sorry...maybe I'm a terrible person, but if someone approached me to be part of something like this I would totally do it. Heck, I'm tempted to run out and FIND the company that does stuff like this. I could totally play a "daughter" for a long time. I'm 26 and most people think I'm 13.

Sadly, it will cost too much. However, it would be a great opportunity to do some nice product placement.
People are still judged by their social standard and jealousy is common in fancy suburbs i think, so if a concept like this could make someone buy a new Audi, it would be a good investment, wouldn't it? Because the second person would make other people buy it too. So 1 Audi can do a lot!

I'll try it and let you know, just give me an Audi! ;)

....but you lack some knowledge in marketing
The finance would not be a problem, because not one item is own by the sellers (the family), they are all lent by Brands. In fact the marketing company would even be paid to use them
In this type of agressive marketing, there's never a fixed wage, the seller is only payed in commissions. This means that in the end, the marketing company has almost zero risk, because it only needs a small budget to rent a house and give staff formation. When in a operation, as soon as the market in that area had a drop off, they would simply cancel it and open it elsewhere
The real problem for the scenario presented in the movie, is that most known brands would never accept this type of marketing in their products, because it would discredit them.
They would never accept this.... officially!!!
It's not much different than what it already happens with athletes, and artists worldwide.

i doubt it will cost too much. those items can be reused by other units. or it's a loan. then all they need to pay them is the commission, plus entertainment claims. i mean, the head corporation will already sign multi million dollar deals before they take on any projects. and the houses are probably owned by the corporation. im pretty sure they rotate families in the house so their marketing ploy could work for a long time.

You're not grasping the concept. The company doesn't need to pay a dime for the products since they are there "to sell". Companies will in fact pay the product placement firm to use their products since it's a marketing investment. You should also notice that this firm or company , in this case, aims at upper-class families with a high purchasing power based on the neighbourhoods collective income.
At the beginning of the movie they even say that the average annual income of that area is 100.000 dollars.

It's a real-life ad and in real life people do this all the time - recommend products, places; services, it's called word-of-mouth. They're selling a lifestyle for a concentrated group of potential buyers but with higher probability of success since it's your next-door-neighbour giving you some tips and not a flat-screen on your wall offering merchandise.

This type of brand management and marketing already exists in various forms. The movie itself is an excellent feature-length advertisement for various products: Audi, Puma, HTC, those designer cubic glass sculptures (don't know the name); CapriSonne, Yves Saint Laurent (the L'Artisan perfume) and many more.

Another good example of this kind of marketing is Facebook where companies pay good money to know what you like and what you use your money for. Facebook has even been criticized for breaching personal integrity by selling this kind of information to companies and prospectors of new business ventures; everything you do on their site like uploads, likes, comments, games played, videos forwarded, locations visited (gps tracking) is owned by them, not you.

I'd say this is a very possible reality, probable even, that if you're targeted then you wouldn't notice it unless you were looking for it.

EDIT: misspelled the spoiler code =)

"where we're going we don't need roads..."

I don't think so. A lot of these companies spend millions of dollars on a commercial, so letting one family show off their product is not that expensive in comparison. Plus it isn't like one company supplies all of the products, they just feature their products. Get enough companies and this can happen. In fact many years ago when car stereo products were popular, I installed all types of the products I would sell in my own car. When I drove around and people saw the stuff I had that they never seen before, they would go crazy and ask where they could buy it. I would give them my business card and a lot of them ordered it.

You weren't paying attention, it's not "a handful of people" it's literally a whole neighbourhood and surrounding areas that are the direct buyers. Not taking into account the even greater total of indirect buyers. Mrs. Jones even brings up this very point in the movie by telling her husband that he can't just interact with a handful of potential buyers since that isn't an efficient way to market the goods, he needs to spread his marketing by making others sell the goods for him. Like a ripple effect.

The magic and ridiculously simplified sales monitoring program that they use can be done in real life by the investing companies monitoring sales in a specific region where this family is installed, meaning that as soon as there is significant change in sales of the specific products in the region or coming from that region after the advertisement family has moved in that would be proof of the effectiveness of the marketing working as intended.

"where we're going we don't need roads..."

[deleted]

In my experience, the NOK or NOC adherents are old money. They have been in that demographic for generations.

None of the people The Joneses were interacting with appeared to be old money, more like upper middle class that had worked for, not inherited their money.



"Arguing with idiots is like trying to play chess with a pigeon..."