I’m curious.
Could this sooper-sekrit marketing cabal perform a Yedi mind trick to, e.g. make one crave a certain brand of car or [de]wristwatch[/del] timepiece? I’m thinking maybe coveting a classic sports car with such a fervor that made one go out and buy a replica at a fraction of the cost. Or maybe buy a really expensive Swiss chronometer, when a Timex would do the job.
Snarky-Kong aside and with qualifications, yes. That’s what marketing does: instill a desire for consumer goods and work to overcome resistance to purchasing them. Resistance can be simple ignorance (you’ve never heard of wristwatches). It can be taste or style or personal preference, however quirky (you don’t like metal watches). It can be economic (you really can’t afford a $2k watch).
Can even sooper-seekret-magical marketing make you suddenly turn into a jewelry store and spend your rent money on a Rolex? Almost certainly not. The entire game is one of chain reactions, mostly small but leading to larger and larger actions. An ad for a Rolex is a pebble, but Rolex’s marketing efforts (along with those of all their competitor/colleagues in the field) eventually produce enough avalanches to make the effort worthwhile. Face it, no one just wakes up one day with a desire for an absurdly expensive watch; it’s a “need” and a want carefully fostered by a dozen streams, not least of which James Bond flashing his newest Omega at you.
What’s new and concerning and not a little frightening is that marketing long since passed the “external influence” that most argue has no effect on them, and has used behavioral psychology to develop behavioral engineering techniques to get past deeper and deeper levels of individual resistance. If this level of coercion - subversion of your deepest emotions and motivators - doesn’t bother you, I think it can only be because you don’t understand it. It’s not screaming in your face to buy a Rolex… it’s manipulating you on biochemical levels to accept the arguments of need and desire and want, whether you could ever be overtly convinced or not.
ETA: The meta-question you’re posing is a good one: does marketing drive the desire for continually upscaling one’s possessions and “lifestyle”? Of course it does. What else do you think drives a buyer from an Accord to a Mercedes? And what]s the point of the effort? To drive sales because yay sales (and profit) regardless of source, need or consequences.
I’ll do my best.
You seem to believe that, while I think I’m a sensible and sophisticated consumer with a healthy amount of sales resistance, marketing experts with almost unlimited info and almost inconceivable power get past my barriers – and even awareness – to subtly shape my perceptions and preferences to sell me on stuff. And I can’t dispute this, because that only shows how good they are.
Instead of asking you why they don’t “run everything”, let me ask you about a much smaller and shabbier goal: what if, instead of persuading me to buy stuff, they merely want to persuade you that they’re as good as you think they are?
No, don’t tell me you’re too sensible and sophisticated to be sold on that by them; after all, that’d just be what they’d want you to think, right? And the more you try to deny it, why, the more obvious it’d be that they’ve subtly slipped past your barriers of awareness and resistance to shape your perceptions and preferences.
(Again, not to the point of running the world; just to a point of making themselves seem as good as you say they are. Just to the point where movies that flop can be explained away; and a whole industry can go under, but that’s Not My Job; and no matter what happens on the ground, people who work in marketing are assuredly being underestimated – except by the oh-so-clever in-the-know folks.)
How would you go about disputing that?
How do you know you don’t like Breitling if you’ve never Breitled?
I don’t know that I’m really up to these meta wheels-within-wheels arguments. 
What I’ve been saying (here and all along) is relatively straightforward descriptions of how modern marketing works. The general idea is that it’s a lot like Mad Men, but with more of those computer things, and honestly, the way MM presented ads and marketing is about like a car-centric show gushing over the Model A.
Marketing heretofore dealt only with groups: put up a billboard, run an ad, do a direct mail campaign, and count the returns. What it’s evolved to is smaller and smaller granularity, where cost-effective campaigns can be mounted to a dozen carefully filtered individuals or households - there might be ten thousand iterations, but in small groups with the most careful targeting possible.
So what you might or might not respond to, the field’s ability to get past what you think of as you defenses and resistance gets better and better. The analysis (which also gets better and better) says so.
There’s also a great deal more to it than just the call-and-response of ads and your (any you) reactions to them, from indifferent to wholly converted. Such examples are pebbles in the avalanche of overall marketing effort, from shelf placement to product placement in entertainment to embedded marketing to social marketing, all guided by the very latest in behavioral understanding and big-data tracking and analysis.
So if you want to get into how Big Marketing might be JediMindTricking me about all this, I guess we could, but in the end we might as well just cut to the chase and start talking about the red pill vs. the blue pill.
I’ve Brieitled. I can’t remotely justify why, but that I own a Breitling should answer Waldo’s question about my imagining I am immune to all these forces. I’m not. I am (possibly greatly) more aware of them, and their interplay, than most, but I am no more indifferent or immune to them than I am to that avalanche or Australian rip tide.
Which is part of why I contend they are among the most powerful forces that have shaped our present-day world. And why their misuse disturbs me so much.
I have inline ads in Facebook that are for things I looked at on Amazon. Amazon is clearly selling this info to Facebook somehow. Creeps me the hell out.
Recently a friend was searching for something online.
She got a direct email from a business selling whatever it was. That was scary.
The whole thing with Samsung and the TVs listing is another example of why we are in absolutely NO hurry to get Alexa, OK Google or whatever. The only people who need something like that are people who can’t figure out how to program their VCR or work the TV remote. And those people won’t have the tech savvy to set up such a gadget anyway.
Bear in mind: I participate in market research surveys, voluntarily. I volunteer to have that information collected and am aware it will be aggregated and resold. I am compensated for this.
I use Google services (gmail etc.). I am aware they are aggregating information to some extent, I have consented to it by using their services, and I am compensated by being provided these services.
I do not volunteer to have Samsung or LG or whomever take information without my knowledge or consent. - companies which have provided me NO benefit in return for this information, nor have they provided me with any disclosure that they are doing so.
There’s a quote that says “if you’re not paying for it, you’re not the customer, you’re the product’”. With Google or whatever, we know we’re the product. With the TVs, we paid for the product so we are the customers. We are NOT the product.
Something that was radical/hysterical to say a couple of years ago but is now pretty widely accepted. Not sure how well it’s understood, though.
I’m not sure it’s so easy to draw a line. Just because Google provides its tools and services without charging directly, it puts them in a different… ethical? transactional? category from something you buy more directly? Put another way, because Google lets you put an infinitesimal load on its systems, they’re entitled to mine you like Rio Tinto Zinc?
I don’t think I can agree. I’m happy with the notion of paying Google and other “free” providers somehow, but giving away large chunks of personal and family privacy seems like price gouging. (See: Gen. 25:29.) Or the techno-savages giving away the pretty red stones for crackly sheets of paper.
Interesting article on the front page of today’s NYT about the “legitimate” use of this technology - legit as in they have permission.
Accepting that these are controlled tests, with the foreknowledge and permission of the participants, I’m still left with a couple of chilling thoughts.
First, the blase “I don’t mind a camera watching me and dissecting my every facial expression and activity while I watch because I have nothing to hide” just freezes my bones. It’s the kind of unconsidered thinking about personal privacy in the internet age that can only lead to passive acceptance of many more kinds of surveillance. Because, of course, honest people have nothing to hide. (Only those Islamic terrorist types who might walk through your bedroom.)
Second, this has been done in a fairly tight, restrictive environment of the FCC under control of administrations reasonably committed to things like net neutrality, data privacy and individual rights. We now have an FCC commissioner openly moving to end net neutrality and allow cable companies to sell subscriber’s data… and if anyone thinks that’s the end of it under Agent Orange, you probably wear a MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN that I’d check for a bug.
Third, the article basically glosses over/ignores the fact that this deep invasion of privacy and the already-occurring illegitimate uses of it have the sole purpose of being able to sell us more shit, more efficiently, and by closely monitoring our behavior in a fairly personal, private and intimate setting. Who on earth can think this is a benign combination?
As a postscript, I’ll point those interested at a colleague’s recent book, which I hadn’t realized was in print. It’s probably the most coherent work yet on how retailers manage and influence shoppers - and to their own benefit, not the customers’.
This colleague of yours: does he share your confidence that plenty of decisions are matters of “personal taste that cannot be overcome with even billions in marketing”? Likewise, does he agree with you that that – instead of trying to influence folks into changing their various preferences – the sensible thing to do is, often, just throwing one’s hands up and simply declaring that they’re fixed preferences?
If so, he sounds interesting.
You persist in trying to pin this “taste” issue on me as some kind of fixed point in my perspective, and I don’t know why. Can we agree that “personal taste” is your hobbyhorse here, and not mine, and perhaps quit dragging every issue back to it?
Personal taste is one factor among many in consumer choice, of varying influence depending on many other factors. That’s pretty much all I have to say on the subject in general terms.
…no?
Near as I can tell, you’re the one who first used the phrase “personal taste”. I don’t know why you picked the phrase “personal taste” – or why you used it to describe something “that cannot be overcome with even billions in marketing” – but it’s a point you for some reason raised and affirmed, as if it were your hobbyhorse.
For all you know, I’d never even heard that phrase until you mentioned it – when you felt like noting that “it cannot be overcome with even billions in marketing.”
Yes, I know; you later went on to talk about fixed preferences as stuff that – near as I can tell – you believe is separate from personal taste; quite possibly you believe in a great many different factors that can’t be overcome by even billions in marketing.
Bit of a placeholder here, as I’m limited by being on my tablet and two tablets of oxy… knee surgery this morning and can’t get to my desk. But I’m feeling quite mellow.
You don’t seem quite interested in this discussion except in a sort of high school debate mode, wherein if you can pin a single flaw on my sentence structure, you win the points. Here’s all the points; you win the medal. I’m done on that level.
If you want to read my long and careful answers and address them as whole parts, I’m happy to continue this discussion indefinitely.
For those of you disputing the power of marketing; how many times have you gone to the kitchen after a round of commercials to grab a bag of chips,pretzels, or what have you that is already in the house? I can honestly say that I’ve come back with a hand ful of tortilla chips or a bowl of snacks and I’m willing to bet you probably have as well. It’s not about the fact you resisted the commercial at the store because it’s already in your cart and on it’s way home with you. The fact you didn’t buy the Guacamole Doritos (which are friggin’ awesome BTW) they had on sale and grabbed your favourite Miss Vickies is not the point at all.
As I said somewhere back up there… there’s very definitely an “all for all” benefit for each player from any marketing within a segment. Nothing any one company counts on, but a huge campaign for Lays chips lifts all bag snax sales.
But I’m not out to pin a flaw on your sentence structure.
First off, I don’t see anything noteworthy about the structure; if I were trying for some kind of have-you-stopped-beating-your-wife trick, you’re giving me nothing to work with. Second, though, I’m not going for a debate trick; I’m truly interested in the sentiment behind the sentence, restructure it if you please.
You believe that billions in marketing can’t overcome personal taste when it comes to movies and music and, in a word, entertainment. And, near as I can tell, you believe that in other areas – politics, f’rinstance – ‘fixed preferences’ likewise just need to be taken as a given. And you’ve hinted that, even aside from personal taste and fixed preferences, there are other such things that should be taken as a given.
If I have that right, then you can structure your sentences however you like; you’re just making a point I find interesting, is all – and I’d sure like for you to continue indefinitely, if you want to specify other examples of stuff you believe even billions of dollars of marketing would be wasted on because it’s like unto ‘matters of taste’ or ‘fixed preferences’. I’m not out to score rhetorical points on sentence structure; I genuinely want to hear the full list of stuff that you think qualifies.
Please do. I’d like you to start by clarifying your position; now that you’ve mentioned your thoughts on fixed preferences, and on matters of taste – and, again, feel free to restructure them if you like – please spend as long as you desire itemizing up a list of things that you think are like unto fixed preferences and matters of taste.
Well, you’re not addressing me, since I don’t dispute the power of marketing.
But I’ll say this:
…as I’ve said, there’s presumably an “all for all” benefit to marketing companies when it comes to selling people on the idea that, y’know, marketing companies are as good as Amateur Barbarian thinks they are. Nothing any one company counts on, see; but just a campaign built to help portray marketing companies as good for business.
And, judging by Amateur Barbarian’s response – well, who am I to dispute the power of marketing? They’re apparently quite good at selling people like him on an idea like that, such that it’s impressive and remarkable and my thesaurus runneth over.
Again you have turned a specific comment into a sweeping generalization. I never said this inability was general and universal; it applies only to the individual - that’s what “personal” means - and to a widely varying degree. A person who loathes horror movies or romcoms is not going to be swayed by a marketing campaign intended to reach as much of the movie’s potential - and likely - audience as possible. There have been cases of campaigns reaching out to non-obvious viewers, in movies and TV shows and even foods, but they are specific and rare.
Studios simply don’t waste money trying to get a few percent of old kindly ladies to come see “Biker Babe Vampire Ghouls.” Is it a matter of “personal taste”? Sure, but it’s also a matter of using expensive tools to the most profitable end.
To re-reiterate, “personal taste” is only one axis of marketing analysis, effect and focus. It matters a great deal more for subjective things like entertainment and perfume preference, and a great deal less for products and markets more strongly driven by other factors.
But that’s largely your dichotomy, and I’ve done my best to explain that these are two axes of marketing focus among many-many, and only loosely related to each other. I can’t think of a way to structure a list with two columns that divide these things in the way you persist in seeing them.
Again: these things are axes, a spectrum, a spectrum of spectra, a matrix that all interact and affect every individual differently. To think of them as linear variables is Don Draper territory. Which brings us back to the main point this exchange started with: the more and deeper data you have on individuals, the more precisely you can target approaches and bypass overt beliefs and even “taste” to get your message to a deeper, less-guarded part of an individual or small selected group’s mind. You can influence decision making on the other side of personal barriers and defenses by using low-level behavioral triggers and responses. You might even get kindly old Mrs. Higginbotham to sneak into a matinee of Biker Babes. But you won’t do it with any of the simplistic verities taught in Marketing 101.
And with that, I’ll leave you with Mssrs. Wu and Turow’s books (which are still damp from the presses) and move on to more productive topics.