Brandwashed

   The subjects of Brandwashed are marketing and branding, both of which are designed to drive consumer buying, but in different ways. The function of marketing is to  detect a need and to inform consumers as to the existence of the product and includes pricing, promotion and distribution. The intent of branding is to establish a link between the consumer and the product, using psychological mechanisms to establish brand loyalty. The book title suggests that branding may act as a form of brainwashing, wherein the consumer is psychologically bonded to the brand. Furthermore, it implies that at times, the employed methods are illegitimate and that consumers must be alert to this form of coercion. The fact that sellers use advertisements to usurp the minds of potential buyers is an important subtext of the book. Ads that are effective often have an emotional content that penetrates our unconscious, and makes us subservient to our hidden desires that are often rooted in fear, anxiety, self-image and sexual interest. This book explores each of these issues in depth.

    This is not the first book to address the use of psychological methods in order to motivate consumer preferences. In  1957, Vance Packard published a groundbreaking book whose premise was that unconscious desires determine consumer-buying preferences. He proposed that access to the buyer’s unconscious is essential to effectively motivate consumer buying. The name of the book was The Hidden Persuaders.  The book advanced the use of Motivational Research to uncover consumer desires, which remained buried in the unconscious. Freud contended that the unconscious is the seat of forbidden desires, often related to sexual feelings. Since these desires are repressed they are inaccessible to routine questioning, and require psychoanalytic techniques to bring them out into the open. The Packard book explores these methods in fine detail. Whether these methods are as valid for populations as for individuals is discussed in one of the final chapters of the Packard book.

    Brainwashed picks up where the Hidden Persuaders left off. The author contends that psychological forces responsible for consumer preferences are the products of neurologic mechanisms. The author discusses in detail the role of neurologic imaging as a method to uncover

neurocircuits responsible for decision-making. He thus moves from psychological mechanisms to anatomic and physiologic determinates of buyers’ thoughts.

 

    Unexpectedly, he comes to the conclusion that peer pressure is the most powerful stimulus for consumer buying.  The author contends that identification with trusted peers primes the consumer pump. Along with peer pressure is celebrity endorsements.   Identification with celebrities is central to consumer self-image supporting the contention that consumers must be proud to choose certain products. In all cases, trust is the essential ingredient of the power of the suggestion. An interesting chapter in support of the power of peer pressure depicts an imaginary family called the Morgensons who by their very presence in the community impels consumer preferences by  example, contiguity and suggestion. The Morgensons are modeled on the Jones’s, a TV family whose goal was to make buying suggestions to the community The Magnesusns consisted of a family of people, who like the Jones’s suggested products to the community. The conclusion of this study is that community pressure is the most effective motivator of consumer buying.

   The most powerful and startling chapter in the book is entitled Every Breath You Take, They’ll be watching. It is no accident that this title reflects paranoid ideation.. This chapter deals with what the author refers to as mega data mining, a practice by which sellers accumulate personal information from a variety of sources in efforts to plumb the minds of potential buyers. This chapter is both illuminating and frightening in its implications.   Whether it be Facebook or Google, our use of social media makes it possible for third parties to uncover facts about us that we always assumed were private. Similarly, by monitoring our wandering through supermarket aisles sellers accumulate first hand knowledge of our consumer interests. Most importantly, and unbeknownst to us these data are shared with a variety of providers. All of us have had the experience of researching  a subject on the internet, only to receive an e-mail or coupon related to these activities, almost immediately. We assume that these are just coincidences, but an author points out, in marketing, nothing is a coincidence. This chapter is not to be recommended to those who are influenced and frightened by paranoid thoughts.  Such thoughts are accompanied by fear that there is a conspiracy to influence oneself. There is an old joke that being paranoid does not exclude the possibility of actually being followed and monitored.

   Unlike the Vance Packard book there is no chapter on ethics and morality. Is it right to use hidden methods to influence peoples behavior based on hidden desires, sexual interests, anxieties, fears etc.?  We have come a long way since Vance Packard wrote the Hidden Persuaders. New techniques have been developed which allow one to probe the minds of potential buyers. The author warns that companies are “collecting information about us without our knowledge, not just our buying habits but about everything about us-our race and sexual orientation; our address, phone number and real-time location “ It brings to mind Orwell’s nightmare about big brother is watching you. We would be well advised to heed the warning of Vance Packard in his conclusion of his book “they try to invade the privacy of our minds. It is this right to privacy in our minds, -the right to be rational or irrational- that we must strive to protect”. Perhaps this book will be adequate warning to those captivated by issues of marketing and branding.

     What Brandwashed does not deal with is the role of branding in political races. Such branding has far more consequences than whether people buy Wheaties. Studies of what determines political choices have found that people rarely vote based on professed policies. Their vote comes from the gut, from their perceptions of whether the political choice supports them as people.  Thus the election of Donald Trump was undoubtedly determined by populism, with the notion that he favored a sub segment of the population at he expense of others.

  The main problem with this book is that in its intent to be user friendly, the author falls prey to a writing style that is chatty to the point of being distracting. The writing meanders and it is difficult to discern the author’s intention to provide a cogent massage.  One becomes unsure of the direction that the author is taking and becomes lost in the pointless verbiage. Each chapter is headed by a cute title which in its opaque way suggests the subject to be discussed but leaves it to the reader to decipher its meaning. Fortunately, the author rescues himself and the reader with a few sentences at the end of each chapter, which summarizes the message

   Another major problem with the book is that it frequently asserts outright falsehoods and half-truths, disguised as established facts. An example is the reference to hand washing and the use of hand lotions to prevent the flu. The author argues that hand washing cannot protect against organism spread by aerosolization. He overlooks the fact that such aerosols alight on objects in the environment and are transferred to the airways by tactile transfer of organisms. A bit of fact checking would have been helpful. None the less, the book is thoughtful and encourages  us to examine critically the methods that marketers use to influence our buying choices.

Post by Arthur Banner