Just got through reading Douglas Rushkoff's book "Coercion, why we listen to what They say" and found it pretty heady stuff. Definitely gave my eye a slant towards all that garbage advertising on television. Of course as I recently told a friend, I've virtually given up television for blogging. This is way more fun!
I think what I found most interesting about Mr. Rushkoff's book is when he points out how forms of coercion have spread from their advertising routes and permeated many people's daily behavior. That was really fascinating and totally witnessable. I know some of my customers are occasionally baffled when I just offer product and don't include a "hard sale" line of thought. As if they've become so saturated by advertising influence that they are at a loss when it is absent. I've got good corn, tasty watermelon, what more do I need to say? It doesn't matter to me if they trust me or not, they either take some home and come back believers or they don't.
2 comments:
My family and I make it a kind of 'sport' to analyze and point out the stupidity of most commercials. Car commercials are the worst, by far. But there are so many other stupid ones that I hope this game will teach my kids to question stuff like that.
According to the author that is something the advertizers are trying to work around. They make ads which give you a wink and a nod "We know you can tell what we're doing so we aren't going to really advertize to you, ok? Buy Mt. Dew" as if we can't tell that they can't tell that we can tell what they are really doing. I can run that recursion as deep as I need to shake any advertizer so they should just get a better job to start with.
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