Corruption in Consumerism

While walking in your local supermarket, a silent attacker is lurking. While driving in your car to work or school, the attacker is everywhere. While surfing the internet, the attacker is watching every move you make. Now before you all pull out your cell phones to call the police about this creepy attacker, consider that this attacker gets paid a large lump of money, employed by companies who have you as their target audience. Who is this creepy, but well-paid attacker, you wonder? Not who, rather what. Billboards, advertisements, media messages, basically all forms of persuasion, advertising, and media are violently attacking society. You might not even realize the ways it influences your daily choices. That is what makes it so frightening.

When an intellectual bank robber carefully plans out his tactics for robbing a bank, he knows everything about it. He knows where the security cameras are placed, he knows the easiest escape routes, and he knows how to blend in with the crowd. Marketing agents are like bank robbers. They know everything about the demographic they are trying to target. They explore the websites that consumers visit, they analyze their credit card purchases, and they understand the basic lifestyle of the consumer. By doing this and listening to customer complaints, researchers learn exactly what their audience wants from a company. Researchers emphasize that the customer is always right and the sole purpose of the company aims to accommodate the wants and needs of the customer at any cost. While this sounds very appealing, it also causes destruction. Over time, companies lose the capability to continually please consumers; therefore they must deceive customers into wanting things that exceed their necessities or wildest dreams.

Don’t believe me? Song Airlines, a branch of Delta Airlines, attempted to add luxury to travelling. Their target group? Trendy middle to upper class mothers. Song market researchers pulled in Andy Spade, co-founder of Kate Spade, to get his opinions on how to market to people similar to his clients. His vision included the production of an advertising campaign that did not mention the airline at all. He envisioned the creation of a social persona that brought the fun into travelling. The company’s vision from their own research included having organic meals, leather seats, personalized entertainment for each seat, and free beverages, all at an extremely low price. Both of these ideals were implemented within the airline. As demonstrated by the little success of Song (they closed after 3 short years), the billions of dollars spent in marketing research to create the “ideal” airline failed. In the PBS documentary The Persuaders, researchers admitted that the creation of commercials alone consumed almost a third of the entire budget for the airline. Billions of dollars down the toilet. Isn’t that what every consumer loves to hear in our fiscally struggling country?

Sadly, the negative influence of advertisement does not solely affect the economic well-being of the country. It also strongly affects the political aspects. Mass media including television, social networks, computers, and cell phones allow information to spread rapidly, and sometimes, that information widely diverges from the truth. A majority of political campaigns utilize this mass media to their advantage to stir up controversy about their opponents. Also, narrowcasting (or spreading specific information to a small target audience) plays a large role in elections these days. Mailings, phone calls, online surveys, you name it; political campaigners attempt to utilize it to manipulate public opinion. Researchers have found efficiency in targeting small groups because they are more likely to be influenced. The clutter of political advertisement also strongly affects the opinions of uninformed votes and lackluster candidates can build great reputations with people who are uninformed about the issues for which they stand.

Advertising overwhelms us. It clutters our world. When every company attempts to stand out and beat out other companies, consumers are left more confused than ever. As an analyst from The Persuaders said, “When culture becomes completely advertising friendly, it ceases to be a culture at all:” Due to persuasion and advertising, Americans are losing their culture. We no longer think independent thoughts; but rather we consume the personalized “positive” information fed to us by marketing researchers. If we continue on this destructive path, allowing ourselves to be completely influenced by media and advertising, we will surely lose our uniqueness, personal beliefs, and economic well-being.

Bibliography

Hosford, Christopher. "Ad Networks Raise Profile with Targeting." B to B 14 Mar. 2011: 1.MasterFILE Premier (EBSCO). Web. 10 Aug. 2011. .

Sadler, Russell. "Democracy in the Age of Narrowcasting." Web log post. Blue Oregon. 10 June 2007. Web. 6 Aug. 2011. .

The Persuaders | FRONTLINE | PBS. Dir. Barak Goodman and Rachel Dretzin. Prod. Muriel Soenens, Rachel Dretzin, and Barak Goodman. Frontline, 2003. PBS: Public Broadcasting Service. 09 Nov. 2004. Web. 01 Aug. 2011. .