Skip to main content

Manipulation in marketing and advertising.

Marketing, advertising – it's all just bullshit. It comes down to manipulation. You've got to play the game.

One reason I started writing these articles is because in early 2016, one of my work friends said the above to me. And I was a bit stuck for a reply. I mumbled something along the lines of "But...no! We're here to inspire people and improve their lives" – which was only met by a cynical laugh.

In retrospect (and despite evidence to the contrary), I didn't really know what to say because I like to pretend that the marketing-slash-advertising industry doesn't involve manipulation.

Because manipulation sounds deceitful.

And bragging about one's manipulative abilities (viz. my colleague) can never not come across as presumptuous. "Lo and behold how I can make people do things with my awesome Machiavellian skills."

(In fairness, the colleague actually said what he did out of...kindness. He thought – and still does – that I make life unnecessarily hard for myself by trying to find greater truths when sometimes it's just about getting a job done.)

And I can't imagine anyone one likes the thought of being, or having been, manipulated – the thought of taking action not because of one's own bidding, but because of someone else. People like a healthy measure of autonomy.

So I don't like the thought of being manipulative. (Or at least I dislike the thought of being perceived as manipulative.)

But then...I do want people to react to the concepts I come up with, and the words I create, in a specific way.

I want my creations to engender a specific response.

It's about being both functional and performative.

But not in an underhanded way.

So is perhaps persuasion the better term? Persuasion implies there's a dialogue, while manipulation seems distinctly one-sided.

So lo and behold: I am here to persuade.

Comments

Post a comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reading Raj Patel’s “The Value of Nothing” in an advertising context.

The more I read about the theory of advertising (which is plenty, thanks to my upcoming IPA Eff Test), the more it seems just inextricably linked to other disciplines. Psychology and sociology are pretty much a given – the better we understand how people’s minds and social structures work, the better we can sell to them. But there’s also a huge economic dimension to advertising. Specifically, so much of advertising relates to the process of value creation. Though my Comparative Literature course included ample Marx, Engels, Veblen, and Benjamin, it’s a concept that I’m still working to fully understand. That’s why I was very happy to come across Raj Patel’s The Value of Nothing . At its core, it’s a fundamental examination of why things cost what they do – though it also goes far beyond that as the subtitle, “How to reshape market society and redefine democracy,” suggests. One of the best parts is where Patel explains why “a burger grown from beef raised on clear-cut forest should rea
Post a comment
Read more

Stylus talk review: "The groups that will shape the commercial landscape in 2019."

Trends and insights researcher Stylus gave a presentation on  "The groups that will shape the commercial landscape in 2019"  on Tuesday, February 12 – here's my roundup (with extensive commentary). TL;DR: Interesting in terms of hearing about big and small trends (and the Zeitgeist in general), but also relatively niche and very US-focused. It was definitely about the "haves" rather than "have nots" – though that makes commercial sense I suppose. Also: I'm not entirely sold on the figures cited... Still, events like these are definitely worthwhile because with the insane amounts of information out there, anything that can shed light on what some of the distinct trends are, and where we're headed, makes the infoscape a bit more navigable. The speakers' main points: Don't just focus on Millennials and consider the "new" lifestyles which people are embracing – specifically... 1) "Supercharged Kids" Basically: the rise
Post a comment
Read more

Digested Read: How (Not) To Plan, Section 2.

Product, Price, Place! Introduction Marketers tend to focus overly much on Promotion, ignoring other three Ps. 2.1 Brands Can(not) Live Forever "Brands don't have life cycles," a theory which the longevity of Heinz, Kellogg's, and Hovis apparently support. "If there is any 'life cycle,' it's a brand management cycle." Phase 1: Brand launch with strong marketing support and ROI. Phase 2: Sales plateau – marketing needs to maintain and depend the brand and gets less management attention; budgets are cut. Phase 3: The cuts lead to declining sales; brand owners retaliate with price promotions which deliver short-term sales but damage the brand image (further affecting sales). The Boston Matrix of Cash Cows and Stars should be applied to categories, not brands. Checklist "Aim for brand immortality" Always invest in continuous advertising [Comment: A recurrent theme ] Share and Voice and Share of Market can help you estimate how much
Post a comment
Read more