Tonight at 9 p.m., my local PBS station broadcast a Frontline edition titled “The Persuaders,” exploring the frenzied competition among marketers for our eyeballs and dollars. It was an intersting show, to say the least.
“Welcome to the new American Metropolis,” media critic Douglas Rushkoff tells viewers as he walks through New York's Times Square. “Somewhere beneath all these ads is the city I grew up in. But over the last 20 years, it's grown a second skin — a twinkling membrane of commercial messages.”
It's not just New York though. The average person is unable to walk down the street, ride an elevator, go to the bathroom, look at the sky or even play golf without being bombarded with messages, including as the show mentions, reaching down to pluck your golf ball after a successful putt and finding an ad at the bottom of the cup.
This is one thing I found interesting; and it relates to the general content of this site: researcher Douglas Atkin describes a moment that occurred as he was sitting in on a focus group where participants were talking about a particular sneaker.
“The terms they were using were evangelical,” he says. “I mean, they were converts. … If these people are expressing cultlike devotion, then why not study cults? Why not study the original, find out why people join cults and apply that knowledge to brands?”
Shudder...sneakerheads as cultists? Maybe this needs more explanation.
And indeed, that's just what Atkin did, studying groups ranging from Hare Krishna to Harley Davidson owners, from Falun Gong to Mac owners.
His conclusion: Whether joining a cult or becoming a brand devotee, it was all about a need for a sense of belonging, the need for the company of others.
Okay, that sounds better.
In all, this was a fascinating peek inside the heads of the persuaders and the lengths they'll go to and the money they'll spend to convince us, at any cost, just how much we need their stuff.
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