I'm one who tends to imagine terms and sayings in a literal sense. A good example is the colloquialism, "Let me pick your brain". I envision the person quoting this as a starved crow standing over me after I get smushed trying to cross a busy road... Or some freakish mad scientist with a stabby instrument who has me cornered in his underground lab. I prefer to say, "Let me pick your thoughts", as I have no interesting morbidly plucking at someone's cerebellum. That's a bit invasive, don't you think?
I see most modern marketers as macabre brain pickers
When I was a youth, I remember seeing a replica Coca Cola advertisement from the WWI era. It said, (drum roll) "Drink Coke". Such a primitive, bare-bones message seems so quaint. To me, it's a bit refreshing in its crudeness. It's very direct and easy to brush off if you don't want ruined teeth and extra rolls. Back then, there was no marketing team aggressively planning to cynically “tug at people's heart strings” to sell massively over-hyped sugar water (yikes, there's another image to make me shudder).
Enter Edward Bernays
Sigmund Freud's nephew Edward Bernays was a pioneer in getting inside potential consumers' minds. I'm not going to spend much time on this guy, but after watching the documentary, Happiness Machines: Century of Self — I was floored. If you don't believe that elites view us as bacteria in a petri dish to be experimented on and exploited, then this documentary will strongly challenge that view. Bernays perceived humans as a brutish herd to be manipulated and subdued with sneaky psychological measures. This philosophy spread from marketing, which is bad enough, to media and politics. This is an eye-opening, but disturbing video, but I value awareness. You should too! :)
The future of marketing
With 5G connections and the Internet-of-Things (IOT), I foresee marketers as being debatably more menacing than a psycho with an ice pick. Reputable people have expressed strong suspicions that marketers are already spying on us through laptop microphones so they can serve up pertinent ads. This is no longer the stuff of conspiracy theorists. If some marketers could read thoughts of consumers, they would — and with great zeal — just to squeeze a few more pennies from us.
Here’s an example of how marketers have no qualms about invading privacy to pitch products... A German company (in 2013) has found a way to vibrate the bones of the skull and project sales audio into the heads of weary travelers that rest against a window on a commute. To quote the article, "It uses something called “bone conduction technology” which transmits sound to the inner ear by passing vibrations through the skull, reports the BBC’s Leo Kelion. That makes it seem like the sound is coming from inside your head."
What sparked this article?
I wanted to express my annoyance and float my sentiments out regarding marketing's over-reach. The catalyst was fairly innocuous compared to the other examples, though.
I was bored out of my mind in a parking lot when I received an email from my former car repair center. It contained a customer satisfaction survey. At first, the questions were very straightforward, asking about their pricing, quality of workmanship, explanation of repairs, etc. After page 10 of the insanely long survey, the questions became probing and very touchy-feely. These bastards were trying to pick my brains!!!
Here are some of their questions
(answers ranged from "Strongly agree" to "Strongly disagree":
• I express my feelings publicly, regardless of what others say
• My thoughts are the most important thing about myself
• My religion is very important to me
• Being able to make my own choices is important to me
• I am able to work diligently toward a long-term goal
• In uncertain times, I usually expect the best
• I am not sure how I could live my life without technology
• Overall, I expect more good things to happen to me than bad
At this point, I closed the survey window with a very uneasy sigh. The world is becoming a great big microscope. These auto mechanics and their PR firm can take their psychology mumbo-jumbo and shove it.
