Brandwashed
Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy
By: Martin Lindstrom
Published: September 20, 2011
Format: Hardcover, 304 pages
ISBN-10: 0385531737
ISBN-13: 978-0385531733
Publisher: Crown Business
"My goal is by understanding just how today's newest hidden persuaders are conspiring to brandwash us, we as consumers can battle back", writes marketing expert and chairman and founder of Buyology, Inc., Martin Lindstrom, in his provocative and thought provoking book Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy. the author describes how marketers have developed sophisticated new strategies, tools, and techniques to persuade consumers to purchase their goods and services, and shares ideas to better educate people on why they are buying to make more informed decisions in the marketplace.
Martin Lindstrom recognizes that people cannot simply stop buying consumer products entirely. The author tried that strategy himself, and the result was a complete failure. He takes the realistic position that people will always spend their money on various consumer products. At the same time, marketers are also well aware of this reality of modern society. Martin Lindstrom points out that marketers will use every social, psychological, sexual, and demographic information at their disposal to convince us to buy their wares. While those concepts have been around for decades, the author provides evidence that marketers are going much farther than ever before in manipulating the customer. Indeed, Martin Lindstrom alleges that marketers go much farther than ever before in seducing potential customers.
Martin Lindstrom (photo left) points out that many of the techniques used in modern marketing are what he calls devious, underhanded, and even outright rewiring the brain of the consumer. The author describes how marketers gather information on customers without their knowledge. Going far beyond collecting buying behavior, marketers utilize complete individual profiles gleaned from multiple sources, ranging from social media to invade personal and family lives. This collected and collated data is then turned around to sell people even more products and services. The methods described by the author extend to marketing to very young children, and at earlier ages than previously thought possible.
Martin Lindstrom shares a series of chapters that describe how marketers manipulate customers, and provides a series of remedies to reduce the influence of those same intrusive marketing strategies. The topics covered include:
* What age companies begin to market to consumers
* Why fear sells in marketing
* How brand and shopping addicts are created
* The role played by sex in marketing
* Hoe peer pressure is applied to consumers
* How nostalgia is used to market fond memories
* How celebrities and fame are used in marketing
* How hope and values are marketed
For me, the power of the book is how Martin Lindstrom combines a comprehensive and fundamental understanding of marketing techniques, with practical and readily applied tactics to avoid marketing manipulation. As the author states, the purpose of the book is to educate consumers to make more informed buying decisions, and how to avoid falling prey to intrusive marketing methods.
Martin Lindstrom presents his information as an antidote to what he considers underhanded marketing strategies. To be a better informed consumer, is to be a wiser and and more resistant consumer. The author shares the latest brain research used by marketers to stimulate certain areas of the brain to generate buying impulses. He also offers hands on advice to openly resist even the most subtle marketing messages. The author also shares the results of a unique marketing experiment he employed in the real world. Overall, this book is an eye opening experience for anyone.
I highly recommend the often shocking and very informative book Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy by Martin Lindstrom, to anyone who is serious about understanding the inner workings of marketing at their most basic and fundamental level. With this knowledge, combined with the techniques to counter the marketing tactics, you will be a better informed consumer.
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