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Modern Scientific Marketing.
Practically everything has become a "science" these days.
Exactly. Brain washing of the masses at its best.
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I am grateful that Lizzie suggested that I read Vance Packard. "The Hidden Persuaders" makes this science very clear. I think everyone should read it.
Read through all the pages, I have a different perspective.
When I was a young Marine and didn't have a care in the world, I heard about Black Friday, but it meant nothing to me.
Later when I got a family of 3 kids, it meant the world to me. I's a Dad who wanted to make sure and get everything my kids wanted. I wasn't making much back then, but I made sure my family didn't want for anything. Black Friday was a Godsend. I literally saved 50-70%, every year and back then, I needed every single %. The thought of anyone begrudging me for those things would get an earfull.
Retailers say that this season is the biggest sales time of the year and wish there could more times like this.
Economists say that consumerism is the guage of economic health. We've been in a depression, there's only two things that bring us out- war or consumerism. Pick your poison.
At this time of year, we can choose to see things in a cynical light or a positive one. IMO, the whole point is the latter.
Happy Holidays,,,,,
Do the boys in marketing look like Don Draper?
We haven't been in a depression. Not even close. In the winter of 1932, nationwide unemployment topped 25 percent, banks were failing in every state and charities were reduced to feeding hungry people from pails of restaurant garbage. We haven't approached that level of crash since, due largely to protections put into place during the 1930s -- at least not yet.
But I do believe a depression -- a real one -- is inevitable as the ultimate result of an unsustainable consumption-driven society. The population simply isn't going to be able to keep up with the increasing need to feed the maw -- we've seen that already in the constant pressure for consumers to spend, spend, spend, accumulate, accumulate, accumulate, discard, discard, discard, replace, replace replace -- regardless of whether you *need* the goods or not. The job assigned The Boys is to ensure that you think you need the goods, because it's the only way to keep the engine chugging. I don't disagree with you when you say that's how the system works, because that's how they've set it up. My point is *that system can't be sustained forever, and we need to be thinking beyond it.* Vance Packard made this point in 1957, and less than sixty years later -- a mere blip in the overall human timeline -- things are moving in just the direction he predicted. What we saw in 2008 was a spasm symptomatic of a deeper disease.
Eventually the engine will run out of fuel -- and we, the people, are the fuel that it's going to run out of. We've created a society based increasingly on the creation and distribution of things of no intrinsic value whatever -- you can't build a house with an iPhone app, you can't eat social media, you can't clothe yourself in mortgage notes. When the society that created these things crashes, they will lose all the value that society assigns them. And then, then, there'll be a depression, and it'll make the one in 1932 look like a little whistle storm. And the only people who will survive it will be the people who've already learned the difference between what they actually need and what The Boys have convinced them that they want.