Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us… (edition 2012)

Nothing too new or surprising here. Lindstrom is a little too fond of the expression "more than you can imagine." I can imagine plenty, when it comes to marketing, and my deeply cynical imaginings are rarely wrong. So, yeah- you are being marketed to every second of your life, unless you live in a cabin in the unspoiled woods. Speaking of the unspoiled woods, I thought a lot about Ma Ingalls while I was reading this- I wonder who marketed what to the pioneers, and what brands were popular, and why. I know there are brand names scattered through some of the other period fiction I've read, but offhand, I don't remember any from the Little House series.

The writing here is pedestrian and the concepts interesting but familiar. ( )

A real eye opener to the way Marketeers-online, and off use neuroscience to target behavioural advertising at us to make us buy. ( )

I have a lot of criticisms of this, but I'll stick with my gravest. First, the way Lindstrom interprets psychological and other research doesn't always match how I'd interpret it. For example, if you were to hook me up to a plethysmograph (you can't, but that's not the point), you might find that I was physiologically aroused by a stimulus. That's a far different phenomenon than my acting on that arousal. Lindstrom consistently conflates the two. Second, his idea of consumers as essentially mindless bumpkins who are easily suckered and misled doesn't inspire my trust his motives. Third, based on this world view, Lindstrom assigns warrantless motivations to consumers. For example, he asserts that we don't choose the first item from a shelf but reach behind it for the second because we think it's cleaner. To test this hypothesis, I surveyed random family members and friends in situ at the grocery. I didn't interview those who took the first item. They are evidently outliers, even though it was true of most of them. I asked those who reached behind for the second item why they were doing so. Nobody said it was because it was cleaner. For perishables, they said it was because items with a longer time to pull date were further back. For shelved items, they said it was because the ones in the front were dented or dinged (which they were). The only person to cite cleanliness pointed out the filthy children being allowed to paw at the lower cans and boxes. I'd like a million dollars for my fab-o study, please.

There's not a lot here that's not obvious or that you didn't read in an expose 40 years ago. Producers want to sell things. Advertisers misrepresent their products. I'm as easy to influence as anybody, but my behaviors aren't those of Lindstrom's herds of moo-cow consumers who don't seem to read the labels or Consumer Reports, or consider whether products actually work. ( )

This was an interesting read, all about how we're persuaded into buying things. How a company makes easy links for us to choose products and then encourages us to unthinkingly go along with their choices. It asks us to look at our habits and decide if we're happy being led or whether we should question it. One of the most interesting chapters was at the end where he talked about the experiment he and some others did with a family, the Morgensterns, where they were brand ambassadors for products and where, when they were advocating green products other people listened, saying that it is important what brands you advocate to your friends and family and to be mindful of it.

Yes we have free will, but we have to be willing to use it.

It calls for us to be a little more mindful, and maybe to play games with the marketing types. That we're being watched for every step we take and that privacy is often an illusion.

Me, myself? I'm going to continue using my reward cards in shops, they get something back, also I have to eat gluten-free so this is telling them that I buy certain brands, which they will hopefully continue stocking. That while you're a commodity, that you have to make sure that you influence them with the good choices, as well as your unthinking choices. To buy what you want and try to ignore the influence of others trying to make you do what you don't want to do.

It also tells me that I should be more adventurous in my choices and to venture out of my comfort zone occaionally - provided there's no gluten involved, of course. ( )

For years, I have tried to find a book that made me gasp as many times as Freaknomics did. I remember thinking about that book years after I read it...I’m still thinking about it now. I tried Super Freakanomics and other books that people thought were comparable but none of them made me gasp and do a triple take. None of them until “Brandwashing”. This book does for marketing and advertising what Freaknomics did for economics and Fast Food Nation did for food. It made my brain hurt in a way far surpassing the brain freeze of milkshakes and Slurpees. In fact, it has taken me over a week to even sit down to write this review because I have been too busy telling all of my friends to pre-order their copies!

Author Martin Lindstorm is a veteran advertising agents with clients that range from McDonald’s to Microsoft. It say that Lindstorm knows that ins-and-outs of marketing is to say that Steve Jobs can use a computer. Here he takes us behind the scenes to show the reader how companies use MRIs to figure out the areas in the brain that they want their marketing to hit. He tells of how advertising can affect use before we are even born; how smells that our mothers experienced when pregnant with us can condition us to buy certain detergents and eat certain foods. He explains why panic and fear sells more than happiness and peace. Lindstrom gives credence to the idea that people can be addicted to their smartphones and lip balm. Tactics of using nostalgia to buy a certain brand of soda or candy bar are explored. What does Justin Bieber and the British royal family have in common? They’re both brands that dictate our tastes and purchases. In his final chapter, Lindstrom carries through with an experiment like that in the movie “Jones” in which he has a family peddle certain items to their friends in an effort to see how keeping up with the Jones’ really works. Spoiler: it works!

I could go on for pages and pages about this book but at about 275 pages, this book can stand for itself. It reads like a thriller that you won’t be able to put down. Sadly, the horrors that are inflicted in the “story” are on us...the consumers. Just in case the reader doesn’t believe his theories, he backs them up with copious case studies. Once I finished this book, I immediately ran out and bought his other book (which I now know is a marketing ploy). I know people will be talking about this book for years to come. I know I will!

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