Brandwashed

by Martin Lindstrom

From the bestselling author of Buyology comes a shocking insider’s look at how today’s global giants conspire to obscure the truth and manipulate our minds, all in service of persuading us to buy.
 
Marketing visionary Martin Lindstrom has been on the front lines of the branding wars for over twenty years.  Here, he turns the spotlight on his own industry, drawing on all he has witnessed behind closed doors, exposing for the first time the full extent of the psychological tricks and traps that companies devise to win our hard-earned dollars.
 
Picking up from where Vance Packard's bestselling classic, The Hidden Persuaders, left off more than half-a-century ago, Lindstrom reveals how advertisers and corporations:
 
   • Intentionally target children at an alarmingly young age
   • Stoke the flames of public panic and capitalize on paranoia over global contagions, extreme weather events, and food contamination scares.
   • Are secretly mining our digital footprints to uncover some of the most intimate details of our private lives
   • Purposely adjust their formulas in order to make their products chemically addictive  
   • And much, much more. 

This searing expose introduces a new class of tricks, techniques, and seductions--the Hidden Persuaders of the 21st century--and shows why they are more insidious and pervasive than ever.

• ISBN10: 9573269767
• ISBN13: 9789573269762
• Publish Date: 1 May 2012 (first published 1 January 2011)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 12 August 2021
• Imprint: Yuan Liu/Tsai Fong Books
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Language: Chinese

Reviews

[wyvernfriend]

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.

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.