by Pops » Wed 22 Sep 2010, 20:32:15
Thanks for that basil, well worth watching. Pretty interesting for me since I've been involved in marketing for years - very very low on the big picture totem pole tho.
I disagree with your summary americandream, although I understand your POV. The film did talk a lot about using psychoanalytical hocus pocus in the early post war era to "program" consumers and "control" citizens but the whole subliminal messaging bit is fairy dust - though it sold a lot of ads I bet!
No, what Freud contributed to marketing was the "talking about your feelings" aspect of psychoanalysis that morphed into the focus group as a way of understanding what the consumer wanted or feared or their objection to some product. The focus group told business things about the consumer he didn't want to say about himself right out loud as in a traditional poll.
And as to politics, of course I'll say it reinforces my opinion that we get exactly the government we deserve because every president since Reagan has given up on doing what's best for the country in favor of doing what the voters want (George Ist went against them and you know the rest). Clinton/Blair made it into an art by basically delivering on the minutia of the swing voters' desires. It explains to a tee exactly why Carl Rove and his sock puppet thought the way to a thousand year reign of the 'pub party was through tax cuts and more spending - it's what the citizens want.
One line I especially liked came from Robert Reich who worked for Clinton and wasn't thrilled about the idea of governing by fulfilling tiny swing voter wishes (which Dick Morris insisted was the only way to win re-election) instead of attacking the big problems of the day:
Political hack: "What good is being elected if we don't have a mandate?"
Voter analyst: "What good is having a mandate if you aren't elected?"
The last episode is really good for recent political history, the first episodes go off into the whole mind-controlled zombie with a credit card bit which is pretty silly - not that that whole idea didn't sell lots of stuff, it did, lots of TV commercials, magazine ads, billboards, radio spots,..., ...,
The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)
