If Only We Believe: The New Green Economy

A Culture of Imbeciles

September 10, 2014

Honestly, Ms. Klein, Author of NO LOGO & 350.org Board Member – You Really Don’t See This Intentional, Psychological Manipulation of Citizens?

“As Noam Chomsky has pointed out, Obama is a “brand” like none other, having won the highest advertising campaign accolade and attracted unprecedented sums of money. The brand will sell for a while. He will close Guantanamo Bay, whose inmates represent less than one per cent of America’s 27,000 “ghost prisoners.” He will continue to make stirring, platitudinous speeches, but the tears will dry as people understand that President Obama is the latest manager of an ideological machine that transcends electoral power. Asked what his supporters would do when reality intruded, Stephen Walt, an Obama adviser, said: “They have nowhere else to go.” – John Pilger

“Every brand comes with a set of associations,” explains study co-author Gavan Fitzsimons, a professor of psychology and marketing at Duke University. “When we’re exposed to logos, those associations fire automatically, activating our motivational systems and leading us to behave in ways that are consistent with the brand image”—and our preexisting drives. Over the years, all the Think Different ads we’ve seen have seared a link in our brains between Apple and creativity… — Psychology Today 

“With enough repetition, people encode the brands identity (usually not as read words but as the recognized look, shape and feel) in their brains, preferably linked to things that matter to them.” – Branding Strategy Insider

“So the original brands were comforting logos that were often people, like Quaker Oats or Aunt Jemima, that were essentially surrogate relationships, it’s like, ok, you’re not buying it from the local shopkeeper, you’re not buying it from the local farmer, but here is this image that you can relate to – you could form a personal relationship – albeit a fake personal relationship – with this mascot, with this figure. But the message was that you can trust it as much as you would trust it if you actually had a real relationship.” – Naomi Klein

“And this idea was the idea of lifestyle branding, the idea that if companies wanted to be truly successful and competitive in a global marketplace they had to understand that their true product was not their product, i.e. sneakers, movies, lattes, computers, it was an idea, a lifestyle. It was meaning itself. The idea of brands not products explains for me a few things at once. It explained the assault on the public sphere in the form of corporate sponsorship. It explained why we were seeing evermore new and creative forms of marketing particularly directed at young people.” – Naomi Klein [Source]

“The point is that you don’t have the choice whether or not to turn it off because it is in the streets, it’s right in front of your face, on the subway or even in the bathroom, in a public bathroom. The point is to take choice out of the equation because choice, even when you can click with your converter, that is seen as the enemy in the world of marketing, that’s why you need to get your ad woven into the content of television shows, so choice is taken out of the equation.” – Naomi Klein [Source] →