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Title: HIDDEN PERSUADERS by Vance Packard ISBN: 0-671-53149-2 Publisher: Pocket Pub. Date: 03 June, 1984 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.43 (7 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The strip-mining of human nature
Comment: Written at the cusp of the 'consumer revolution', this book is both a quaint historical piece and a prophesy of what was to come. The tangential thesis of the book is that by the mid-fifties, the standard problems in capitalism -- those of production and distribution of goods -- were solved, but that this introduced another problem: all of these goods must be consumed. So, it became necessary to step up the techniques used to market these goods.
Advertising was nothing new, but the psychological intricacy and sophistication in it was ratcheted up significantly. Using Freud, Jung, and whatever other foundation proved workable, social scientists and psychoanalysts honed their skills to develop an ever-growing repertoire of tricks that would induce us all to spend and consume at ever-higher levels.
Two things make the book relevant today: 1) nothing has changed either in the economic situation or in the techniques, except that both have become even more intense (two thirds of the 2002 U.S. GNP depends on consumer spending); and 2) no other book has yet come forward to do a better job at showing, in great anecdotal detail and for a broad audience, what depth marketing is all about.
Rating: 4
Summary: Hidden Persuaders
Comment: What is perhaps most interesting about the early market researchers is the amount of attention paid to class: they imagine, for instance, that the subtle gradations in difference between Buick and cadillac is a telling sympton of American class differences. That is one reason that the Edsel failed, because it was based on the idea that families would "trade-up" to an Edsel if it was positioned as slightly higher-class than a Ford. You can also learn a good deal about life in the 50s: before flouride, people brushed their teeth in the morning, and not for hygiene but for cosmetics. It is a testament to the power of the advertising (and the research) that we now all brush our teeth at night. Packard is long on examples and short on analysis, and he waffles between being golly-gee-willickers impressed with the "scientists" and their methods or repulsed by the cynicism and naked manipulation of their backers. Their definitely is the sense, which is so unfamiliar today, that these guys in lab coats are really strange birds, but surely they must represent progress. After all, isn't it a good thing that people brush at night? Packard is not your standard culture curmudgeon like Galbraith or, much worse, Adorno. Class, of course, is much less important today than then, but it is still important. Packard relates the fascinating story of why people went to loan sharks instead of the wood-panelled banks (and just think of how wood-panelled station wagons have been replaced with the plastic wheel-rims of SUVs): because the borrowers could feel superior to the loan sharks, even if they had to pay higher rates. I suggest that the publisher reissue Packard.
Rating: 5
Summary: Brilliant
Comment: It is hard to believe that one of the most perceptive and important books on the shaping of modern society is out of print. This book shows how the workings of our minds have been scientifically evaluated, and this knowledged used to manipulate them. Not in any 'X-Files' manner, just straight out appealing to our basic desires and needs. Read this book, and then as yourself what every ad and salesperson is doing to you when you see them. It's all there, so they aren't hard to work out.
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Title: The Status Seekers: An Exploration of Class Behavior in America and the Hidden Barriers That Affect You, Your Community, Your Future. by Vance Oakley, Packard ISBN: 067950091X Publisher: David McKay Co Pub. Date: June, 1959 List Price(USD): $7.95 |
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Title: The Waste Makers by Vance Oakley Packard ISBN: 0679500995 Publisher: David McKay Co Pub. Date: June, 1960 List Price(USD): $7.95 |
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Title: Subliminal Seduction by Wilson Bryan Key ISBN: 0451127277 Publisher: Signet Book Pub. Date: December, 1974 List Price(USD): $2.95 |
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Title: Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising (Ideas in Progress) by Judith Williamson ISBN: 0714526150 Publisher: Calder & Boyars Pub. Date: 01 March, 1994 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Lonely Crowd, Revised edition: A Study of the Changing American Character by David Riesman, Nathan Glazer, Reuel Denney, Todd Gitlin ISBN: 0300088655 Publisher: Yale Nota Bene Pub. Date: 01 March, 2001 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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