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How Much Are You Affected By Advertising?
A great excerpt from a (I think) quasi-fictional interview about the book, Poker Without Cards:
I saw this movie called The Ad and the Ego. It explored the negative and unrecognized impacts that advertising had on people and society. At one point it had one of its ‘talking heads’ relate how she was doing a survey to collect data on advertising. She would ask her subjects how much impact they felt advertising had on the choices they made.
[…] Most people would say that they felt advertising had little impact on their choices.” And then she got that look in her eye and said, “The funny thing is that these same people were often wearing their Budweiser caps and Nike clothing.”
That’s goddamned great stuff. Speaking of advertising, has anybody actually read this PWC book?
August 14th, 2005 at 6:59 pm
yeah i just finished it actually. it’s basicly the text of another book, manufacturing america, by a remorsefull advertising guy named ben mack,
http://www.rinf.com/manufacturing-america/
PWC is that book, folded into a kind of metafictional narrative about a character named howard campbell who is in fact, so far a i can tell, ben mack, both of whom have blogs under thier respective names.
the whole thing falls under the heading of another media ‘breaching’ experiment by what i playfully think of as the Joe Matheny Syndicate. who were and are behind the whole Ong’s Hat thing, and alternative reality gaming and all kind of spooky fringy stuff in name of helping out all us poor sleepy fuddles, and making an honest buck at the same time, god bless em.
August 14th, 2005 at 7:10 pm
So far I’m finding the “media blitz” around this book to be somewhat irritating and also somewhat intriguing. I’m trying to give it some attention, but haven’t yet found the hook into it that really is going to make me buy into it. I’ve heard people mention the Ong’s Hat stuff in the past, but never really got into any of it though. And was also just on Matheny’s homepage for some reason. Oh that’s right, cause he did an interview for Gpod with Mack/Campbell.
Can anybody give me a quick and dirty run-down of just what this whole “media breaching experiment” consists of, as I go off and try to find out for myself?
August 14th, 2005 at 7:47 pm
it’s kind of playfull nd kind of not.
what they like to do is, make up some story, fill it with just enough real world connections and ambiguity that they can pass it off as possibly ‘real’ and use the resulting confusion as a way to study how people cope with shifting realities and quite possibly as a recruiting filter for their little clique, which has ties to things like Dr Hyatt’s extreme individual institute.
a lot of it is fun at first, until you try to pull back the curtain and then it starts to smell manipulative and sadistic. you’re allowed to play, just don’t try to challenge the ‘rules’
August 14th, 2005 at 7:54 pm
Yeah, there’s definitely something stinky about it all. Like that Campbell interview I originally linked to here… it’s interesting, but also annoying. I ended up not being able to finish it because it seemed like (1) it wasn’t going anywhere, and (2) it was trying to play a trick on me. I wish the marketing was just a bit more straightforward. Everybody has to do this weird little dance to try to make you intrigued. It ends up turning me off at times. Maybe it is more effective in the long run though than just straight advertising and promotion, but maybe not. Back in the glory days of the internet, they used to call stuff like this “mystery meat navigation” - when you had a web page with navigation icons that didn’t give the user any indication of where they were going, or what they should expect to find when they get there. It’s fun as a bit of a non-linear gag, but is extremly trying when navigating huge information sets. Imagine trying to get around Amazon.com and none of the buttons were labelled, and everything was a joke within a joke…
So anyway, did you find PWC as a book to be worthwhile or not? I hate to do their advertising work for them, but oh well… too late.
August 14th, 2005 at 8:00 pm
not especially. it’s meant as an entry level text for people who’ve never read RAW or howard bloom or anything about memetics. i’m quite sure it’s meant as the thin edge of the wedge for the next stage of these guy’s move into mainstream media. it seems profound if you can’t see through it, just like anything.
August 15th, 2005 at 2:43 am
Well he sounds like a tiresome dick who gratefully writes books, that way you don’t have to talk to him. But, I thank you Tim for a link to the interview. Having read both of Bloom’s books I might have taken a skip on this one, but Douglas Rushkoff’s blurb makes me ever more intrigued. Give the man his iconoclastic dues I s’pose.
I liked the mention of the purposefulness of having the president ride in a Cadillac for his
impeachmentinaugural procession and the brazen marketing that goes into such a choice. Then again, what truly is brazen anymore? The reason I liked it, is because I’m really puzzled by the existence and quasi popularity of the Hummer. It makes perfectly no sense whatsoever to me. Now, a leap in popularity of a hybrid Hummer would still rankle my hide, but at least *that* would be marginally understandable. What scares me about the Hummer is what it glorifies and why people allow themselves, rich or no, to do something so unadulteratedly arrogant.Marketing. Ooooooh, how I hate marketing!
August 15th, 2005 at 9:51 am
I read PWC. I could make some complaints, but I did enjoy it, and it’s a quick read.
August 15th, 2005 at 12:06 pm
my assessment exactly. it’s worth a read-through and it’s a super-quick read, but there’s nothing mind-blowing in there for anyone who’s already slogged through the collected works of raw.
August 15th, 2005 at 12:54 pm
A better barometer would be…
How Much Are You Willing To Admit Being Affected By Advertising?
Those answers would be enlightening to say the least.
August 15th, 2005 at 2:40 pm
what’s that saying…. ‘you fuck with the bull you get the horns?’
I guess we’ll see…
http://goldenbraid.blogspot.com/2005/0...-conspiracy-it-seemed-to-me-that.html
August 15th, 2005 at 3:27 pm
nobody wants to admit to being affected by advertising. i use it like a drug. like coffee in the morning. the right image associated with the right product and i`m ready to go. i won`t buy the products, mind you. i just get the high. i guess that makes me a consumeristic voyeur, or a voyeuristic consumer. not a window shopper but a page shopper, looking at the products and grooving with what the ad guys wanted me to feel and then riding the wave. i have driven ferraris, climbed mountains, parasailed, ridden the tour-de-france, lived in a mansion……… and then turned the page. yes, i`m affected by advertising. i`m wearing an adidas climalite t-shirt right now.