The other day, we talked about how connect-the-dots marketing hijacks the natural tendencies of humans (scavenging, sharing, status) for the purposes of selling products. And we’ve also been talking a lot about the concept of a technocracy, or a “rule by experts.” I would like to start synthesizing these topics and illustrating them by way of popular media, because once you know what to look for and how to read this agenda, the amount of it you’ll find out there is just staggering.

Towards that end, I have started scanning pieces from magazines that I think make good discussion points. This one comes from page 2 of the July 17, 2006 issue of Newsweek, and it is an ad for a program on the Discovery about Global Warming.

Sorry for the low quality of this scan - I’m working on improving them. Anyway, the text reads:

DON’T JUST LISTEN TO THE EXPERTS, BECOME ONE

Go beyond politics and agendas for a scientific look at the facts. Join the world’s leading climate scientists as they investigate research from every continent. See what the most sophisticated climate models predict for the future. And find out for yourself what’s really going on with our planet.

This ad is very conscious of it’s market - as all ads ought to be. They recognize that the readers of a magazine like Newsweek see themselves as well-informed. That is, in fact, why you buy a current events magazine: so that you stay well-informed. I’m going to guess that they have statistics about their readers which also detail what other magazines they read, how frequently, and maybe even what other websites and television & radio news media they are exposed to. They would have to be aware of this to recognize that not only does this audience demographic pride themselves on being well-informed, they actually pride themselves on it so much that they like to consider themselves as sort of experts about what’s going on today. They believe that read enough news to “really know what’s going on” and to “see through politics and agendas.”

All this really means though is that they are good consumers; they have been trained to shop around for the best deals and research not only tangible products, but intangible informational products such as news media. So for a company to recognize in its audience this desire to be seen as an expert information consumer and well-informed is a very big deal because it rewards the self-image of the customer. The customer’s identity is validated, and their social status elevated by calling them an “expert” which also creates a positive emotional association with the brand/company smart enough to tap into this.

The actual graphic itself includes an adventure scene, of a person plummeting into the unknown. It has an ambiguous cultural association taken on its own: it could be either a scientist or simply a thrill-seeker. Both connotations work together in this case: the scientist angle hooking into the surface subject matter, and the middle-aged thrill-seeker angle tying into the emotional identity/status game being played by the ad.

With all this in mind, the slogan at the bottom - “LET’S ALL DISCOVER CLARITY” - seems more than a little absurd, does it not? It may be that the experts who put this ad together had a great deal of clarity as to what they were doing, but I would wager that few members of their audience would have the conscious wherewithal to unravel these threads.