Anti-Corporate Corporations

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John Ess Posted: Wed, Feb 4 2009 10:56 AM

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ7w5junaNc

Despite what you think of corporations and statism, you gotta love that the (normally great) Google is giving time to this guy on this week's AtGoogleTalks youtube video.  Lucas Conley.  The video caption reads as follows:

The Authors@Google program welcomed Lucas Conley to Google's New York office to discuss his book, "Obsessive Branding Disorder".

Publisher's Weekly: "Journalist Conley examines the implications of brand-centric marketing in an incisive investigation that illustrates how defenseless consumers are against advertising—on any given day, they are assaulted by 3,000 to 5,000 ads and branding stratagems that subtly dictate every aspect of their lives. Harnessing scientific innovations, branding has become increasing insidious—whether it is the Xbox audio logo or Southwest Airlines' incorporation of the fasten seatbelt sound in their marketing campaign—consumers are being conditioned to think in brands. Beyond ad creep and product placement in entertainment programming, viral and word of mouth (WOM) marketing now make even personal recommendations suspect. According to Conley, 1% of American children and 7% of mothers are compensated for participating in WOM marketing. Even social policy is being corrupted—the author asserts that public branding initiatives such as post-Katrina New Orleans' allocation of public funds toward refurbishing its Mardi Gras City image rather than addressing its safety issues shifts resources away from problem-solving in favor of perception. Conley's perspective on branding's encroachment into social areas is as alarming as it is stimulating."

This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.  And especially from a brand-name and advertising heavy company like google.  It's the old myth that people are being preyed upon by the mere suggestion that a company's product might be good and worth sharing with people.  And how dare they not believe, like socialists, that products are merely generic classes of goods that are indistinguishable.  This is even worse than the IP debate (and is probably even the reverse):  that people should be paid for even talking about products.  Well, which is it?  Get sued or get paid?  Maybe we could do both and they cancel each other out?

And I don't understand the abstract "scientific innovations."  Microsoft made the Xbox they didn't "harnass" someone else's work, why shouldn't they advertise it with sound effects?  And the petty complaint about seatbelts in SouthWest Airline commercials makes me long for the days when statists were steadfast for making everyone wear them.

The whole notion of "useless advertising" is bunk and is plain old anti-economic thinking.  As Thomas Sowell points out in his Basic Economics: 

 brand names are considered to be useless things from the standpoint of the consumer's interests. As India's Prime Minister Nehru once asked, "Why do we need nineteen brands of toothpaste?" In reality, brand names serve a number of purposes from the standpoint of the consumer. Brands are a way of economizing on scarce knowledge, and of forcing producers to compete in quality and price... Many critics of brand names argue that the main brands "are all alike." Even when that is so, the brand names still perform a valuable function. All the brands may be better than they would have to be if the product were sold under anonymous or generic labels. Both Kodak and Fuji film have to be better than they would have to be if boxes simply said "Film,"...  When United Parcel Service first began to compete with Federal Express in overnight deliveries, UPS announced that it would deliver packages by 3 PM the next day. Federal Express immediately announced that it would deliver them by 10:30 AM-which both companies subsequently did...   In nineteenth century America, most food processors did not put brand names on the food that they sold-a situation which allowed adulteration of food to flourish. When Henry Heinz entered this business and sold unadulterated processed food, he identified his products with his name, reaping the benefits of the reputation he established among consumers. (Sowell 269).

The idea of brand names being bad is the same as the paradox people have about over versus underconsuming.  The people will inevitably be blamed for either type of behavior:  either lazily milking products in a semi-monopoly if others do not enter the market or quickly innovating them and selling them with ads.  In one sense, people want competition because they cannot claim that all parts of the market economy are bad (as it demonstrates itself as a working process every day).  Even Thomas Friedman, as dubious as his thinking is on almost every issue, cannot disagree, for instance,  with pricing signals and competition's role in setting those prices. But when competition reigns, it's considered bad if it does not bring the "correct" results (to the critic who does not consider himself one of the consumers).   This is what causes the annoying "middle-way" Mises talks about in which people accept market paradigms but with caveats about their also being evil.  So the market becomes a Jeckel and Hyde that can only be tamed by government.

What's worse is that Microsoft and SouthWest Airlines could be criticized in a number of ways by consumers in terms of their quality of product (Microsoft seems to be infinitely more responsive than the statist airline industry, however), so targeting their branding ideas is a bit ridiculous.  It's like the old conflation that some statists had between US and Soviet corporations:  while working in low-pay jobs may suck, it's not the type of coercion of forced labor in the gulags.  Here, watching advertisements with TV (that you don't even need to watch), is considered on par with being a defenseless woman or child -- beaten down by Clockwork Orange-style mind control and then working for slave pay when they magnanimously tell anyone by mouth about products.

Google here is acting a lot like the networks that put out cartoons kids watched in the nineties like Captain Planet -- they have to work as capitalists, while hiding the fact that they are capitalists.  You get ads and you get laughable caricatures of businesspeople!  Probably to mitigate parental guilt somehow.  Which is never pointed out as conditioning itself!

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Jon Irenicus replied on Wed, Feb 4 2009 12:37 PM

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Oh yes, someone please save my helpless, defenceless little mind from the barrage of images and sounds targetting it!

Socialists are idiots.

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ama gi replied on Mon, Jul 20 2009 3:35 PM

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Jon Irenicus:

Oh yes, someone please save my helpless, defenceless little mind from the barrage of images and sounds targetting it!

Socialists are idiots.

Nice

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ladyattis replied on Mon, Jul 20 2009 3:54 PM

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I guess we'll ban Tolkien's books too because hobbits have become iconic.

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Natalie replied on Mon, Jul 20 2009 4:16 PM

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ladyattis:

I guess we'll ban Tolkien's books too because hobbits have become iconic.

We should definitely ban Tolkien. He dares to mock "fair redistribution". And there's not a democratic government in sight. What does he teach our kids?