Brandwashed

Last I checked, Martin Lindstrom was receiving a lot of flak for claiming in the New York Times that neuroscience proves that people literally love the iPhone. The oped piece was typical of Lindstrom's penchant for making bold claims about consumer culture and marketing, invoking science and empirical evidence to back it up, but glossing over maybe one too many crucial details along the way.

Yet I happen to like Lindstrom's work, which I agree must be taken with a grain of salt. I enjoyed his other book, Buy:ology, and find his regular column in FastCompany both insightful and entertaining. He seems to be in touch with the pulse of consumers and what marketers do in order to capitalize on it. Furthermore, even if the research he uses to support his claims could stand improvement (in presentation, if not substance), his appreciation for how data and science underlie successful sales and marketing is most definitely worth learning from.

His latest book, Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy, perhaps captures all the reasons I find Lindstrom's work worthy of attention -- as well as many of the reasons why he is excoriated by his critics.

As the title suggests, the conceit of Brandwashed is straightforward: it is an exposition of the many techniques that marketers use in order to compel/encourage/trick people into wanting/needing/buying the products that they peddle. Most people think that they make consumption decisions independent of whatever gimmicks companies use to bring prominence to their brands, that they are sophisticated enough to tune out most marketing messages and sales pitches. But as Lindstrom points out in his book, nothing could be further from the truth. We have become primed to crave the "new new thing", to identify with logos and brand identities, to associate products with the lifestyles we want to lead.  Companies have become very adept at grabbing our attention, keeping it, and convincing us to part with our money.  Whether we realize it or not, each of us in our own way has become brandwashed.

You could say that Lindstrom's book is a tell-all (of sorts) of the different tricks at the disposal of today's marketing professional.  Indeed, Brandwashed lays much of it bare for readers to behold, bringing to light many of the sales tactics that people have ever suspected companies of using -- such as clothes that are labeled a size or two smaller to flatter unsuspecting consumers, or products targeted at infants in the hope of developing lifetime consumers -- but taking care not to spill too much of the beans.  Therein lies the book's appeal: it reveals just enough to interest/horrify/amuse the average reader, but not enough to be of too much concern to fellow marketers (many of whom, I suspect, will come away from the book thinking, "Why didn't I think of that?").  Thankfully, not all of it is sleazy, and I think most readers will come away from Brandwashed marveling at why we are susceptible to such techniques in the first place.

Still, just as in his piece regarding the iPhone -- which is also in the book, by the way -- Lindstrom deserves criticism for jumping too readily to conclusions based on arguably questionable science.  At the very least, it can be deemed questionable barring further information.  For instance, he repeatedly invokes studies conducted by a neuromarketing firm in support of some his claims, but isn't able to provide sufficient details that speak to the credibility of these studies (e.g., representativeness, research design, etc.).  In fact, I'm rather certain that most readers will find the real-life experiment Lindstrom conducted and recounted at the end of Brandwashed to be blatantly unethical -- even if it makes for riveting reading.

But that's really the point, isn't it? If it abided by the strict rigors of science, then Brandwashed wouldn't be anywhere near as fun to read, which it undoubtedly is.  Such is the masterstroke Lindstrom has achieved with Brandwashed: to entertain us with the folly of our own ways, to provide plausible explanations why this must be the case, and maybe -- just maybe -- help turn us into savvier consumers in the process.