A Taxonomy of Manipulation

I think it is important for consumers, especially kids, to learn these common techniques of persuasion. There has been a kind of "arms race" of TV ads over the decades that has seen commercials become increasingly artful and sophisticated, even quasi-ironically appropriating anti-corporate motifs.

However, even when we know how a magic trick works we can still enjoy the craft and wit of its performance. I used to seethe with indignation at the manipulativeness of ads. Now I ignore most of them and enjoy the clever ones. (Maybe future art critics evaluating the art of our era will most praise not today's highbrow gallery product, but pop entertainment and commercials.)

Think of ads for high-end goods and services that run during your favorite network shows (I don't know - Lost, House, whatever) as a kind of tax on the affluent and gullible that allow you to watch these programs for free. (It's less pernicious than the lottery, which is a tax on the poor and gullible.)

I wrote the following months ago in another context. Admittedly, it's not very original, but it might be relevant.

"There are two models, actually two extreme poles, explaining consumer behavior:

The Top-Down Model (TDM) is that consumers are brainwashed by industries and their advertisers to want things that they do not need, to buy too much of it, and to crave things that are actually harmful.

The Grassroots Model (GRM) is that consumers want certain things and companies just satisfy a preexisting need. Advertising is simply an attempt to steer consumers from a competitor's similar product, rather than create a desire that wasn't there originally.

TDM is the model for those who want to denounce, regulate, or even ban certain industries, from fast food to makeup. It has a long history in the left, from Marx's "commodity fetishism" to today's culture jamming movement, notably the periodical Adbusters. GRM is the model of libertarians who want the market to be unfettered; they assert that the power has always rested in the hands of consumers. ...

I would like to replace both TDM and GRM with a more complex model that credits (or blames) manufacturers/advertisers and consumers alike as being in a kind of mutually modifying dialog (the Mutual Dialog Model or MDM), and understands the role of tastemakers, status competition, cultural values, and social trends.

The problem with both right and left is that they tend to reduce relations of social power and influence to a tiny number of actors - big government, big business, and a vast anonymous collective of consumers characterized as either brainwashed (left) or empowered (libertarian).

But in modern participatory market democracies with highly developed civil societies, there are many, many groups, institutions, and information networks - interest groups, internet communities, youth subcultures, professional associations, nonprofits, churches, etc. Consumers have overlapping, sometimes conflicting, identities as members of such groups and they have markedly different kinds of access to information, services, and goods, hence different levels of market power due to changeable (both individual and generational) factors like income, education, and age. In addition, products themselves are inherently qualitatively different, from harmful and addictive with no real benefit (cigarettes) to frivolous and harmless (fashion accessories) to necessary if bad in excess (all foods, not just "evil" fast food)."

That presentation reminded me of a friend, after completing his degree in Graphic Arts/Media, explained how magazines were completely designed to sell a product(s)

... and people look at me weird when I tell them I avoid tv like the plague.

Think of ads for high-end goods and services that run during your favorite network shows (I don't know - Lost, House, whatever) as a kind of tax on the affluent and gullible that allow you to watch these programs for free. (It's less pernicious than the lottery, which is a tax on the poor and gullible.)

I'd rather pay the tax, but that's not at issue because I can turn off the tube or go to paid channels. Even with my opting out, the damage gets done.

The problem is that the onslaught of advertising is designed to influence behavior on a market scale, and it does. The result of that is overconsumption and a steady artificial rumble that intentionally confuses want for need.

Of course, push comes to shove, social survival loses out to market economy.

What about the 'guilt trip' ad? The one that shows carefully crafted emotional imagery of injured kittens or starving children, and the promise that your monthly donation can save them.

Im cynical, I know, but even if the money is actually going to a good cause I still consider those adverts manipulative. The carefully chosen musical cues, the way washed-out browns in the 'before' change to the sunny days of 'after,' the hand-picked use of the cutest possible animals or children... the veiled threat that the cute ones will suffer if you dont pay up.

The artificiality of the "twelve types" taxonomy bugs me, a little, particularly when the descriptions themselves talk so much about "fuzzy boundaries" and how this type resembles that other. Such a name is, I think, false advertising, implying that the analysis done here is more subtle than it actually is.