While mass production desocialised the worker, mass marketing desocialised consumption, writes Douglas Rushkoff in ‘Life Inc.’ (www.landmarkonthenet.com). Brands had to alienate people from one another in order to replace the human bonds that once characterised commerce with artificial corporate ones, and national brand relationships replaced local social relationships, he rues.
Tracing how the supply-side glut of mass-produced material goods required a new individualism capable of inspiring consumers to purchase as many commodities as they were offered, and experience their social reality through them, the author reasons that the myth of meritocracy – that we are all free to compete with one another as individuals for the great prizes our market has to offer – kept people from conferring with one another on just how satisfied they were with the system in which they were living.
“Dreams of achieving status through social participation were replaced by dreams of purchasing status through private acquisition. For corporate industrialism to work as an economic model, people would have to be sold on individuality and personal freedoms as the paramount human goals – even if this actually meant a more isolated and alienated existence.”
A chapter on ‘consumer empowerment and the disconnect from choice’ laments that advertising doesn’t merely mean to suffuse the atmosphere; it means to become the atmosphere. “The cumulative effect of all this messaging has less to do with promoting any particular product than it does with promoting the underlying message of advertising itself: you, the individual consumer, matter. You’re the one.”
Recommended read, unless you are averse to disturbing insights.
**
‘Hit-and-run’ secret
Some of the brightest and most dynamic people in Western society make a living from counterknowledge, cautions Damian Thompson in ‘Counterknowledge’ (www.atlantic-books.co.uk).
“It takes a talented entrepreneur to make a profit from false information, to package it so skilfully that questions about truthfulness and accuracy either never arise or are successfully brushed aside.” They are not just salesmen, they are what Malcolm Gladwell calls ‘connectors,’ with friends and business contacts across a wide range of subcultures and niches, the author adds.
“They can efficiently spread a message – a health fad or a conspiracy theory – to charities, government, schools, specialist websites and, above all, the mainstream media. If the counterknowledge entrepreneur is lucky, word of mouth takes over and provides free publicity.”
An example of ‘hit-and-run’ counterknowledge that the author discusses is ‘The Secret,’ by Rhonda Byrne. “The formula can be summed up in three words: Ask, Believe, Receive. No one knows why it works, we are told, but it may have something to do with quantum physics. At any rate, The Secret completely overturns our understanding of cause and effect,” notes Thompson.
Valuable study.
**
Be not cheap as chips
Price your product or service right, not cheap, says Caspian Woods in ‘From Acorns: How to build a brilliant business,’ second edition (www.pearsoned.co.uk). Setting the right price can be a tricky business because price is tied up with the whole notion of ‘worth’ and is a very emotional issue, he explains. “People often find it hard to ask a fair market price for their product or service because deep down they have a low sense of their own self-worth.”
He lists six reasons why pricing should not be cheap as chips. One, “as a small business it’s unlikely you will have the economies of scale (like purchasing power) to undercut everyone else indefinitely.” Two, you could be triggering a price war, in which the established players with deeper pockets will certainly pitch in. Three, you will have trouble trying to raise the price later. Four, you can’t drop price selectively because customers will talk to one another. Five, customers may not necessarily associate good value with low price. And six, “you risk ending up with just the cheap customers, who will dump you as soon as the price goes up.”
Ready takeaways.
**
BookPeek.blogspot.com
