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Tag: "Consumerism"

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Brand Obama–now with more awards!
By Brynn Jacobs on September 17th, 2009

Brand Obama–now with more awards!

Barack Obama’s presidential campaign has again won a major advertising award. A month before winning the presidency, he won Advertising Age’s annual “Marketer of the Year” for 2008. Now, his campaign manager, David Plouffe, has won Brandweek’s “Marketer of the Year” for 2009. What better commentary on the state of contemporary American society could there be? Our president is a master marketer, or more precisely, employs a team of master marketers. In a society that is dedicated to worshiping at the altar of consumerism, perhaps it’s unsurprising that this is the case, but it still is shocking to me. Once I began researching for this article, I really was surprised at the extent to which “Brand Obama” has penetrated our national consciousness.

His logo and posters have become iconic. His slogan, “Yes we can” is everywhere– it’s also a marketer’s dream. It’s devoid of any clarity or substance, and yet it makes you feel good, possibly empowered. “Just do it”, anyone? Actually, his campaign beat out the Nike campaign (and even Apple!) for top honors. You can go to mybarackobama.com and sign for immediate updates from Facebook, Myspace, Youtube, Flickr, Twitter, and several other web 2.0 services. You can get Obama on your mobile phone by texting “hope” to 62262– it’s just as easy as voting for the next American Idol! The media is relentlessly focused on what Michelle Obama is wearing next, and there is at least one blog offering daily updates on her clothing choices (”Follow the fashion of Mrs. O.:What and Whom she’s wearing”). For those who are tuned-in, you can even do Ecstasy tablets shaped like Obama. One wonders where does politics end and the cult of personality begin?

American Culture • Communication • Consumerism • Featured • Politics
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A big suburban shopping mall is dying, yet I’m not shedding any tears
By Erich Vieth on September 12th, 2009

A big suburban shopping mall is dying, yet I’m not shedding any tears

Today I took my two daughters to a movie. The theater was located in a large suburban shopping mall in Southwest St. Louis County, “Crestwood Plaza.” I had not been to this mall for several years, and I was shocked at what I saw. Approximately 40% of the stores have been shuttered and the entire place was like a ghost town. A lonely security guard told me that the stores have been rapidly failing over the past two years. That comports with my recollection. Two years ago, this mall was a packed and thriving shopping area located in a solidly middle-class community. Crestwood Plaza is not an isolated story; shopping malls are failing all across America.

[I've posted a gallery of today's images many of these shuttered stores along with this post. If you don't see that gallery, click the title to this post to go to the permalink, where you will see those thumbnails.]

I sometimes get snarkish when someone tells me they’re going to a shopping mall. I sometimes ask the Intrepid shopper to do me a favor and buy something practical for me, “Could you please buy me a hammer.” I usually get the same reaction, a puzzled look accompanied by a response “They don’t sell practical things like hammers at shopping malls.” Now I’m not denying that malls sell clothes or that we need clothes. Most mall clothes are for far more than staying warm or covering up. They are much more often than not, for impressing others.

For that reason, I’m not shedding tears for the shattering of dozens of mall stores at Crestwood Plaza or anywhere else. The failure of most of the stores means that we won’t be buying things we don’t actually need. Because Hallmark no longer sells its commercial greeting cards, we might be “forced” to create and send our own personalized cards and letters to each other. Now that Libby Lu gone, our pre-teen daughters can get back to being children rather than obsessing about their sex appeal. In my mind, many of these store closings are mostly good things, although I am saddened by the thought that so many people have lost their jobs due to these shutdowns. See these terrific videos by Josh Golin of CCFC regarding the dangers of turning our children into rampant consumers.

Another silver lining is that the mall owners have been forced to do something different with their space in order to survive (assuming they do survive). What they’ve done at Crestwood Plaza is to lease out many of the “store” spaces to art galleries, educational facilities, community theaters and other arts and crafts workshops for children and adults. In other words, it appears that the mall owners are opening up their malls for people who want to develop their minds and skill-sets rather than simply their pocketbooks.

American Culture • Communication • Community • Consumerism • Environment • Evolution • Featured • Meaning of Life • Psychology Cognition • Science
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Geoffrey Miller’s “Spent”: an evolutionary psychology romp through marketing and consumerism
By Erich Vieth on July 19th, 2009

Geoffrey Miller’s “Spent”: an evolutionary psychology romp through marketing and consumerism

I’ve repeatedly written about Geoffrey Miller based on the many provocative ideas presented in his earlier book, The Mating Mind. (e.g., see my earlier post, “Killer High Heels“). A gifted and entertaining writer, Miller is also an evolutionary psychologist. His forte is hauling his scientific theories out into the real world in order to persuade us that we didn’t really understand some of the things that seemed most familiar to us.

In his new book, Spent, Miller asks why we continuously buy all that stuff that we don’t really need? Miller’s answer is twofold. Yes, human animals have been physically and psychologically honed over the eons this to crave certain types of things over others to further their chances at survival and reproduction. That’s only half the answer, however. We must also consider “marketing,” which is

The most important invention of the past two millennia because it is the only revolution that has ever succeeded in bringing real economic power to the people. . . . it is the power to make our means of production transform the natural world into a playground for human passions.

Is the modern version of marketing a good thing or a bad thing? The answer is yes.

On the upside it promises a golden age in which social institutions and markets are systematically organized on the basis of strong purple research to maximize human happiness. What science did for perception, marketing promises to do for production: it tests intuition and insight against empirical fact area market research uses mostly the same empirical tools as experimental psychology, but with larger research budgets, better-defined questions, more representative samples of people, and more social impact.

Here is a July 2009 interview of Geoffrey Miller by Geraldyne Doogue of the Australian Broadcast Network:

Most of us are quite familiar with the downside of marketing. It encourages us to buy things we don’t really need. But marketing doesn’t merely clutter up our houses and garages; it corrupts our souls:

Consumerism • Culture • Economy • Evolution • Human animals • Meaning of Life • Psychology Cognition • Sex • ignorance
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By Erich Vieth on July 12th, 2009

The danger of Cheap and Plentiful

At Salon.com, Stephanie Zacharek explains that cheap and plentiful goods are not a good idea. Her article is a review of a new book, “Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture,” by Ellen Ruppel Shell.

Here’s how Zacharek’s bottom line regarding Shell’s book:

The wealth of cheap goods available to us doesn’t make our lives better; instead, it fosters an environment that endangers not just the jobs of American workers but the idea of human labor, period.

It turns out that Shell is not only picking on Wal-Mart. She’s talking about those mass-farmed shrimp, as well as trendy stores like IKEA. “We no longer expect craftsmanship in everyday objects; maybe we don’t feel we even deserve it.”

Consumerism • Environment
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By Erich Vieth on June 09th, 2009

What Americans owe on their credit cards

What do Americans owe on their credit cards? A huge aggregate amount that constitutes a ticking time bomb that could further devastate the economy. Here are the details, from Consumeraffairs.com:

Average bankcard borrower debt, defined as the aggregate balance on all bank-issued credit cards for an individual bankcard borrower, inched upward nationally 0.82 percent to $5,776 from the previous quarter’s $5,729, and 4.09 percent compared to the first quarter of 2008. The highest state average bankcard debt remains in Alaska at $7,476, followed by Tennessee at $6,869 and Nevada at $6,677.

This is per individual bankcard borrower. For the average debt of a married couple, then, double the average amount.

The same site reports that the number of consumers who are three or more months behind on their credit card payments is up 11 percent over the same period from 2008.

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By Erich Vieth on May 24th, 2009

Businesses tricking children into thinking that brands can solve non-existent problems

I really like the message delivered by Josh Golin of Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood. [Note: I interviewed Josh here.] This speech was giving at the February 2008 Conference for Reclaiming Childhood From Corporate Marketers.

First of all, yes, a healthy childhood lifestyle is something that is extremely difficult to commodify. That fact means that when you see commercial entities trying to convince children to buy things, it is almost certainly an attempt to convince families that there is a problem where there really isn’t one.

Golin states that “children are being targeted relentlessly with the lie that it is brands that will make them happy, cool, powerful and sexy.” He scoffs that the problem can be addressed by allowing businesses to “self-regulate.”

In this speech, Josh clearly identifies some of the specific problems with allowing advertisers into the hearts and minds of children. And then he tells some stories about how people are fighting back.

Here are parts II and III of Josh’s speech:

American Culture • Consumerism
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Hear the story about all of our stuff
By Erich Vieth on May 16th, 2009

Hear the story about all of our stuff

In The Story of Stuff, Annie Leonard tells us that all of our “stuff” is part of a linear system that is clashing with our finite planet. Her video is extremely popular (5.5 million views) and easy to follow. Here’s a short description from her site:

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It’ll teach you something, it’ll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

What are the main problems? We are externalizing costs, so that we are oblivious to the damages we are causing around the world when we buy so much of the stuff that we are buying.

We are running out of resources. Her stats from the United States are especially troubling because we are so very much living beyond our means. We generating huge heaps of waste. We are using energy + contaminated products to promulgate toxic products and untested products. One of the highest concentrations of toxic food substances has become human breast milk. 200,000 people move from their resource-exhausted long-time communities into crowded cities, many of them slums.

And consider that 99% of the stuff we run through our economic system is trash within 6 months. This is not an accident, either. It is long-time government and industry policy that we should shop and consume. We shop three to four times as much as Europeans.

Which, again, leads to disposal problems. For every trash can full of waste we throw away there were 70 trash cans of waste produced to make that one can of waste.

Incredible.

Many DI related posts can be found here.

Further, listen to Daniel Goleman’s description of the basic problem and the solution in his interview with Daniel Goleman.

American Culture • Consumerism • Environment • Featured • Health
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What’s the count?
By Erich Vieth on May 01st, 2009

What’s the count?

What’s the count?

Image by Erich Vieth

No, not the balls and strikes! I’m talking about the number of advertisements you’ll find in a baseball stadium (click on the image for a much bigger and clearer image).

I was recently invited to go to a Cardinal baseball game for a work function. I was amazed at the number of ads. There had to be more than 100 large ads visible from the seats. And I’m only including static ads, not the videos they pump out on the big screens.

American Culture • Consumerism
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By Erich Vieth on March 31st, 2009

Boats for free

The NYT reports that many people are dumping their boats–simply abandoning them:

Some of those disposing of their boats are in the same bind as overstretched homeowners: they face steep payments on an asset that is diminishing in value and decide not to continue. They either default on the debt or take bolder measures.

Marina and maritime officials around the country say they believe, however, that most of the abandoned vessels cluttering their waters are fully paid for. They are expensive-to-maintain toys that have lost their appeal.

This story reminds me of something my friend Gary once told me:

Gary: What’s the second-happiest day in a person’s life?

Me: I don’t know.

Gary: The day they buy a boat. What’s the happiest day in a person’s life?

Me: I don’t know.

Gary: The day they selltheir boat.

This abandonment of playthings reminds me of the 20-foot Python problem that could someday take over 1/3 of the U.S.

Consumerism • Economy
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By Erich Vieth on July 30th, 2008

More of my favorite quotes

I collect quotes (who doesn’t?). Really, it’s a good hobby. It’s cheap and often interesting. When they are really good quotes, it’s like a novel condensed to a mere sentence.
The first two of this set are about one of my favorite topics, rampant materialism. The others all relate closely [...]

American Culture • Good and Evil • Language • Meaning of Life • Psychology Cognition • Quotes • snake oil
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By Erich Vieth on May 24th, 2008

What we can do about the media’s sexualization of young girls

At Alternet, Tana Ganeva reports on Gigi Durham’s new book, concerning the corporate media’s sexual objectification of girls. Durham characterizes the overall problem as the “The Lolita Effect,” which is the media’s sexual objectification of young girls. Here’s an excerpt:
In 2006, the retail chain Tesco launched the Peekaboo Pole Dancing Kit, a play [...]

Consumerism • Sex
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Even your stuff has stuff.
By Erika Price on May 14th, 2008

Even your stuff has stuff.

Back in February, I posted a quote from The Gods Must Be Crazy about the needless complexity of modern life. The quote has made me stew on the topic ever since. We live in a world awash in technologies designed to make life easier, but that often only bog us down. An air conditioning unit [...]

Consumerism • Culture • Food • Uncategorized • Whimsy
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By Lisa Rokusek on February 25th, 2008

What does enough look like?

I love being a recruiter as a way to make a living. It is a fantastic mix of detective work, rapport building, conflict resolution, understanding and differentiation. In our new information age I can do it from anywhere, and that is just cool as it can be. My career fits me well, and I find it immensely rewarding when things go well, and probably learn even more when they do not.

I left my company and went out on my own because I felt like like my life was terribly out of balance. Yes part of it was the oppressive and abusive atmosphere coupled with the rampant disrespect, but all of that negativity really just made me more aware that I was following a path that wasn’t consistent with how I wanted to live. I found myself dreaming of a life where where kindness, compassion, and mutual respect formed the ground rules and, ultimately, where I could feel like I “made a difference” to the world as a whole. That life looked so far away from what I was living that it seemed like a fairy tale. When I stopped and looked at the distance between the life I was living and the life I wanted, I got scared. I also got busy figuring out a way to escape. It is not that I am against working smart and making money. I had that discussion with myself years and years ago, and I decided then that I can do more for the world with some cash than without it. But the truth was I was exhausted mentally, physically and emotionally from an environment that had become combative and very dark. I wasn’t doing anything for myself, not to mention anyone else.

Consumerism • Culture • Meaning of Life
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