OUGD501 - Lecture 1: Consumerism: Persuasion, Society, Brand & Culture

Aims:

• Analyse the rise of US consumerism
• Discuss the links between consumerism and our unconscious desires
• Sigmund Freud
• Edmund Bernays
• Consumerism as social control

• Century of self - Adam Curtis (Film)
• No Logo - Naomi Klein (Book)

Freud (1856 - 1939)

• New Theory on human nature
• Psychoanalysis
• Hidden primitive sexual forces & animal instincts which need controlling
• The Interpretation of Dreams (1899)
• The Unconscious (1915)
• The Ego & ID (1923)
• Beyond the Pleasure Principle
• Civilisation & Discontent (1930)

• Freud says most actions are driven by hidden 'ID' (Primitive desires) we don't access them consciously but they do cause most decisions
• Fundamental tension between civilisation & the individual
• Human instincts incompatible with the well being of community
• The pleasure principle
• WW1 was the testament to his theories

Edmund Bernays (1891 - 1995)

• Press agent
• Employed by public information during WW1
• Post war - set up 'The Council on Public Relations)
• Birth of PR
• Based on the ideas of Freud (His uncle)
• His idea is that any kind of business can be successful if they relate the product to the subconscious desires
• Psychological techniques to link these products to desire
• Was employed by tobacco company to get women to smoke - was a taboo for women to smoke at the time - organised for women to smoke at the same  time on a parade - tipped press off saying these women were suffragettes/feminists & that smoking was their symbol of freedom/power
• Product placement & celebrity endorsements
• The use of pseudo-scientific reports
• System of mass marketing & cross marketing basing on the idea that it gives satisfaction
• Things are bought under the illusion that it will satisfy people

Fordism

• Henry Ford (1863 - 1947)
• Transposes Taylorism to car manufacturing
• Moving assembly line
• Standard production models built as they move through the factory
• Request large investments
• Based on modern consumerism is giving USP's to products - marketing products as if they are more special than others
• Bernays applied this to business

• Culture starts to shift to a society based on desire and not what is needed

Marketing hidden needs:

• Selling emotional security
• Selling reassurance of worth
• Selling ego-gratification
• Selling creative outlets
• Selling love objects
• Selling sense of power
• Selling of immortality
• Selling a sense of roots

• People just given the illusion that they are happy
• A new elite is needed to manage the bewildered herd
• 'Manufacturing Consent' - governmental propaganda

• Russian Revolution 1917 - poor overthrew the rich - communism
• America saw this as a threat to capitalism

• Walter Lippman started to consult government in how to keep people happy using Bernay's principles

• Oct 24th 1929 - Black Tuesday - American economy fell - the great depression

• Roosevelt and the 'new deal' 1933-36 - promise to introduce benefits, pensions, job creation, investments etc
• Big businesses were in uproar - government wanted to limit their control/profits
• The world's fair New York 1940 - giant exhibition for all which is good about the American Culture - essentially a propaganda for big businesses - 'Democracity' - could be free as long as you buy the big businesses products

Conclusion

• We are free but how free?
• Society is based on the illusion of freedom
• Consumerism is an idealogical project - belief that desire can be met through consumption and consumerism
• Conflicts between alternative modes of social organisation happens to this day