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Tilted Cat Head
Administrator
Location: Manhattan, NY
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another review of the Frontline episode airing tonight.
Quote:
November 9, 2004
TV REVIEW: 'THE PERSUADERS'
How They Make You Buy Buy Buy
By NED MARTEL
rontline" decodes advertisers' latent meanings and manufactured responses in "The Persuaders," an ambitious report leavened by the puckish narration of Douglas Rushkoff. The message is that soon no brain will be beyond the reach of peddlers and pleaders, who know a surprising amount about each American's purchasing predisposition.
Yet "The Persuaders" says that the more shoppers are bombarded, the less they respond. Or as one industry expert says: "Consumers are like roaches. You spray them and spray them and after a while it doesn't work."
Consequently, buy-now messages are buried in lofty language. Advertisers now imagine a target audience not as pests but as spirits in need of uplift. This so-called mission marketing started with the Apple corporation and it has produced cultish brand loyalists, the sort of customer devotion and sense of purpose that companies want.
The report shows that the car manufacturer Saturn literally has a field day for its dedicated fans, who trek to Tennessee to share some egalitarian vibes. Volkswagen, through its commercials, tells customers to feel connected to other sentient hipsters caught in a world of conformists. Starbucks, we are told, sought to create a third place in the consumer's life, something between home and office.
So what could be the mission for Song, a Delta Air Lines subsidiary geared toward female passengers? Despite its fiscal crisis, the company hired the "brand visionary" Andy Spade, who once marketed his wife, Kate, into an aspirational icon for more prim fashionistas. Not only was Mr. Spade offering the company Kate Spade-designed flight-attendant uniforms, he also claimed to give Song and its executives with "a substance and a texture and a life that they might not know how to create."
Evoking Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut for his commercials, Mr. Spade was given free rein to depict happy people flying kites in the meadow, but no planes. Of course, clients fret about runaway costs of ethereal messages. One reported industry aphorism is: "I know I'm wasting half my ad dollars. I just don't know which half."
The program combines the practicality of an M.B.A. case study and the skepticism of a semiotics seminar. Mr. Rushkoff and his producers keep an ear open for quirky terminology, which marketers craft at great expense and defend with high-mindedness. In passing, there is mention of World Wrestling Entertainment as "a masculine ballet," of Tide detergent as "an enabler," of Polaroid cameras as "a social lubricant" and of Cheerios as "full of mystery." (Cut to a grandmother feeding a baby, using the cereal as props for a family tale.) The sturdiness of Chinet plates somehow holds up both traditional values and spoonfuls of coleslaw.
The program raises the question: are there more brands desperate for a mission than missions left to undertake? Marketers must find new ways to connect their merchandise with publicly experienced emotion. Predictably, Mr. Rushkoff cites product placements in television and movies, especially the makeover variety like Bravo's "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy." The more effective example would have been ABC's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," which melts hearts by showering presents on calamity-stricken families. (It should really be called "Tears for Sears" in honor of its sponsor.)
Near the end of its 90 minutes, "The Persuaders" drifts into a discussion of political messages, which are equally intricate, harder to regulate and deserving of another program all their own. Suffice it to say that Palm Pilots are now a tool to provide targeted voters with some very specific ads that might not be shown to their neighbors. Who receives which message is determined by creepily precise demographic profiles, and both political parties employ the Arkansas-based Acxiom Corporation to compile data on nearly every swing voter. A "Frontline" story for another time, let's hope, but in the meantime, "The Persuaders" will help you start to see these marketers as clearly as they see you.
FRONTLINE: THE PERSUADERS
PBS, tonight at 9, check local listings.
Produced and directed by Barak Goodman and Rachel Dretzin; Muriel Soenens, and WGBH Boston, producers; Frontline and Ark Media, co-producers; David Fanning, executive producer; Douglas Rushkoff, correspondent.
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