So aren't you overestimating the
> success of all the targeting?
I think ten percent of marketing is wildly successful, meaning that it generates a big and clear uptick in sales. Perhaps another 30 to 40 percent serves to hold the line and reinforce past messages. Half is waste.
But what is it that those wildly successful campaigns do? Most of the time, they simply alter what marketers call "mental agendas" -- the order in which alternatives pop into your head at moments of decision. This is a very far cry from deep implantation of political ideologies, which is what Stuart Ewen claims marketing is all about.
Take the Sprint PCS example. Probably 50 million Americans have seen the TV ads claiming Sprint has the best service. Of that 50 million, the vast majority either scoff at the claim, or are not affected enough by it to have their mental agendas altered. But some percentage -- a few hundred thousand is my guess -- are impacted enough to be extra vulnerable to Sprint's salespeople. Hence, Sprint sells more phones that it otherwise would.
This is not robot-making, however. It's a question of a feather tipping the balance of the scales.
With the exception of TV and food, I actually think ordinary people make pretty decent product decisions, given the context of commoners having no say whatsoever over macro-choices. Even in the areas of food and TV, I'm pretty convinced that the combination of convenience, corporate promotion, and the inherent addictiveness of salt, fat, sugar, and TV (not robotic mindlessness) explain the choices.
Heck, if I thought people were deeply brainwashed, I wouldn't bother trying to elucidate marketing for them. The controversiality of marketing lies not in its psychological impact, but in its financial and social costs, and in the cynical, totalitarian attitude corporations take toward ordinary product users.