I'm not certain why having an advertising campaign that creates great demand for a product where little or no demand existed before makes everyone a pliable semi-sentient being. Perhaps you could explain why this is so? So our choices are everyone's a dolt and advertisers manipulate them or else advertising is ineffective and multi-billion dollar firms are just too stupid to know it. You're wrong in your assumption that I'm an upper middle class educated person who think the sheeple are just waiting for the next command from their betters. I tend toward a strong utilitarian approach toward things and believe people apply rather sophisticated thinking towards major decisions. Advertisers however attempt to manipulate with misleading information and with emotion laden images to distort peoples rational decisions making processes. As far as SUV's are concerned you believe that manufacturers identified the SUV as a great potential money maker that because of the way regulations existed at the time SUV's allowed specific tax incentives and emissions avoidance. Simultaneously people just suddenly wanted SUV's so the manufacturers started making them because consumers demanded them. That was really lucky for them.
John Thornton
>I see. People didn't _really_ want SUVs. They were
>simply brainwashed into this by advertising. (SUVs
>were in this respect different -- or not? from other
>new products. Cellphones. CD players. Computers. . . .
>)
>
> As I say, there is no way, short of doing more
>research than I care to do here, and even thatw ould
>probably not satisfy you, of resolving the question of
>whether advertising is effective at making people want
>or velieve things regardless of their experiences.
>
>But I once again note that the assumption that most
>people are pliable fools who do not know their wants
>or interests is a very common one among the educated
>upper middle classes. It accounts for a lot of the
>appeal of both Fabian-style social democracy and
>old-style Bolshevism. jks
>
>--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> > John Thornton wrote:
> >
> > >Odd that you should choose the auto industry. You
> > must have missed
> > >out on the SUV craze. A demand created almost
> > wholly from the
> > >desires of the auto industry.
> >
> > Speaking of which, later this afternoon I'll be
> > posting the radio
> > show that includes my interview with Keith Bradsher,
> > author of High
> > And Mighty: The Dangerous Rise of the SUV. He talks
> > a lot about how
> > Detroit marketers played to the personality types of
> > the likely
> > buyers. (Show also includes Michael Mann on his new
> > Verso book,
> > Incoherent Empire.)
> >
> > Doug
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