You might not like it but marketers need much more than ‘Buy Now!’ as a mantra
Hot off her appearance in Netflix’s Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy, Mara Einstein has a message for marketers. It can be an ugly job, but it doesn’t really have to be.
Nobody goes into marketing to be an asshole. But, I promise, one day you will have your “come to God moment” when you realize what you do to put food on the table is great for corporate profits but fundamentally detrimental to people and the planet.
That idea is at the root of Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy – the new Netflix documentary lifting the lid on the world of consumerism, marketing, and the global waste crisis. And these truths have hit a nerve. The doc has been a Top 10 hit globally for Netflix – with over 11 million views in under two weeks – and is setting TikTok alight with Gen-Zers profoundly shocked at the ugly underbelly of overconsumption. Their response should be a wake-up call for retailers and marketers. But more than that, Buy Now! is a clarion call from those of us who have worked in the trenches, only to find out we were fundamentally part of the problem.
I had my epiphany 25 years ago. I left the glamourous world of Seinfeld and Friends to teach at a decidedly under-funded public university. With the classroom as my laboratory, I wanted to research the best way to educate people about how they are being manipulated by marketing.
What I learned is that because we are utterly immersed in consumer culture, everyone thinks they know how it works. Or worse, people think they are immune. This is known as the third-person effect. It is the belief that advertising influences everyone else, but it doesn’t impact me. This was usually said by a student in a baseball cap with Pabst Blue Ribbon or the equivalent across the brim.
Over time, I was able to pull back from my corporate training and begin to see the world of marketing from a bird’s eye view. From this vantage point, I have been able to see trends that others simply don’t have time to, because they are plagued with client calls and the demands of KPIs. My contribution to Buy Now! originated from my work in Compassion, Inc, a book I wrote more than a decade ago about cause marketing and corporate social responsibility, and how ineffective they are. Today, we call it purpose washing, or more pejoratively “woke” washing, but back then, no one was calling out this practice for what it was – consumer manipulation.
But, my goal in writing that book was not only to alert people to how they could truly make a difference for the causes they care about. It was to highlight the work of people that were doing impact right and in so doing give other marketers a benchmark for how they might do their job better.
Today, marketing is so much more insidious. It is no longer messages that can be seen, but persuasive technology that manipulates people right down to the brain stem. Marketing is no longer transactional. It is about relationship marketing and digital surveillance and the rise of brand cults. Seeing all of this, I wrote a book called Hoodwinked: How marketers use the same tactics as cults. When I mention the title to anyone who works in marketing the response has been, “Absolutely. That’s what we do.”
Some are proud of it, but more seem sheepish.
I get both responses.
To be sure, marketing has been about psychologically manipulating people for more than 75 years. If we told consumers they are perfect just the way they are, no one would ever go out and buy our products. But today’s technology has all but quashed the marketing funnel. The time from awareness to conversion to purchase – the time when people might take the opportunity to think – has been virtually eliminated. That’s not good.
I’m willing to be proved wrong, but I believe that social media may be getting past its prime. X will soon have gone the way of the dodo, except for white supremacists and that’s not a target most advertisers are interested in. Threads has announced that it will be adding advertising in January, and I expect to see a mass exodus from there as well. The growth platform is Bluesky, a social site with no advertising. This is fully in line with “enshittification,” a term coined by the author and activist Cory Doctorow. It eloquently explains the trajectory of every social media site – attract content creators, attract followers, then bring in advertisers and watch people slowly stop participating on the platform.
If all this is true, now is a good time to ask ourselves: what do we want a new world of marketing to look like and how can we use it for good? Because that can be done.
CUNY Prof Dr Mara Einstein has spent the past 30 years immersed in the media industry, holding key roles as an executive at NBC, MTV Networks, and major advertising agencies, where she worked on brands like Miller Lite, Uncle Ben’s, and Dole Foods. Her latest book, Hoodwinked: How Marketers Use the Same Tactics as Cults, explores the psychological strategies marketers use to influence consumer behavior. Dr Einstein also is a featured contributor in the new Netflix documentary, Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy.