Thursday, September 20, 2012

Marketing: Instrument of Social Control

Marketing is the key to understanding modern power relations. (To view previous posts about the nature of power, click here and here, for starters.) To summarize: power is a property of relationships, not an entity that can be possessed by an individual, and it is a property of all relationships, not concentrated in or originating from any single institution, such as a state. It is characterized by an ability to act on other people’s actions, for the purpose of repressing or promoting behaviors, and may be distinguished from total domination in that both parties must be free to act. In the modern world, power often works by penetrating consciousness and creating/shaping identities. The old maxim that “knowledge is power” is not only true because knowledge affects one’s ability to act, but also because the production of knowledge about certain populations simultaneously defines who they are.

One of the most salient domains in which identities are created, shaped, and cemented is marketing. We are now bombarded by advertisements. They absolutely saturate our consciousness. On the radio, on television, plastered all over buses and buildings, in our inboxes, on the internet.... the number of advertisements that we encounter on a daily basis is unfathomable. Due to the very extent of its presence in our consciousness, marketing possesses an unparalleled capacity to affect that conscious.

I have learned quite a bit about marketing from my job. It is no secret that the most fundamental principle of marketing is that its end goal is to manipulate people’s behavior. It is not to provide information about a product. For example, an email campaign will be considered successful if it compels people to click on a link; it need not include any information about what is being promoted. The science of marketing is the art of inducing behaviors.

One of the basic ways that this is achieved is through the creation and reinforcement of particular identities. It is more than just “knowing your audience.” Marketing creates the audience. Generally, to achieve maximum success, the market is broken into a number of segments that align with categories of race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, etc. Then, the marketers determine what their targeted segment desires, in order that they can use those desires to manipulate behavior. (In this sense, one can view political campaigning as a subset of marketing.)

However, marketers don’t merely tap into the pre-existing desires of clearly defined, homogenous groups. Through the use of particular images and the placement of ads in particular contexts, new associations are made and old associations are reinforced. It is these associations themselves that define both the categories and the desires simultaneously.  For example, a whole network of interlinked cultural artifacts marks sports as a masculine domain; the commercials that a man sees during a game will both reinforce the idea that "men" (aged 20-40?) are the primary audience, while also elaborating the behaviors and desires that typify masculinity (drinking beer, objectifying women, etc.)

Then there is the less visible side of marketing – the one most intimately involved in the production of knowledge. This is the side of marketing that has been receiving the most critical attention lately, and the side that has shed light on the intersections of technology and privacy in the modern world. Obviously I am referring to the collection, sharing, and selling of personal data. This is governmentality extraordinaire (if only Michele Foucault were alive to witness the development of trends of which his later work portended). Data. Data is the lifeblood of modern power relations. The technological means of culling personal data have become outright Orwellian. Every little move you make: every time you use your cell phone or your credit card or do anything on the internet, information is being recorded about your location and actions. Of course, what Orwell could not predict (see my post about 1984) was that such surveillance does not have to be conducted by a state. We have been too busy fearing the government to realize who/what is really capable of infringing on our privacy.

We tend to think of marketing as a relatively benign practice. Or, at worst, perhaps slightly dishonest and maybe promoting unhealthy behaviors. Yet, the most insidious aspect of marketing is its omnipresence and its hegemony in the most intimate areas of our lives. It surveys (often in the other sense as well), records, and tracks. It concerns itself with our habits and desires. It shapes identities. It monitors what we do in order to tell us who we are and what we want (in order to influence what we do).

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