Lecture 7 Consumerism: Persuasion, Society, Brand and Culture

Aims:

Analyse the rise of consumerism

• Sigman Freud
• Edmund Bernays

Adam Curtis - Century of Self (2007)

Sigman Freud - (1856 - 1939)

• New theory of human nature 
• Pyschoanalysis
• Hidden primitive sexual forces and animal instincts which need controlling.
• The interpretation of dreams (1899)
• The Unconscious (1915)
• The ego and the ID (1923)

1930

• Fundamental tension between civilisation and the individual

Edward Bernays (1891 - 1995)

• Press Agent
• Employed by public information during WW1
• Post-war set up 'The Council on Public Relations'.
• Birth of PR
• Based on ideas of Freud (his uncle)

Bernays is employed by the cigarette companies to promote smoking to women

1920

• Product placement
• Celebrity endorsements
• The use of pseudo-scientific reports.

Doctors would advise smoking to their patients

Fordism

• Henry Ford (1863 - 1947)

Vance Packard - The Hidden Persuaders

Marketing has hidden needs:

• selling emotional security
• selling reassurance of worth
• selling ego-gratification
• selling creative outlets
• selling love objects
• selling a sense of power
• selling a sense of roots 
• selling immortality

Russian Revolution - 1917

"Peace, land, bread" - John J Vail

• A history of the Russian revolution

October 24 1929 - 'Black Tuesday' caused by mass overproduction

Rousevelt and the 'New Deal' 1933

• he tackled capitalist companies and put restraints on the markets.
• consumerism os an ideological project
• we believe that through consumerism our desires can be met
• the consumer self
• the legacy of Bernays / PR can be felt in all aspects of 21st century.

The conflicts between alternative models of social organisation continues to this day.

To what extent are our lives 'free' under western consumerist system?