The Persuaders

Really fantastic documentary program from Frontline.
This one really went at it from many angles, following marketers trying to launch a new branded airline (Song), clinical psychologists turned corporate spies, renegade writers for Advertising Age (one of the most interesting magazines out there, for my money!), and it included interviews with some of the best cultural critics out there.

This was so good I can only say one thing- if you have ever dismissed advertising as background noise, if you have ever wondered how a 30 second ad might cost more than a movie to produce, if you have ever looked around and thought "WTF, mate?", watch this to get a concise, wonderfully articulate and thought-provoking look at what makes the sea we swim in.

Whole program available for viewing online here, at PBS.

Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are, by Rob Walker

Interesting but not groundbreaking book on consumerism as identity creation. I think James Twitchell covers this area better, but still, a tasty read anyway. In fact, Walker spent quite a lot of time quoting Twitchell and Paco Underhill, which I guess is inevitable when crossing such well travelled territory.

Walker did delve a little more into some kind of underground/pseudounderground consumer niches, like the sneaker freaks, etc, and the influence these subgroups have is pretty incredible. Still, it was nothing I hadn't read or known before. I guess I wouldn't really pass it on to a friend who I thought would be interested in this stuff- I would, however, recommend Twitchell's Living It Up: Our Love Affair With Luxury and his Lead Us Into Temptation: The Triumph of American Materialism without hesitation.

Real World, by Natsuo Kirino

This was intense, disturbing, and wonderful.

Four Japanese high school girls become involved in a murder, and their lives are never the same.

I am not sure if this was aimed at adults or teens, but I think it has equal appeal to both- to teens who might be fascinated with the murder and with the descriptions of Japanese high school life, so different from America and to adults who just appreciate a hell of a good book.

The story is told in a rotation of voices, each unique and intense, and by the devastating end, I was reeling.

The Bar Code Tattoo, by Suzanne Weyn

Everyone gets the tattoo- so why doesn’t Kayla just go ahead and get it done?

From the book:

“Everyone has a file,” Amber said. “There’s been a file on everyone for years.”
“But people haven’t always worn their files,” Kayla argues.
Amber shrugged, unconcerned. “What’s the difference? Walk me to class.”
“I’m going home. School feels like a cage today. I can’t sit still.”

The Gospel According to Larry, by Janet Tashjian

Wonderful YA. A guy writing an anonymous, anti-consumerist blog gets his world shaken up when his blog blows up into a national movement, complete with free festivals U2 plays at. Lovely character development, strange ending for me.

Parenting, Inc. by Pamela Paul

Fantastic book, impossible to put down. Great read about marketing to parents, and the shocking money in the 'parenting' sector of the economy. The only quibble I have with it was that it hardly addressed the other side of the coin- that there are parents who can barely afford to feed their children, while others fret about the latest luxury strollers.

Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture by Andrew Heath and Joseph Potter

I felt like I'd read this before- maybe I had? kind of overly academic writing for what was blurbed as a general appeal book.

How many books with people/barcodes barcode tattoos/etc covers will I read in a year? Only the blog knows, man. Only the blog knows.

Jennifer Government by Max Barry

Fanstastic action packed dystopian novel. In the future, everything has been privatised- Government, Police, etc. The major corporations are taking their marketing campaigns to deadly extremes- and it's up to heroine Jennifer Government to stop them. Fun, funny book- great map of the world in the future.


The world of Jennifer Government. Red countries are part of the US, blue ones are the affiliated countries, green ones are "socialist" countries and purple ones are fragmented markets.

Anyway, damn good fun book. It felt so so good to read adult fiction again. Yay!
9 Quality + 9 Popularity = 18 Overall

Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture, by Juliet Schor

Fantastic, well written, passionate and detailed book about the ways marketers research and hunt their quarry- children and teens- in order to develop brand relationships that are in many ways as intense as relationships with humans.

Shor wrote a seriously good book here, and filled it with stories that outrage. This would be a fantastic book for anyone interested in the ways the experience of childhood has changed since the 1980s and how commodified the experience has become. From immersive marketing to alpha teen representatives, Shor dredges up the ugly in an ugly ugly business as lucidly as Upton Sinclair did with The Jungle.

I guess I'll say it here, I am a big fan of hers for not only this book, but for 2 of her other books I enjoyed immensely - The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need and Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure.

Born to Buy, by Juliet Schor

Quality: 10 Popularity: 9 Overall: 19

Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters from Marketers' Schemes, by Sharon Lamb and Lyn Brown

Re-read.
A good intro to the overwhelming brainwashing that (American) girls are subjected to, with an emphasis on consumerism and on packaged female identity. This book, while very solid, is kind of basic and not as in depth as Alissa Quart's Branded, and at times feels like it is written for people who have never thought about such things, which I suppose it is.

The authors are writing to parents, and for what it is, it is an impassioned and articulate analysis of why 'buying into' princesses and pink can damage girls' future attempts to define themselves, and the sections on children's and YA literature are most interesting to me. Of course Gossip Girl comes in for some hits, but I think it's clear that the authors realize that that series is better written than others, and also, their objections to Gossip Girl are more focused on the materialism than on the issues. The Clique, thankfully, is nailed in this book, but some of the books they recommend seem a little off to me - Ok, Speak, sure, yadda yadda, but putting How I Live Now on a list of books supposedly chosen to reflect strong female characters? Daisy was a neurotic anorexic basketcase who had an underage affair with her cousin- I liked the book, but I wouldn't see that character as a role model. Also, the Magic Schoolbus series drives me crazy. But that might just be me.

Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters from Marketers' Schemes

Quality: 9 Popularity: 8 Overall: 17