Exploiting gullibility
5 February—Not to take anything away from Taylor Swift, but why should anybody give a damn or (in the case of Donald Trump) worry about whom she supports or prefers for president? Or whom or what any celebrity endorses for anything at all, for that matter. Sadly, it’s celebrity culture, celebrity adulation, and celebrity endorsements in general that reflect the sorry state of the country. And the world. What’s wrong with voters, consumers, and people in general? Are they stupid or what? Silly question.
Why do people flock to see celebrities? Is it really thrilling to be within spitting distance of celebrity entertainers or athletes? Or politicians? Or even farther away in a crowd?
Just because a celebrity endorses or is otherwise associated with a candidate or other product (because, like it or not, a political candidate is just a product like any other that needs to be sold), are the great unwashed really so impressionable and exploitable that they can’t reason for themselves but are drawn to that product for no other, legitimate, reason? Of course they are.
That’s what marketing is all about: not necessarily hoodwinking, but always influencing the world at large to buy a product, whatever it may be. That’s accomplished not by presenting the product in simple, basic, objective terms—just the facts, as it were—but by embellishing, making the product more attractive and desirable than it may actually be, even resorting to strategies and associations that may have nothing at all to do with the actual product. You do what you have to do to sell your product.
That’s what marketing is all about: slick advertising and a gullible public. Obviously hyped-up, facially ridiculous media advertising sells product (the collective singular term of art) or it wouldn’t exist. You wonder how a gecko with a Cockney accent or an emu or an obnoxious woman or an even more obnoxious man can sell insurance, for instance. But evidently it works.
Go figure. In all events, think for yourself before you buy or vote. Then think again. If you can . . .