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Doug Rushkoff interview

My latest Worldchanging column is an interview with Doug Rushkoff. [Link]

So I go and talk at lots of companies, and try to help them figure out whether there's anyone on their staff who is connected to the industry that the company is a part of. And then, to look at how to make that person or persons more central to what the company says about itself.

All the rest of it – this Blink/LizardBrain/CultureOfPropaganda nonsense is just a way for sold-out intellectuals to sell books to cynical marketers. It's all based on the faulty observation that human beings make all of their choices in the same reptilian fashion. Just because a person's brain may light up in certain way when the see a blue Pepsi can doesn't mean that they'll make important life choices that way – or even trivial choices at the grocery store.

The kind of marketing you're talking about is an effort to fill in where advertising has failed. And while it doesn't really work to sell particular products, it does have a major and deleterious effect on our society. The underlying communication still gets through. And that communication is: you are not worthy, you are in need, you need to buy something to fill that hole in your soul. Mommy doesn't love you, but the corporation does.

jon posted this at 3:28 PM
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