The Persuaders and Love Marks

The Persuaders, a documentary exploring common marketing techniques utilized by US companies, emphasized the importance in "breaking through the clutter." Essentially, advertisements have permeated so deeply into American culture that consumers have developed immunities to certain forms of persuasion. This creates a necessity for companies to find ways to transcend these common tropes and set themselves apart from the crowd. Of course, eventually, these become part of the clutter also and marketing companies have to develop some new way to distinguish themselves from the rest. In the face of this dilemma, American companies have found new ways of approaching their advertisements that hope to grab the attention of consumers already inundated with them. For example, some corporations attempt to create a lifestyle around their products and focus their marketing around that culture associated with their brand instead of the actual product.

Other companies have invested in creating a strong emotional connection between their products and their customers. Called love marks, these products appeal to much more fundamental, affective consumer tendency. This marketing technique makes consumers feel loyalty beyond reason and intimacy with certain products. They come to occupy a special place in customers' heart which makes them more willing to pay for them or buy new products by that brand. After learning of this tactic, the first example that came to my mind was Pokemon. Although I never played or watched very much Pokemon, both the video game and show were very important parts of my brother' childhoods. They had Pokemon-themed birthday parties, Pikachu backpacks, and became immersed in the extensive information and backstory surrounding the little creatures. Pokemon ultimately became inextricably tied to and a part of their childhood. It became more than just an entertainment conglomerate, but a special and integral part of their upbringing. Because the brand established such an intimate and emotional connection with their consumer, they were able to sell more product. Of course their appeal to children became more effective because kids were more likely to buy other goods that were Pokemon-themed. However, the less obvious advantage of love marks is their lifetime. This emotional connection that Pokemon mastered lasted beyond childhood and continued to persuade consumers into adulthood. By becoming an iconic part of many people's childhood, Pokemon is able to appeal to nostalgia and fond memories of adolescence to sell products to adults. Love marks are extremely effective marketing techniques because they shift the appeal away from what is actually being sold. Regardless of the quality, necessity, value, etc of the product, people will buy it because they feel a strong emotional connection to that particular brand.

Decoupling and Contextualizing

This weekend I stumbled upon a concept that reminded me strongly of some of the skills that we are taught in critical thinking. Described best in John Nerst's blog post, this concept describes two different approaches to argumentation and discussion. "Decouplers" are those who separate ideas from each other and their surrounding context. They isolate arguments and claims from their social and political backdrop and attempt to view things as abstractly and separately as possible. Conversely, "non-decouplers" view events holistically and believe information about the source, historical associations, other relevant issues, etc are imperative to genuinely evaluate a claim. Although defined in my greater detail by Nerst's piece, the difference between decouplers and contextualizers lies in differing beliefs about what information is relevant to a discussion or argument (decouplers having a much narrower scope, and non-decouplers a much broader one). 

Although seemingly unimportant, this "coupling" characteristic is actually strongly correlated with various careers. For example, decouplers tend to be STEM people because of their ability to isolate variables, tease out causality, and formulate claims into carefully delineated hypotheses. Non-decouplers, on the other hand, tend to be novelists, poets, artists, journalists. They are more reliant on thick, rich, and ambiguous meanings, associations, implications, and allusions to evoke feelings in their audience. Of course, this distinction is not as binarisitc as it may seem. Most people exhibit both tendencies depending on the situation and are not strictly one way or another. Still, the ability or preference to isolate ideas is a helpful and effective way to explain the differences between "math/science people" and "humanities people."

After I was introduced to this vocabulary I was immediately reminded of the habits/characteristics of critical thinkers that we studied at the beginning of this semester. I believe in addition to the ones we have established, decoupling could be considered a habit or characteristic of a critical thinker. In order to thoroughly analyze something, one must be able to separate it from surrounding or unnecessary aspects. For example, when evaluating media, a critical thinker must be able to identify and separate the product from the author's intention, account for tools of persuasion that may be used to distract/manipulate, advertising methods, etc. Many of the tools that we have studied regarding media literacy can be described as examples of decoupling.