Stop for a moment and think about your favourite pair of shoes, your favourite dress or pair of pants, a local team's baseball or football cap, your mobile device, your hair style, the must-have automobile, the only neighbourhood I can live in, the best pair of jeans, or designer sneakers. Believe it or not, we have swallowed the bullshit of keeping up with the Jones, whomever they are. Now consider why these items are your favourite things. Ever wonder why the latest style for the past 10 years is saggy jeans that look horrible to me but not to the ones wearing them. Why do we choose what we choose. Trust me, we have been and are being manipulated to think that we are making our own decisions when in reality we are being given the choices and we think that we are making them on our own, but we are not. While working in Washington, DC years ago, I asked a friend why everyone seemed to be walking in their sleep and unconcerned about happening in the world. Her response to me was, "We are living in a narcotised society". I never forgot her comment.
The days of being young and naive without even knowing it bring back great memories. Early in my career someone saw something in me that I was unable to see in myself. Someone grabbed me and mentored me in the area of public relations, marketing and advertising. I followed all of their rules and absorbed every single word that I was taught about conducting superior marketing campaigns to make a difference in the lives of people. These lessons shaped me to become a public relations practitioner and guru in the field. Using all the innovative lessons learned, I decided to work with community-based organisations and non-profit entities that couldn't afford to pay the prices of an uptown public relations firm. Like the pied piper I touted my horn and shared lessons on how to promote their image and brand. I taught them how to facilitate focus groups in order to give their audience exactly what they desired. My broadcast media experience helped me to show organisations and corporations about the importance of advertising and how to convince viewers and listeners to purchase quality products. I felt great when I looked in the mirror.
In the mid 90s I was convinced that the work of Public Relations was creative and simply amazing. My vision started to change when I took a position with a project called Tobacco Free Bay Area. As the marketing staff, our role was to first find out if communities wanted to reduce tobacco use and if they were willing to talk about it. Responsible for 9 Bay Area counties, our team, like military soldiers went out to the various counties to get feedback and listen to what people wanted. We set up focus groups to talk to everyone in the various communities about ways to reduce tobacco use and ideas to fight the tobacco industry who controlled politicians through donations of millions of dollars to the U.S. Senate and Congress. This project changed the way people thought about tobacco use in California, across the United States and eventually across the globe. We pushed to create smoke free bars in the San Francisco Bay Area, smoke free restaurants, smoke free offices and smoke free public transit to name a few. We pulled in every priority community that included African Americans, Asian/Pacific Islanders, Latino/Hispanics, women, LGBTQ, youth and the mainstream communities as well. My schooling in Marketing taught me to cross every t and to dot every single i. We hired staff and consultants that spoke the languages to reach our audience. Staff were also hired from those communities. All materials were developed in many languages to show that we listened to what the various communities wanted from this campaign. We were hated by all of the tobacco industry companies and politicians receiving money from them, but this made us very proud of our work. Our troops were called, "Tobacco Nazis" by them and the media.
As I am learning new lessons in life, I started to examine my work in Public Relations and Marketing and uncovered information I was never taught. After watching the BBC documentary, Century of the Self that takes a closer look at my field, Public Relations except it was called Propaganda. Created in 1622, the term was used differently from today. At the time, Pope Gregory XV was frighted by the spread of Protestantism throughout the world approved and supervised the missionary efforts to spread the faith. One of the early marketing campaigns.
As I started to dig deeper, I discovered the creator of Public Relations. I was never taught this in my extensive studies in college marketing. Like a 5 year old kid at a surprise birthday party, you can imagine the look on my face. Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, is that creator. Bernays' goal was to teach immigrants and others of modest means how to transform themselves through smart consumption into happy and presentable people. He persuaded business people, politicians and journalists how to create what people desire by controlling their minds to make them think they were making their own choices, although the choices were always given to them. It's called control and manipulation of the human mind. In 1928, Edward Bernays opened up his business called the Council of Public Relations with the goal of manipulating the masses, that's us. Making people want things they don't need by linking mass produced goods to their unconscious desires was the overall goal that is still working today.
Learning about the devious character Bernays opened my eyes to what's happening in the world today. I used to scratch my head and wonder, how could someone like Trump ever be considered to be President of anything. Now, I simply say Bernays whenever something feels wrong. One of his first clients was the tobacco industry who were having a difficulty time with getting women to smoke during a time when it was not accepted for women to smoke in public. I hate saying it but Bernays idea was brilliant. He set up a series of focus groups with women to talk to them about cigarette smoking. He discovered that women didn't feel equal to men. Cigarettes were considered a symbol of the penis and male sexuality. He decided to give women their own penis. At the New York City Easter Parade, he recruited elite women to be a part of the event with cigarettes attached to their upper leg. Bernays also contacted the media to alert them that a group of women from the suffrage movement were planning a protest. On the day of the event, all of the press showed up and only upon Bernays signal did the women all start to light up their cigarette and smoke in public for the first time. The media reported it as Torches of Freedom. It made women feel liberated and the sales of tobacco increased for women — later in my time cigarettes were created just for women, such as Virginia Slims. Bernays success led him work closely with President Woodrow Wilson and many other Presidents of the United States. It also led him to work with leaders in Great Britain. This was just the beginning. Today, cigarettes and vape pens impact the health of our youth and people of colour by selling flavoured tobacco. Flavours include: apple, cherry, chocolate, honey, grape, menthol, mint, peach, rum, strawberry, "sweet" (including bubble gum, candy, and toffee) and vanilla. Tasting and smelling so good can't be bad for anyone's health, can it?
So are we all considered to be the perfect consumer? We purchase what we are told to buy each season or year. Without question, many of us follow the rules as to what colours are in this season, what style is in — regardless if it's flattering or not to our bodies. When you stop to think about it all, it can make one angry. In 2020, Millennials are considered the perfect consumer and have been shaped over the years to behave exactly how they have been programmed to act. Recent research by Advertising Age suggests Millennials aged between 17 and 34 are expected to spend more than $200bn annually from 2017 and $10trn in their lifetimes — the largest consumer generation in history. So you can imagine the excitement of having a selfish, often narcissistic group of consumers that are easily brainwashed by advertising.
Today, I think that it's time to get off of the carousel ride and take back our independence and wake up from a state of mind control and brainwashing. I refuse to be one of the narcotised people in the world, I want to make my own decisions without being manipulated like a puppet.
"I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept". — Angel Davis
Comments