Brandwashed

In marketing today it is so important to think of yourself and your clients in terms of an entire brand rather than just as individuals. Strong brands create an experience for the customer that creates word of mouth and customer loyalty, therefore increasing profits. My interest in how this experience is created led me to pick up Brandwashed by renowned brand consultant Martin Lindstrom.

In his book Lindstrom discusses nine tactics that marketers and advertisers use to help brands create experiences for current and potential customers that make them believe that they truly NEED a product. These nine tactics include:

1) "Buy Buy Baby:" marketing begins in the womb
2) "Peddling Panic and Paranoia:" fear and loathing can and will sell products
3) "I Can't Quit You:" smart phones, shopping addicts and brand addiction
4) "Buy It, Get Laid:" sex still sells in marketing and advertising
5) "Under Pressure:" the influence of peers
6) "Oh, Sweet Memories:" marketing using nostalgia
7) "Marketers' Royal Flush:" influence of fame and celebrity
8) "Hope in a Jar:" health has a price
9) "Every Breath You Take, They'll be Watching You:" privacy, or the lack there of

Having studied marketing for a while now I was no stranger to these tactics and had heard of many of them before so for me the most interesting part of the book was the social experiment that Lindstrom performed using a carefully chosen family, the Morgensons.

According to Lindstrom the point of the experiment was to determine the power of word of mouth marketing.This would be done by transplanting this family in "a real-life California neighborhood and then film them in every waking moment as they went about covertly persuading friends, colleagues and loved ones to buy a number of carefully selected brands."( Brandwashed, 238)

The experiment lasted one month and it proved that regardless of all the tactics that marketers use the most powerful influence by far is word of mouth. In fact, word of mouth holds more power than even traditional TV commercials. "In contrast to conventional TV or magazine advertising...an event takes place in our brains the moment other people recommend a car, a band, a makeup or a wine." (250) The brain releases emotions such as lust, pride, empathy and guilt along with the feeling of craving a certain product.

Word of mouth marketing allows our brains to fire on multiple cylinders that cannot be reached by traditional marketing tactics. Toward the end of his book Lindstorm makes what some may consider a bold statement, but one that I agree with:

Eventually, "families' like the Morgensons will be in communities world wide, hired by marketing firms to sell products because, "if you can get word-of-mouth influence behind your brand that influence multiplies the power of your brand exponentially." (251)

-Rachel