The Persuaders, which is directed by Douglass Rushcoff, is a documentary on the multi-billion dollar advertising and marketing industry. The films main idea covers how marketers have found new ways and are continually searching for other ways to weave their message into our everyday lives. The Persuaders covers their market research methods that helps them understand consumers, and how they can get us to buy into their product. It has many short case studies from different companies on how they are selling their product whether it be an airline or laundry detergent. The documentary even dives into marketing effects in politics. He discusses how politicians use these tools to get elected and stay in office.
At first thought as I sat to watch this I was intrigued. I am indeed a marketing major and this topic I find so interesting. The way this information was presented was great. The correspondent, who was Douglass Rushcoff again, presented as unbiased as he could, but I believe it is near impossible to ever be unbiased. It’s just human nature to take a side that you most relate to, but in his directing he did a good job. He mentions things we have talked about in class. Breaking through the clutter is a major theme of marketers and we discussed that when we covered marketing. Some other things that he mentioned were that we as consumers are trapped in the marketing pinball machine and we are just bounced back and forth from advertisements like a pinball. During this part of the film they showed how much advertising we are hit with everyday. Even in class we were once told that as a toddler we are familiar with over 200 brands. It makes perfect sense if you go look at timesquare in New York City. If you went to Google and searched for a picture you would see what he showed us in the film. Screens, posters, banners, planes, buses, cars, skyscrapers…EVERYTHING was an advertisement. Us as people are even billboards for our favorite companies. Wearing their logo on our chest. One other thing he mentioned was that advertisers have to spray us like cockroaches. Wherever they come up with these I dont know, but it is true. To get us to remember what company does what for us, they must constantly “spray us like cockroaches” to get that point to stick with us. If we weren’t constantly being bombarded with advertising that might not be necessary but in todays world it is.
During the middle of the film it got a little boring to me, it might of been just me though as I was sleep deprived. The topic covered during this section was market research. They had good points that are worth mentioning again. My favorite was the agency that studied cults and why people ever followed a cult. They then applied this knowledge to the brands they managed. Also they studied companies that had already built a strong following, companies like Apple, Saturn, and Volkswagen. They called this kind of marketing, Psuedo-Spiritual Marketing, it made people feel like they belonged to something bigger than just themselves. They were in a group of other followers and felt like they were welcome in that group and that that company just understood them personally. Tide laundry detergent even said something like “it’s not about just getting your clothes clean anymore.
The last section of the film covered politics. This was my least favorite section out of them all. I follow politics close enough to be knowledgeable of them but other than that I despise them. What he had to say about marketing in politics was legit though, and I agree with it. He mentions how they can manipulate the image that they want others to see to get elected to office and then keep that power. It’s just like if the candidate was a product that they need to sell to people, sometimes though how they are marketed and how they really are don’t match up.
We are all persuaders, we persuade ourselves to do things and buy things and support this company or that company. There is no us and them in advertising anymore.
