No immunity 💀
"I think growth covers up mistakes."
—Howard Schultz, former CEO of Starbucks
> the persuaders | sell you anything
A young man in his twenties bragged to me one day that he had special powers.
We were talking at a local Tulsa coffee shop where I worked in sobriety from alcohol.
He confidently claimed that advertising and marketing didn't affect him the way it did other people.
I looked at him stunned.
- "Wait, huh? Really? The more you believe that, the easier it is to sell you anything."
Unfazed, he grinned and walked away.
- next time "Starbucks and politicians live in our minds rent-free."
- listening New Order "Blue Monday"
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No mercy 🔥
> the persuaders | great plumes of hot gas
The Starbucks Corporation spent nearly $600 million dollars last year on marketing and advertising, according to disclosure statements.
- At one time, the coffee titan boasted that it spent only a fraction on advertising compared to other Wall Street corporations. Those days are over.
- Annual spending by Starbucks on ads and marketing surged by $200 million over the last three years.
Starbucks already was capitalizing on the public's ignorance of the human mind.
To celebrate its 40th birthday, Starbucks offered a "free" online voucher.
As the influential psychologist Robert Cialdini tells it, the vouchers exploited three well-documented human tendencies:
- We feel compelled to return favors
- When we do favors for other people, we like them more
- An illusion of scarcity creates an illusion of urgency
No corporation living at the mercy of shareholders would spend $600 million on anything without anticipating comfortable returns.
The world's 100 biggest advertisers spent a combined $365 billion during 2023. That spending was a new record high, according to Ad Age.
It's a bigger number than entire national economies.
- Fortune 500 companies persuade us by understanding the human mind and our behaviors better than us. Just like political attack ads, corporate advertisers are after our feelings and emotions.
- Parents imagine they can somehow turn off and on profound media effects that billow in great plumes like hot gas through the air.
Words and images cannot be snatched away from the intuitive, unconscious minds of the world's youth.
Like an addiction, Starbucks and blow-dried TV politicians live in our minds rent-free while we cluelessly fantasize immunity from it all.
Wait'll you see later in this project how much Nike spends on marketing and advertising. Wait'll you see what Nike calls it.
- next time Hype rules everything around me.
- listening Screamin' Jay Hawkins "I Put a Spell on You"
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