In a media culture, we not only judge strangers by how they look but by the images of how they look. So we want attractive pictures of our heroes and repulsive images of our enemies.
Virginia PostrelRead
Persuasion has become a kind of force. The more the advertiser knows about what consumers want, and the more desires the product and packaging seek to fulfill, the more coercive the force.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights how effective advertising has the potential to manipulate consumer desires through persuasion.
Virginia Postrel's quote suggests that persuasion in advertising operates much like a force, exerting its influence on consumers based on their wants and needs. As advertisers gain deeper insights into consumer behavior and preferences, their ability to shape desires around products intensifies, leading to a more coercive form of persuasion that can significantly impact purchasing decisions.
Themes
PersuasionAdvertisingCoercionConsumer BehaviorDesireInfluence
In practice
Example use cases
In a marketing seminar, discussing how understanding consumer desires can enhance advertising effectiveness.
More from Virginia Postrel
All quotes →Glamour doesn’t just happen, people don’t wake up in the morning glamorous.
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With its fluctuating forms and needless decoration, fashion epitomizes the supposedly unproductive waste that inspired 20th-century technocrats to dream of central planning. It exists for no good reason. But that's practically a definition of art.
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A world of few choices, whether in jeans or mates, is a world in which individual differences become sources of alienation, unhappiness, even self-loathing. If no jeans fit, you'll feel uncomfortable or inferior. If no housing developments reflect your taste for unique architecture, you'll write screeds against philistine mass culture.
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Most of us cluster somewhere in the middle of most statistical distributions. But there are lots of bell curves, and pretty much everyone is on a tail of at least one of them. We may collect strange memorabilia or read esoteric books, hold unusual religious beliefs or wear odd-sized shoes, suffer rare diseases or enjoy obscure movies.
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'Frankenstein' did not invent the fear of science; the novel found its audience because it dramatized anxieties that already existed. Although popular entertainment can, over the long run, shape public perceptions, it becomes popular in the first place only if it addresses preexisting hopes, fears, and fascinations.
Virginia PostrelRead
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