Bree'sFilmAnnotation10

Bree Mobley, Annotation #10 “The Persuaders” 22 November 2011 1054 words

“The Persuaders” directed by Barak Goodman and Rachel Dretzin, released 2004

“The Persuaders” is a PBS documentary film about what’s going on in the world of today’s marketers and advertisers. The film dives into the evolution of advertisements from simply describing to creating an identity for the product. Covering marketer’s challenge, today’s meaning of “brand”, and the magic connection between consumer and product, the documentary reveals the incredible presence that today’s advertisements have in people’s lives. The last part of the film talks about advertising in political media and the creation of a political campaign from a marketer’s point of view.

The narrative is created by Douglass Rushcoff, an author and teacher of media studies at NYU and the New School University. The film follows him as he begins to reveal the cluttered landscape of marketing and how strategists are working to overcome consumer resistance. He starts by covering the complexity of market research; the goal of each advertising company is to find new ways to integrate their message into our everyday lives. Their goal is to “break through the clutter”. The film discusses the evolution of advertising, from the 1980s TV commercials that described why the product was better (i.e. the cleanest detergent, the brightest light, the better toaster) to the early 1990s TV commercials that first started exploring not what the product did, but rather what it meant. They called this “pseudo-spiritual marketing” or channeling the “inner brand meaning”. The film takes Delta airlines business strategy to build a new, cheaper airline sub-company as an example of trying to create an inner brand meaning for their customers. The film gets behind the original concept of Song airlines and their initial media strategy. After multiple focus group meetings, they identified a consumer group whose needs were being ignored during flight: women. They worked with a Kate Spade designer to invent a new culture around flying creating TV ads, a logo, hiring unique employees, and establishing a “song” brand and identity. It was interesting to see an example fleshed out from beginning to end and see how receptive the public was to this advertising strategy. The film also talks about the dying field of TV commercials. With the creation of TIVO and other television recording devices, commercials are no longer reaching their target audience through television. The business of seamlessly integrating products into shows and movies has begun to take off. This new integration is called Madison-Vine, the blending of products with Hollywood, or in layman’s terms, product placement. The last part of the film talks about the marketing strategies of politicians. Frank Luntz, a highly sought after political marketing creator, talks about his take on marketing to appeal to a voting public. He stresses than an illusion of listening and giving the community what they want to hear is the most effective way to run a campaign.

This film deals with Media and Informational, organizational, cultural, and political sustainability problems

The part of the film I found most compelling was the interview with Mark Crispin Miller, a media critic. During his interview, he presented the idea that a culture that opens every facet of itself ceases to be a culture at all. He accuses our modern culture of doing this. He says that a culture dies if everything that is created is no longer made to identify the atmosphere of the era but rather to simply sell something. He says that when everyone is forced to try to make the profit expectation of management, the possibility of any kind of work that may require taking a chance or a risk will be eliminated. He comments that advertising is celebrated in the corporate and economic realm, but when it comes to taking the risk of offending people, pushing the limits, confusing, enlightening, or trying something new, all ideas are thrown out the window. Miller gives examples of pop music and Hollywood and the recent repetitiveness they’ve experienced: for example, movies recreated from older movies, comic books, and novels.

The least compelling part of this movie was the segment about the market research guru, Repaille. I thought that his presence was relevant in the film, however, I was uninterested in his techniques on conquering the irrational mind of the American consumer. He defended that every person has an unconscious association with every product they purchase. Huge corporations would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars sending their marketing strategists to Repaille. During the film, Repaille was performing an analysis of the word luxury for companies such as Boeing to help them design the interior of a new plane. He started with a focus group that he had do very interesting things to reach a conclusion about luxury. Then he boasted having attained a “code” to unlock how to reach into the consumer’s idea of luxury. It was interesting, but my attention waned after a while.

This movie was intended for an audience of consumers and for people interested in market research and advertisements. I think it really speaks to anyone who has been a subject of advertising, which is every single person in America and the developing world.

I think if the film would have expanded upon the amount of consumerism that is created by an over-advertised society, the environmental educational value would improve. If the film could relate the work of advertisement businesses and marketers to the direct effects on the environment, a better perspective of the immediate effects could be understood.

The film does not point out any sort of action to be taken or points of intervention because no argument is made. Actions that I think would be effective in avoiding advertising would be to buy a house in the middle of nowhere and eliminate any access to modern society. But that is a bit unreasonable, I realize.

This film compelled me to look further into the idea of a culture in crisis that was presented by the media critic Mark Crispin Miller. I looked up his personal website and spent some time exploring: []

I also looking into the Song airlines that Delta launched a few years back to see what had happened to the sub-company. This following article highlights the ending of Song and the reasons for its discontinuation: []