Brandwashed (6 page)

Oftentimes, our adult preference for a brand we used as a child is about
nostalgia—often planted in our brains by the subtle yet clever manipulations of marketers, as we’ll read more about later on. Marketers see to it that we subconsciously link the brand with warm memories of home and family, so that using that brand becomes a way to reconnect both with our past and with our loved ones. I have a friend who insists on using Crest toothpaste and Crest toothpaste only. When I asked him why, he thought for a moment. “Because,” he said, “I feel somehow as though I would be betraying my parents if I used another toothpaste.”

Yet like most of the hidden persuaders we’ll be talking about throughout the book, “hand-me-down” influence doesn’t happen by accident. Far from it. Companies and retailers work hard to get us to pass on our brand preferences to our children; it’s part of their strategy, in fact. This is why so many brands are creating mini versions of their adult products for children and even infants in the hopes that the brand will stick. This is the calculus behind babyGap and J. Crew’s Crewcuts, and it’s why there even exists a Harley-Davidson line of onesies (for that tiny motorcycle mama in your life).

Oh, and if you’ve dropped by an Apple store lately, did you happen
to notice it resembled an international day care? That’s because Apple, a favorite brand among children (as the
New York Times
pointed out in 2010, Apple’s iPhone “has . . . become the most effective tool in human history to mollify a fussy toddler”), offers all kinds of baby-friendly apps, like Toddler Teasers, Baby Fun!, Infant Arcade, Peek-A-Boo, Pocket Zoo, and more. Sure, these apps are a godsend to many tired parents, keeping the kid busy so Mom and Dad can have a bit of peace and quiet, but they are also one of Apple’s many stealth strategies (you’ll read about others later on) for recruiting the next generation of customers. Apple’s “back-to-school” offer of an iPod Touch free with your new laptop is another. Sounds generous, but what’s really going on is slightly more calculated than that. I have no doubt that Apple’s marketers know full well that once Mom or Dad passes along the iPod Touch to their child, the kid can’t help but get hooked on the gizmo and will eventually be asking for a high-priced Apple computer of his or her own.
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(And there’s evidence to suggest children’s obsessions with Apple products start much, much earlier. I once conducted an experiment in which I handed a group of one-year-old children BlackBerrys—only to watch each one of them immediately swipe their fingers over it as though it were an Apple touch screen.)

The point is that one of the main reasons all these strategies targeting children are so effective is that they pack a one-two punch: not only do our earliest preferences and impressions as children stay with us for life, but we’re also drawn to products that capture and allow us to relive the feeling of being young. In fact, as you’ll read later on, nostalgia is one of the most powerful hidden persuaders around, and it’s being used in all kinds of ways to brandwash us.

T
he most recent outbreak of the H1N1 influenza virus, better known as swine flu, was first detected in Veracruz, Mexico, in the spring of 2009. Both the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control termed the outbreak a pandemic. Millions of people all over the world panicked, and although swine flu never became the kind of global catastrophe the 1918 flu did, it has been blamed for roughly fourteen thousand deaths.

Six years earlier, in 2003, another potentially fatal flu, severe acute respiratory syndrome, or
SARS, caused a similar global panic. SARS originated in southern China but spread to infect citizens in roughly forty countries. By the time the virus was contained in 2006, it was thought to be responsible for nearly eight hundred deaths—and people all over the world were going to heroic lengths to protect themselves and their children from exposure.

For doctors, CDC workers, and other health officials, a well-publicized global contagion spells a nightmare scenario: stockpiling and administering gallons of vaccines, diagnosing and treating thousands of patients, and spending countless hours and dollars trying to allay
widespread panic. For a number of companies and marketers, however, it spells something entirely different: a golden opportunity.

Can anyone say “hand gel”?

Thanks in large part to these two global health scares, today we’ve welcomed antibacterial hand sanitizers into our lives as a cheap, everyday, utterly essential staple. Expected to exceed $402 million in profits a mere five years from now (and that’s just in the United States,)
¹
containers of the soaps and hand gels can now be found at virtually every airport, hotel, restaurant, public restroom, newspaper kiosk, grocery store, and kitchen and bathroom sink across the globe. Millions of women, men, teenagers, and children won’t leave home without a small bottle or spritz canister in their purse or pocket. Bath & Body Works and Victoria’s Secret have even devised hand sanitizers as fashion accessories. Recently, while I was on a layover in Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, a voice over the loudspeaker alerted me repeatedly to the presence of hallway soap dispensers. In short, our war on this unseen enemy—a terrorist cell of germs, so to speak—has become a global family affair.

Turns out, though, that neither swine flu nor SARS can be prevented by the use of antibacterial cleansing gels. Both viruses are spread via tiny droplets in the air that are sneezed or coughed by people who are already infected (or, though this is far less common, by making contact with an infected surface, then rubbing your eyes or your nose). Nevertheless, the idea of an unseen, potentially fatal contagion has driven us into nothing short of an antibacterial mania, one that has helped sales of Purell, the top-selling hand sanitizer, to jump by 50 percent
²
and Clorox disinfecting wipes 23 percent since the 2009 panic.
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But our near addiction to these overpriced germ killers isn’t just a happy accident for the companies that make them. The advertisers and marketers at brands like Purell, Germ-X, Germ Out, and
Lysol have worked extremely hard to make us believe that using their product is the only surefire way to stave off grave and deadly disease. How? Well, first they capitalized on the global panic during the swine flu scare by releasing an onslaught of new products and redoubling their efforts to stress the importance of hygiene in staving off disease. “We want to
make sure that people understand that effective hand washing is the best way to keep yourself and your family healthy,” echoed a spokesperson for Dial, the soap manufacturer. Purell then posted on their Web site: “According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), one of the ways you can help protect yourself from Swine Flu is by practicing good hand hygiene. Specific CDC recommendations include keeping your hands clean by washing with soap and water, or using an alcohol-based hand sanitizer when soap and water may not be available.”
⁴

The disinfectant brand Lysol, too, updated its home page with information on swine flu, asserting that although it is not yet clear how the virus spreads, “following proper hygiene routines can help prevent the spread of illness.”
⁵
Of course, what they are trying to insinuate is that their product is the key to good hygiene—and in turn instrumental in staying healthy. Only they can’t
say
that because, well, it would be a lie; in fact, hand sanitizers have not been found, by the CDC or anyone else, to be effective in fighting airborne disease.

It wasn’t just makers of soap and hygiene products who saw serious marketing opportunities in the swine flu panic. Kleenex very swiftly rolled out a line of “antiviral” tissues, which allegedly “have a specially treated middle layer that helps stop cold and flu viruses” and that “kills 99.9% of cold and flu viruses in the tissue within 15 minutes” and are “virucidal against Rhinoviruses Type 1A and 2; Influenza A and B; and Respiratory Syncytial Virus.”
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Major online retailers such as
Amazon.com
and
ReStockIt.com
also got into the game, taking the opportunity to manufacture and market swine flu protection kits, swine flu safety DVDs, ionic air purifiers (ranging in price from fifty dollars to six hundred dollars) and hundred-dollar designer face masks.
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“The spread of swine flu is of global concern and we want to do our part to help contain it,” said Jennifer DiMotta, VP of marketing at
ReStockIt.com
. “These products really work to help curb the spread of germs and disease,” she added.
⁸

What’s in a swine flu protection kit, you ask? Why, hand sanitizer and bacterial wipes, among other useless items designed to give us the illusion of protection and safety. None of these kits, some of which came with surgical masks and a light blue garment that looks uncannily
like a hospital gown, were endorsed or distributed by the World Health Organization or any other health organization. But it was no coincidence that they were designed and packaged to have a decidedly clinical, medical feel.

Even some of the food companies tossed their hat into the ring of paranoia. A few months after those first swine flu cases began to appear in the headlines, Kellogg’s, in an attempt to tap into the growing misconception (fed largely by the opportunity to profit off it, of course) that a healthy immune system was the key to staying swine flu free, introduced a new variant of Rice Krispies and Cocoa Krispies loaded with “antioxidants and nutrients that help the body’s immune system.” Too bad it was also loaded with 40 percent sugar. Just a few months later, the company’s health claims were so widely criticized for being bogus that it decided to pull the words “helps support your child’s immunity” from all boxes. (The word “immunity,” it should be noted, appeared in giant, boldfaced letters that could practically be seen from Jupiter.)
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Kellogg’s denied preying on swine flu
fear, claiming that it had begun work on its revamped Rice Krispies a year before the H1N1 virus peaked. Still, one has to question the company’s motives, given that in November 2009 it bowed to the negative publicity, announcing that “given the public attention on H1N1,” it would no longer sell the antioxidant-enriched cereal, though “we will continue to respond to the desire for improved nutrition.”
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Companies are equally quick to prey on public panic over food contamination scares. For example, in 2010, when over half a billion eggs were recalled due to reports of salmonella, the marketers of brands like Egg Beaters and Davidson’s sprang into action, adding sections to their Web sites boasting that their products were uncontaminated. Davidson’s even bought the Google adwords for the searches “pasteurized eggs” and “safe eggs,” so that panicked egg lovers looking online for information on the recall would most likely find themselves on the Davidson’s Web site, where they were immediately assured, “Our pasteurized eggs eliminate the risk of food borne illness and cross-contamination of your kitchen from shell eggs.”
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Fearmongering is also a tactic favored by big-box retailers like Walmart, Kohl’s, and Target, which employ a company called Weather
Trends International to help them adjust their inventory to capitalize on the anxiety generated by predictions of hurricanes, fires, ice storms, and other extreme weather events.
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It’s true that in the case of an
actual
disaster like Hurricane Katrina, this can be a genuine public service (as one journalist reported, “unlike local, state and the federal government, which didn’t react until days after the hurricane hit, Walmart was at work around the clock before Katrina even hit to have the stores fully stocked with full pallet positions of water, flashlights, batteries, canned soup and canned meat”).
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But it’s also true that if there’s even a remote possibility of extreme weather, these retailers are lightning quick to erect huge front-of-store displays of everything from bottled water to power generators to shovels to mosquito nets, pulling in a tidy profit in the process.

F
ear is an interesting, complex, and not altogether unpleasant emotion. Do you remember the delicious thrill you felt as a kid when you watched your first horror movie—whether it was
The Blair Witch Project
or
The Shining
or
The Exorcist
? Your pulse probably raced, your heart likely beat wildly in your chest, and you may have found yourself involuntarily holding your breath as you waited for that ax-wielding killer to jump out of the shadows. You were scared out of your mind, and you loved every minute of it. It’s not just horror movies and scary urban legends that deliver this delicious thrill. Ever wonder why Stephen King has sold more than five hundred million copies of his books over the years, or why on
Publishers Weekly
’s list of best-selling books in 2009, a staggering thirteen of the top fifteen fell under the category of thriller?
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As the popular media gossip blog
Gawker.com
noted sarcastically, American readers love being scared—of everything from Freemasons to lawyers to murderers to aliens to lawyers to pirates to even our northern neighbor, Canada. And what do you think is behind the enormous popularity of scary TV shows like
Bones
or
CSI
or even the Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week”? I read once that a human being’s chances of being eaten by a shark are smaller than his chances of being hit by a coconut falling
from a palm tree, but if you look at how many movies and TV shows feature shark attacks, you’d think otherwise.