“The Art Of Persuasion” – marketers and advertising executives have for years known all the tricks in the book in order to get you to buy their products, regardless of whether you ‘need’ them or not.
The world of marketing and advertising has moved beyond consumerism, and the same tricks are now being used within the wider media, in order to ‘nudge’ or coerce people into changing their habits or adopting new patterns, in order to adjust to the wider agenda at play.
Lets start with the following: how many times have you been ‘invited’ to take part in some market research, whether it be in the form of an opinion poll or survey, with the ‘reward’ of some Amazon gift ‘voucher’ dangled in front of you?
Well that’s happened to me on a number of occasions, and in my experience, said survey is designed and structured in such a way that you have no chance of expressing any contrary opinion, but participants are merely being ‘steered’ towards agreeing with what is being proposed. Oh well, but you might stand a chance of winning £25 to spend at Amazon… if you provide your email address and personal details that is…
On the subject of gift cards, as well as Amazon, one cannot fail to notice how many gift cards are available to buy for various ‘big-name brands’. While queuing in my local Wilko the other week, I was stood next to a huge stand, it was stocked with loads of Xbox and Playstation gift cards, as well as those for the likes of Amazon, Argos, Apple, Google etc etc.
Stuck for something to buy for a loved one? Give them the gift of choosing a product for themselves from the leading big corporate brands!
It sounds like you’re doing a ‘good thing’, but all you are doing is forcing your recipient to further ‘feed the beast system’, by giving them little choice but to use the voucher you have kindly given them at a retailer they probably never had any intention of using.
The big corporate brands/names all clearly look out for each other, and that also extends to much of the mainstream media as well. I wrote recently about the quality of mainstream news journalism, and something you’ll see on your local Reach owned news site is where they blatantly publish articles which are just a means of promoting certain products so they can gain commission on affiliate sales.
You can view that article in full here. The same Reach news sites have also been heavily promoting and pushing air-fryers, as with the one above the ‘news articles’ are worded in a way that attention is grabbed by the idea of ‘saving money’, but in reality, it is just more ‘nudging’ and encouraging consumers to spend money on products that they probably don’t even need. (Whether any money will actually be saved is quite questionable too)
What is most galling is when the ‘journalists’ just merely copy-paste ‘blurb’ from the websites that they provide their affiliate links to, its not the case that they’ve ever actually used any of the products themselves. Oh and using ‘product reviews’ to justify the endorsement…
In most cases the ‘affiliate links’ end up with Amazon product listings.
So your local news media is also just another advertising platform, promoting big-brand products and directing you to Amazon or Argos to complete your purchase.
So during a “cost of living crisis”, the same media outlets that will pump out articles about how people “have no money” or are “worried about bills” or “resorting to foodbanks”, are equally pushing articles encouraging people to spent £200 on a brand new air fryer so they can “save money on their energy bills”.
The big corporate entities rely on consumers to keep buying their products.
But aside from consumerism, there are also other nefarious examples of ‘nudging’, where the media play on peoples’ ‘fears’ with regards to living costs, in order to push and promote other agendas at play.
I wrote a while back about what I thought was coming for those with smart meters, and I stand by what I wrote then, and believe the end game is to be able to charge people more for using energy at certain times of the day.
It of course all starts with ‘incentivising’ people to reduce their energy consumption at peak times in order to avoid ‘black outs’, where energy supply cannot meet ‘demand’. So there is already talk of offering ‘discounts’ to households for using appliances such as washing machines outside of peak hours.
UK households are furious after it emerged there’s a catch in the scheme to pay Brits for lowering their energy use. Households will be paid to use their appliances at non-peak times as National Grid warns of three-hour blackouts over winter.
Households will get paid £10 a day. But now it has emerged a little known detail in the small print could prove to be massively controversial.
Brits will only be paid if they have a smart meter. Former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith told the MailOnline that it seems “cynical that only people with smart meters can benefit”.
“UK households furious over loophole in plan to pay Brits to cut energy use” – Birmingham Mail, 7th October 2022
This is beyond ‘cynical’, its the whole purpose of this. Oh well, there you go, “nudge nudge wink wink” better get yourself a smart meter if you want to ‘save money on your energy bills’.
Smart Meters on their own won’t save you money, and it’s also worth pointing out that they are neither compulsory or mandatory, no matter what anyone might tell you otherwise. I have read comments elsewhere about people being ‘nudged’ or coerced into upgrading to a smart meter because they are ‘free’, and other more nefarious comments where it has been suggested to them that ‘dumb’ meters will somehow ‘stop working’ in the future and will need to be replaced.
Preying on peoples’ fears again (fears that are only generated by the… mainstream media and their propaganda) we’ll also see articles such as the following:
The worsening cost of living crisis is putting millions of people across the country under serious financial strain. Many face difficult decisions are rocketing energy bills and rising prices have left household budgets increasingly stretched.
Although the government has capped the average household energy bill at £2,500 a year, this is not an absolute limit and some consumers may pay more depending on how much energy they use. Even at this level, however, bills are twice what they were a year ago.
As a result, many people have been left wondering how they can possibly save money – and whether smart meters can be part of their solution to their woes. But are smart meters actually a good idea, and can they help consumers save money?
“How smart meters work and whether they can save you money on your energy bill” – Birmingham Mail, 7th October 2022
Of course, the values being quoted regarding the ‘energy cap’ are also a grand work of fiction, and your own household bill will be determined by the actual amount of energy you use, yes it is true that if you are on a standard variable rate tariff, your energy bill this year is going to be higher than last year, but it is not the case that EVERYONE’s energy bills are going to ‘rocket to £2500’.
In short, as with anything ‘smart meters’ in principle should be a good idea, but no, they will not save consumers any money, and in fact in the long term once there is wider uptake of them they will actually end up costing consumers more if the energy companies get their way and introduce ‘demand responsive’ or ‘surge pricing’.
To conclude, people need to be wary or cautious of anything they see in the media that is ‘incentivising’ or coercing them into doing something they would otherwise not be willing to do, especially if it is something either being promoted by or supported by a ‘big corporate brand’.
Remember this one?
