BuzzFlash Reviews

June 2005

We Know What You Want: How They Change Your Mind
by Martin Howard

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

The American economic engine (teetering as it is) is built upon the most fundamental assumption: you can create a demand economy for a product by convincing people to buy things that they don't need. Marketing and advertising are the vehicles for accomplishing this task, psychologically inducing us into desires and impressions that would otherwise never occur to us.

" We Know What You Want" is a handbook that details tactics that influence us in five major arenas: the retail zone, the personal zone, the event zone, the media zone, and the virtual zone. This is not in anyway an academic treatise. To the contrary, it is a vibrantly designed, practical introduction to how we are psychologically influenced as a result of intentional strategic design.

The two-page section (104-5) on how to detect propaganda is worth the book itself. It captures the Rovian manipulation of public opinion in seven short paragraphs.

In fact, reading through "We Know What You Want" provides you with an extremely informative understanding of how the right wing of the Republican Party has "seduced" America through a variety of marketing, advertising and public relations techniques. The book, we should note, is not about Bush or politics per se, but the extreme wing of the Republican Party has mastered these "skills" on the political level. So, you read through many of the techniques with a "Oh, that's exactly what the Busheviks do" sort of recognition.

The reason that control of the media is so important to the Busheviks is that they know (as did Stalin and Hitler) that manipulation of public thought is key to achieving their secretive, self-serving goals.

They are masters of the bait and switch, but more importantly they are masters of insinuating psychological messaging into their propaganda. While the Democrats react to public perception (which many Democratic leaders mistakenly believe is a fixed rather than a moving target), the Republican corporate advertising, marketing and public relations experts tirelessly work to shape public opinion. It is probably the only thing that they do well, besides wrecking a wonderful democracy.

This is a book that is informative, thought-provoking and actually fun to read through, as odd as it may sound. "We Know What You Want" knows that this is a visual age, so the pages often jump out at you with provocative visuals and unconventional design.

It's a neat little book that leaves you realizing how much we are controlled by the media through marketing, advertising and public relations -- and that for the Busheviks the media is indeed the message.

The political leaders who can control messaging through the media are the ones who control the nation. They know it works. As "We Know What You Want" demonstrates, Americans are the great "messaging" guinea pigs of the world.

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS