The Hacking of the American Mind by Robert H. Lustig

First, the trigger-an itch, in the vernacular, ideally a socially-acceptable itch, like an email waiting in your inbox. What are the basic components of a science-based marketing strategy?Īs former Google employee Nir Eyal writes, rhere are four items that need to be satisfied. If what they’re saying is not truthful, it’s propaganda. If what they’re saying is truthful, it’s marketing. Propaganda uses disinformation to elaborate your point of view. The real question is, what’s the difference between marketing and propaganda? Marketing uses science to elaborate your point of view.

Is that kind of marketing always a bad thing? That’s an old trick, and it has been used for many years in marketing. If they tell you that you need Cialis (“When the moment comes, will you be ready?”) they’re playing on your brain’s reward system and stress system. They’re also marketing things you want as things you need-playing on your brain’s reward system, so they are able to turn want into need. It’s just another way neuroscientists are changing how we perceive our world and what we buy. So they have methods of marketing to you, and only to you. They have video cameras and facial recognition software that can read people’s facial expressions and alter their messages based on what they believe you’re thinking, based on your face. The first answer is that they are marketing hedonic substances and products and behaviors as being completely benign, and using neuroscience to do something called neuromarketing. There are a lot of answers to that question.

Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist and author of the best-selling book on sugar consumption Fat Chance, about how modern advertisers are blending old marketing tricks with fresh neuroscience to make their products irresistible and how to avoid bringing up consumerist children in the age of constant consumption. Lustig points out in his new book The Hacking of the American Mind, this whole corporate ploy is driven by reverse-engineered neuroscience. Consumerism has gone digital, making consumption increasingly intimate. Our children are growing up in a world choked by targeted advertising, and banner ads claiming that whatever product is being sold is precisely the product that they need to have.

The Hacking of the American Mind by Robert H. Lustig