The Core

What if increasing the supply of information to the point where it’s limitless has made us value any particular piece of information less?

https://markmanson.net/everything-is-f###ed

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Good article

Site is a bookmark for sure. The politics aside I think he makes some very good points but I think he missed the extra step when talking about purchasing decisions.

In say the 50's and 60's we purchased things largely for the practicality, the utility. Shoes as an example were bought because they were comfortable, practical and hard wearing.

We stopped doing that, we bought shoes because of how they made us feel, the emotion.

The extra step is that increasingly, I think, people buy things because of how it makes other people think about them. The Internet has played its part in that.

As marketing people I don't think there is a great deal of difference in approach needed between steps 2 and 3, but if you were thinking of starting a new business I would choose one with a strong visual aspect.

Yes, people are ruled by emotions much more than we care to admit.  We ignore this at our peril.

But in marketing this precedes the internet.

1. First you make people feel insecure.  So you show a TV ad saying don't let your armpits stink. Use our product and your pits won't stink.

2. Show rewards: Show person with fresh armpits driving off in swanky convertible with not one but two, count'em, beautiful blonde women in car.

The Author is right though, in that the Internet Balkanizes.  It makes you feel insecure about everything, politics, ethnicity, religion, science, how you speak, plus your armpits.

But back to emotion:

There is an interview in the documentary series "World at War" where they interview an anti-aircraft gunner and a civilian who had lived through the Blitz.  It went something like this.

Gunner:  The German bombers would be overhead and we would open up with the big (anti-aircraft) guns. 

Civilian: But we hardly hit anything...

Gunner: But you felt better. We were fighting back.

Firing those guns helped keep morale up which far outweighed the actual material effect.  Emotions, Churchill understood this better than we do today.