How marketing melts your brain
MARKETING is the most insidious of industries. It combines the art of image and sound with the psychology of the masses, carefully dissecting the herd by gender, age and pretty much any imaginable criterion. Starting with the most basic food products, going through hygiene, electronics, travel and even religion, this science we call marketing is a part of the very foundation upon which our lives are built.
In most civilized countries, marketing is everything. Going from advertising to distribution and then selling, it drives the economies of the modern world. It can make corporations soar or crumble like a fragile card castle. Companies like Apple have a devastating success not because their hardware is excellent, even if it sometimes really is. The real key to their success is that they have mastered how to properly seduce the masses. And this doesn’t mean only getting people to buy their toys, but to transform ordinary consumers into living advertising banners.
Propaganda machine
Isn’t marketing affecting us a bit too much? Most of us heard of the word
fanboy, but besides the dictionary definition, what does this word mean in
today’s IT landscape? In most cases, the fanboy is the slave of one or more
brands. The fanboys did not willingly choose this path. It’s an unconscious
decision, one which is sown and carefully grown into their minds by the
fantastically skilled and able minds that concert the deluge of advertising all
around us. The regular consumer is turned into a fanboy or fangirl sometimes by
his or her entourage, sometimes by the reputation and advertising of a brand.
Advertising itself is a science, it’s psychology, demographics and statistics, it’s knowing how to convince people that they need what they didn’t know they needed, that they have to buy it no matter what and that it’s better than all of the competitors’ products. And the banks, the shylocks and all the other money lending sharks are just begging the marketers to sell more, so that we owe more, so they can take more than we were rightfully due. In the current situation, our world’s growth rests on marketing and linear consumption, without any little bit of regard to the limited nature of the planet we live on, but that’s another story.
The skewed fanboy
What the advertising industry does is to turn people into mindless brand
zombies. The so called fanboy defends his idols with religious tenacity. The
fanboy will automatically label you as a heathen when you try to argue about his
beliefs. Apple, nVidia, Intel and AMD are only few of the big names in IT who
attract legions of obedient slaves on their side.
The behaviour of the fanboy is something worthy of a psychology show, or a nature program. It’s incredible how narrow minded some of these people can be. The fanboy will not only defend his opinions in a most aggressive way, but will also viciously attack with made-up arguments or one-sided studies anybody from the opposite camp or even free thinkers. And the sad thing is that all this is initially caused by years of well targeted publicity. Granted, the performance of a particular brand also convinces people, but that doesn’t mean the said brand is holy or perfect. Nothing is perfect and every company has its flaws, failed products and bad decisions. Fanboys willingly ignore such things, throwing themselves into a brainwashed flock which blindly follows the lead of a company which doesn’t give a dime about them, except as a statistical figure which execs use in their Power Point slides. But the fanboy doesn’t know, doesn’t care and doesn’t understand such things. The fanboys can never imagine that their favourite toys are being produced by a corporation which doesn’t care about anything except their money, and will usually fight this thought with any possible argument, be it the truth or a lies ranging from exaggeration to complete fabrication. The constant warmongering only feeds the fanboy’s almost mystic adulation for his idols while controversy and contradiction only strengthen his resolve, instead of raising some fundamental questions.
The Underdog Syndrome
A couple of years back, in the 2000s, when AMD was the eternal number 2, there
were a ton of people almost ready to adopt the cute little company. With a
number of very good designs and also using the money and loyalty of these
people, AMD finally became number 1 for once. And then is when its attitude
changed. It became just as arrogant and complacent as the company they had just
surpassed, performance-wise. The victory was short lived, as Intel came back in
force, stronger than ever. But the recent events didn’t prevent AMD’s former
CEO, Hector Ruiz, from cashing in on huge bonuses and increasing his income even
if the company was in deep trouble. Even now, as AMD breaks up, Ruiz is busy
writing checks to himself as the new CEO of the Foundry Company. So this is the
brand a lot of consumers loved so much.
Do we have something against AMD? Absolutely not, it’s about all companies. They’re all the same, make no mistake. There is no exception to this and there never will be. Why? Because this is the way the economy works. It’s a jungle and it’s survival of the fittest. The Underdog Syndrome benefits many companies. And they are happy with the role, as long as it serves them for survival. When the fame comes, the price will always go up. And when things turn black again, it’s back to looking shy and cute. The firms themselves don’t give a damn about you however, as this is all just unsympathetic numbers. That’s what it all boils down to in the end.
Stop worrying about some little company dying because you didn’t buy its stuff. This is not a reason to support a bunch of incompetents. Remember that the company is merciless and if it will go bankrupt because nobody buys its products, it deserves it. They will never show you mercy and you must do exactly the same if you don’t want to end up with the short end of the stick. Worries about dying companies are pointless. Competition always appears, not only because the governments are there to avoid the emerging monopolies, but because the business environment thrives on it. When there is a chance for competition in a domain where lots of money is made, you can rest assured that the competition will not be late for the meeting. It’s how these things work.
An open mind The number one step in curing a disease is to admit that you contracted it. Remember your last conversations. How often did you protect a certain company without solid proof and how many times did you attack a brand only because your gut feeling told you to? There are too many cases when the gut feeling is a fake. It actually is what was planted within you after years of advertising and rumours about a certain product. How many times did you advertise products and accomplished the dirty work which is usually the job of the publicity companies? Unconsciously we all become more or less the slaves of TM. We become free publicity. Some take pride in having AMD stickers on their rig or nVidia T-Shirts on their backs. Geeks happily wear Intel caps after participating at some tech fair where AMD Phenom paper bags can be seen all over the place. All this is just an investment made by a cold and calculated mind, doping our senses with sweet little logos and fancy names starting with the letter “i” or containing as many “x” as possible.
To all these companies, we are only statistics. Drones that wander around spewing their holy word, without realizing that there is no way in hell any of these brands are really worthy of our effort. The smart consumer is the consumer who beats these giants at their own game. The smart consumer is the one who stops being a fanboy and uses cold and calculated reason, just like the camp at the other end of the battlefield. There are a lot of smart consumers everyw here. The people who see countless reviews before buying something, the people who participate in open arguments about products, hearing both sides of the story, forming a healthy and educated opinion, free of the entangling marketing bollocks sold by absolutely every manufacturer and seller out there.
We must all remember that in today’s modern society, the greatest war being fought is the economic war. This is a war for our money, a war for our minds. A subjective and rigid mind is always very easy to subdue, conquer and exploit. That is why the less passion you put into a certain company, the better your judgement is. Think about this when you go shopping the next time. Try not to care about the posters, the stickers and the brand itself. Visit websites, investigate countless reviews, question everything and have arguments with your friends and neighbours. Dig out into the light every bit of information because, after all, it’s your money they’re after, and you should make it clear that your pocket will open only with good reason. µ
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[regards, a fanboy of inquirer rants, best in the business]
Surprisingly well-written and lacking in satirical bite.
Also, very informative. I could see someone performing a fan-boy "intervention" using this as the script.
An an AMD fan-boy myself, I am humbled and shamed by being called out and shown for what I really am.
It is really annoying that every tech forum is full of flame wars between fanboys of AMD, Intel, nVidia....
/deep breath.

My name is Neil and I am a Fanboy.
This consumer society has an incredible momentum built upon and supported by marketing and governments who receive campaign donations from big companies. The person who figures out how to change this capitalist mass-consumerism society to something better deserves more than a nobel prize.
Marketing and public relations are only different, ''politically correct'' words for mass control and mass manipulation. It is used to induce fear, instead of knowledge, passion instead of reason and to replace ''need' with ''desire''. 

They don't care about what's best for humanity on the long term but how to imprison us all into a false reality, the illusion of short term, immediate and easy ‘’happiness ‘’ with all the very bad consequences that this philosophy imply.

They are worst than politicians, lawyers, insurance brokers and bankers combined, expect maybe for the democracy invader/parasite that are the power and money hungry lobbyist.

What a beautiful world… 

Ramon
I stepped into this article skeptical, but color me impressed. It's one of the smarter statements I've seen about technology, and it explains why I know iPod owners who had their new machine brick itself...and went out and bought another. And XBox owners who hit the Red Ring, shrug, and flame Sony for a while to make themselves feel better. 

I'm a PC gamer. It's a pain in the ass to always be tweaking, patching, fixing. I'd like to think if it ever got to the point where the hype was not worth the effort, I'd bow out. But even I can't claim to be immune.

Mission Accomplished: Saturation Bombing Successful
Marketing is a direct consequence of freedom of choice. 

One way to stop the pernicious effects of marketing on our feeble brains is just to stop all competition: how much marketing of anything but The State was there in Soviet Russia?

Although some brands can get away with sub-par products for a while (good brands are more 'sticky'), the idea that people will perpetually fall for it doesn't correspond to anything I've seen out there.

Does that mean that only the best gets to the top? Obviously, it doesn't. Having a pile of cash allows you to generate more noise than the little guys, and forces them to use their much more scarce cash to get any sort of hearing.

However, this general rule is being increasingly skewed by the internet. Blogs and review sites are able to get information out about smaller companies' products that you would never have heard about before. This is still marketing, even if some of it is generated by users.

The point about the underdogs is not that they somehow deserve to succeed, but that you as an individual have much more power to help them succeed. If there's a local restaurant that's really good but not critically recognised, it's likely to go out of business unless the customers who like it support it and tell their friends. It's in their interests to do this, otherwise they'll be stuck with a big faceless one. 

The idea that marketing is the cause of this doesn't reflect what I see. Marketing is human behaviour in other formats, not sinister mind control. Believe me, I've worked in marketing for 20 years, and if there was a simple way of getting people to do what we want life would have been a lot simpler.
firefox rocks!!
Vote with your dollar. And in this case, not voting or buying does actually count.
Let's not forget that fanboyism is very notably present amongst so called tech journalist, like say theinq staff.
And it competes in popularity with the work of creating fanboys for the companies, that is done by the same group often, tech 'journalists'..
The core cause of "Fanboyism" isn't marketing. It's the need for critical mass.

Technologies that don't acquire critical mass *die*. In general there's room for one big winner, one struggling 2nd place, and any number of dead losers.

So let's say you're a programmer, and you try out a new language, and you love it. Now, if that new language is from Microsoft, which has declared it will be used to develop all new software, then you have nothing to worry about. But what if it has no big base of support? It needs to grow fast. It needs evangelists. It needs you to be a Fanboy. 

Secondly, you need to find other supporters of your endangered technology. You need mutual support, and you're lost in a sea of unbelievers. You need to stand out. 

People who use Windows or Intel CPUs aren't Fanboys. Why would they need to be? Those products have 90% of the market. Fanboys support AMD, or Apple, or Nvidia vs ATI, or Tivo. 

Someone read this to Charlie, while the grownups are being deliciously rude about every side in whichever particular form of scumbaggery is at question today.

Not saying he's polarised, but.. oh yes, I am. Rabid, foam-flecked fanboi. 

Was gonna make a smartass joke about silver screens, projectors and 3D displays, but it's probably too spoddy even for the Inq.
First of all do I really afford the time of analyzing in detail with which product/brand should I go? Maybe I'll do that for 1-2 expensive products but when most of them share the same capabilities, then I'll go with my experience or gut feeling, if not ask one of the sell assistants, who with a large smile will point me to one of the most expensive products or one the boss recommended to sell as soon as possible. The way of choosing a product is relative, I can't always trust the list of so called specialists but I might take their advice at least when they have the knowledge and experience I need. Referring to software products, I would prefer to stick to a certain vendor mainly because of the increased level of interoperability between a range of products, look and feel, experience or learning curve. I put level of interoperability on a fist plane because there are still many vendors that try to keep their products closed for other vendors, gaining on the short term but loosing on the long run (see Apple and their iPods).

Often, not the best company or product wins, but the one who can take advantage of existing circumstances, for example of market needs (see Renault and its Dacia Logan), high level partnerships (products that come by default with other subcomponents), trends, and I think my list ends here. There are companies which are smart enough to create a need or trend (see Smart given as example in some Marketing study books). For the average consumer are enough the products with average functionality and quality, so don’t be upset the masses follow the trend!

Talking about corporations, their philosophy is to decrease the costs, increase, if possible, product’s price and vary the quality to a level acceptable for the market; of course that’s nothing new, however within this context there is no wonder when some of the companies loose because they don’t have the required mobility, management, logistic, etc. Most of the companies are trying to gain customers' fidelity increasing the quality and availability of services/products, increasing customers’ awareness or dependency to a product. It’s a question of image and mirage, holding the customer at a certain level of need.


There are theories about customers brain washing or about corporatist conspiracies, they might be possible tough we don’t have to go so far away as long as, using an expression from popular philosophy, “for each product there is a sucker to buy it” and sometimes even without smallest attempt of persuasion. To some extent there is also some lack of education (I wonder who would like us to be educated) or knowledge with respect to quality and analysis of products, though they don’t go along with any product. A few weeks ago I was readying in a Romanian newspaper that Romanians prefer green products even if they are more expensive, it can be given as an example of increased customer awareness; on the other side the number of people who continue to drink carbonated drinks and eat junk food is increasing.

Behind the marketing or managerial strategic plans are not necessarily “cold and calculated minds”, most of them are applying blindly what they learned in schools or what the competitors are doing. Such minds produce more chaos than diabolic plans and they are guiltier for the actual economical crisis than for our buying or persuasive behaviour. 

There are also some ethical questions related not only to customers but also to vendors’ own employees and working environment, though that’s another story.
We have a real urge to wake people up for the reality of Corporate America
It's so well written that you can replace "company" by "political party" (and "performance" by "issues", etc...) and you get one of the best recent commentaries on the endless US election.

Serious, read again before calling me a cynic
"Believe me, I've worked in marketing for 20 years..." 

In that case give me three of whatever you're selling please.


"...and if there was a simple way of getting people to do what we want life would have been a lot simpler.""

Based on this profound statement, I suspect that you're not trying hard enough.


Likewise, your Soviet Russia analogy makes about as much sense as a chocolate tennis racket. 

Sadly, I suspect I agree with parts of what you're saying. It's an indictment of human intelligence that it's easier to lower the expectations of your target market than it is to create a product that sells on the strength of its relative worth. 

But then again, it's also an indictment of modern morality that it's allowed to happen so shamelessly.
"Marketing is human behaviour in other formats, not sinister mind control. Believe me, I've worked in marketing for 20 years, and if there was a simple way of getting people to do what we want life would have been a lot simpler."

Don't be so modest Sulis. Oh I know that you people agonize over how to pitch the latest product and spend sleepless nights worrying about successful marketing campaigns to keep your clients coming back. 

The reason marketing a specific brand is difficult is the plethora of highly sophisticated propaganda that every marketing campaign has to compete with. 

Sure, marketing is not a science as mentioned in the article, it's more of an art or more aptly voodoo. Actually nothing beats the original designation, Propaganda, in conveying the insidious, manipulative, malicious essence of the practice of marketing.

I love how it's portrayed as normal human behaviour like your example of a restaurant and word of mouth and then the leap of logic that equates word of mouth support for a small local business with an international marketing campaign for megacorp inc. 

It's the antithesis of free choice. If free choice was how people decide what to buy advertising would not be the unrivaled industry it is today.

Thanks too to whomever mentioned the "vote with your dollar" canard. That's so endemic on fanboy sites. So you decide to switch to HP not to buy Sony while they are selling how many tens of thousands every day? At the end of the year they say, "whoa, look at March 3rd. John didn't buy from us. Instead of 523,641,554 we only sold 523,641,553. This is not going to go over well with the investors"

Not only is that scenario ludicrous, just know there is a person who decided they were going to stop buying HP and opted for a Sony that very same day. How does your vote against stack up now? 

Am I a victim? Of course, like everyone else. I felt like a traitor buying that 1st Intel cpu for my computer. I still feel a little guilty and it's almost a year later.
I would have substituted Marketing with TV, it sounds better and it’s closer to reality. Also the parallelism between Marketing and the different political forms is not so bad. On the other side the average man has the freedom of choice, he/she has the power to use the remote control or his/her veto of blame. How many of us have done that? 
Everything is political capital, everybody is a potential customer/sucker, why not take advantage of it? Is not what companies and individual do? As topic it starts with salaries and other employee’s benefits, working conditions, growing programs and ends with the lousy mischief done at the corner of the streets. 
There are any expectations to have an ethical society? We have a long way to go in order to achieve that! Fortunately each system has sooner or later its end, I wonder what will be next?!
I'm not influenced by marketing - I just look at the benchmark results, the characteristics, and get the most powerful component for the best price my money can buy me.

Yes, I'm happy to have bought the Athlon Ghz model, but I'm also quite happy to have a Q6600 quad core now.

I'm looking forward to going to DDR3 next year. I'll do that with anything that can give me 100fps in Supreme Commander at 1920 x 1600 with full details.

Intel, or AMD ? Don't care. It'll be the one that gives me the best performance at the price I can afford.

I'm not a fanboy, I'm a power whore.

So sue me.
Great rant, with just one glaring fault - "Competition always appears".

Wrong. Intel has de facto control (via patents on the instruction set) over who can make x86 processors. The last (known) time that they granted someone the right to make x86 chips was over 10 years ago (to Centaur in 1995).

No matter how high the prices go on x86 chips, noone else can enter the market. If Intel's competition dies, it'll take a few years of Intel abusing it's monopoly position plus 10 years of lawyering for a new startup to get a license. The x86 processor market is really a classic example of a failed market.

As a side note, no-one has been granted an IA64 license. Whether this is down to lack of demand or refusal to supply is not clear ...
I mostly agree with this article; although, I think a lot of this fanboy loyalty stems more from the learned stance from youth that you support "your team" regardless of its quality. This unwavering loyalty applies to sports teams and even to entire countries. Just as terrible management can make a team suck, terrible leadership can make a country suck and it's surprising how many "country fanboys" get irrationally upset when you bring objective evidence to the table regarding internal problems that are guiding it to failure. (ie. USA under Bush leadership) So, this blind loyalty to propaganda is a general societal problem or human nature problem more so than a business marketing effect. Only the independently/objectively minded personalities can escape it's effect.

One thing I disagree with is the attack on the "underdog" issue. I agree that all "saint underdogs" are likely to become "sinner leaders" but competition is so vital to control monopoly abuse that the underdog needs to be given special support. I also don't agree that underdogs have an equal and fair opportunity to compete against "goliaths". For one thing business monopolies are not effectively controlled by government as you seem to think. Once established, these monopolies have multiple "tools" at their disposal to control competitors that effectively forces the competitor to fight on their knees. 

In addition, "fanboy" support also can stem from near complete approval and satisfaction of a companies products and/or direction. While missteps are inevitable, it's important for customers to highlight the positive actions of a company in hopes that this support will guide the entire industry in a beneficial direction. I have been a temporary "fanboy" of all these companies at one time or another when they have led their industry in a positive direction that attempts to bring more options and benefits to the consumer but I never allow myself to become blinded by infatuation or loyalty. As you said, research is the most prudent way to shop but once you have found the current "best", there's nothing wrong with spreading the word with vigor. Fanboy support can help level the playing field for small companies with a great idea but small marketing budget to battle the media bombardment of the big companies. Thus fanboyism isn't necessarily bad if there is a justified reason to be a fanboy.