The key ideas

Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy

Martin Lindstrom, 2011

A branding expert decided to go a year without buying a single new brand and cracked after six months over a T-shirt in Cyprus. Martin Lindstrom has worked for big companies for twenty years and reveals their tricks from the inside: fear, games, nostalgia, data collection and advice from the neighbors. You’ll learn to notice when you’re being steered and to choose more calmly.

Who it is for

For anyone who buys more than they plan to, and for those who sell and want to understand where persuasion ends and manipulation begins.

The purpose of this book is not to get you to stop buying: I’ve proved that is frankly impossible.

Six months without brands and a T-shirt from Cyprus

Martin Lindstrom has spent twenty years helping big companies build brands. One day he decided to test whether he himself could resist: a whole year without buying a single new brand. He shaved in the shower without foam, asked for “any kind of soda” on planes and left bookstores empty-handed.

He held out for six months. In Cyprus an airline lost his suitcase, and that evening he had an important keynote to give. Half an hour after checking into the hotel, he was standing at a register with a white tourist T-shirt declaring love for Cyprus. After that, the dam broke: furniture at a sale in Milan, a jacket in New York, minibar chocolates by the boxful. Then he realized his mind had been washed by brands. In English it’s a single word: brandwashed.

Lindstrom conceived his book as a sequel to journalist Vance Packard’s classic 1957 work on the hidden tricks of advertising. He reveals what he saw from the inside, in meeting rooms. The goal, in his words, is not to get you to stop buying but to help you choose with your eyes open.

Fear sells better than dreams

In 2009 the world feared swine flu, and sales of Purell gel rose by 50 percent. Lindstrom points out: the gel doesn’t protect against a virus spread through the air in droplets. It protects against something else: the feeling that you have no control.

According to a study from the University of Bath in Britain that the author cites, what pushes people to buy is not so much a promise of success as the image of a “feared self”: who you’ll become if you don’t buy. Hence the Brink's alarm ads with a woman alone and footsteps outside the door. According to the author, alarm sales rose by 10 percent in a year, even though crime fell that year.

Fear also works more quietly. In Lindstrom’s experiment, a shopper named Kelly would take a shampoo off the shelf, put it back and reach for an identical one from the second row. Each time, the scanner showed strong activity in her amygdala, the area of the brain linked to fear. Freshness is often sold to us as an illusion: a paper strip on the lid of a jam jar says “fresh”, even though the jar sits on the shelf for months.

When an ad shows you the worst version of yourself, ask yourself what fear is being sold to you right now.

Read in Livria

About the author

Martin Lindstrom, a Danish branding consultant, has worked with Coca-Cola, Pepsi, McDonald’s and other big companies. In 2009 Time magazine named him one of the world’s hundred most influential people.

All books by this author: Martin Lindstrom

Terms from the book

  • Amygdala
  • Kelly
  • Mitchell
  • Walmart
  • Pop-Tarts
  • Brandwashed: A pun in the book’s title: brand and brainwashed. The author’s word for a person whose mind has been washed by brands.
  • Packard: Vance Packard, an American journalist. In 1957 he published The Hidden Persuaders, a book about the hidden psychological tricks of advertising.
  • Purell: An American brand of antiseptic hand gel, the best-selling one in its category.
  • Brink's: An American home security alarm company, later renamed Broadview Security.
  • Philip Morris: An American tobacco company, the maker of Marlboro cigarettes.
  • Red Bull: An Austrian brand of energy drinks.
  • Gilt: An American members-only sale site for fashion brands, where discounts last for a short time.
  • Club Penguin: A children’s online game: players appear as penguins, chat and buy items with virtual coins.
  • Rosy retrospection: The tendency to remember the past as more pleasant than it actually felt at the time.
  • Whole Foods: An American chain of supermarkets selling natural and organic food.
  • Ghirardelli: An American chocolate brand from San Francisco.
  • Loyalty card: A store card that gives discounts and bonuses and at the same time records all of its owner’s purchases.
  • Nicorette: A brand of nicotine gum and other nicotine products for people quitting smoking.
  • Canadian Tire: A Canadian chain of stores selling auto parts, tools and household goods, with its own credit card.
  • Gamestation: A British chain of video game stores with an online shop.
  • Morgenson: A family from California that played the lead role in Lindstrom’s experiment: Eric, Gina and their three sons.
  • Laguna Beach: A small and very expensive resort town on the coast of Southern California.
  • DSW: Designer Shoe Warehouse, an American chain of large shoe stores.

All terms

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