Does fine print drive you crazy? Like me, do you find yourself wading through 63-page credit card agreements — trying to understand the legalese but often failing? Don’t you wish there were a site that highlighted the lunacy of this stuff? Well, there is.
Mouse Print is a blog devoted to “exposing the strings and catches buried in the fine print” of all sorts of offers and agreements. Here’s what Edgar Dworsky says about his site:

“Mouse print” is the fine print in advertising, in a contract, or on a product label, often buried out of easy sight. In the worst cases, the mouse print changes the meaning of, or contradicts the primary claims or promises being made. Sometimes, the catch is not even disclosed. In other cases, the fine print is merely an unexpected surprise for the reader. Fine print is not inherently illegal. But, advertisers are not safe from false advertising claims merely because an [...]

I get frustrated when I meet people who don’t think advertising affects them. Advertising does affect you. And, in fact, I’d argue those who believe they are immune are probably most likely to be influenced.
How powerful are advertising and marketing? In 2007, I shared an excerpt from Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink in which the author describes how product packaging affects our perceptions.
In front of us was the beverage section. Rhea leaned over and picked up a can of 7-Up. “We tested Seven-Up. We had several versions, and what we found is that if you add fifteen percent more yellow to the green on the package — if you take this green and add more yellow — what people report is that the taste experience has a lot more lime or lemon flavor.”
In other words, a product’s taste isn’t just affected by the ingredients; it’s affected by the packaging too! Advertising and marketing influence us in [...]

This is a guest post from Lynn Brem, who writes one of my favorite sites, Take Back Your Brain! TBYB! is all about advertising to yourself, about using marketing tools to help meet your goals.
Persuasive messages are all around us. In fact, Adbusters estimates that we’re exposed to as many as 5000 marketing messages every day. They’re embedded in news, entertainment, information, transportation — even in our food and clothing. Several properties are shared by the messages in this advertising tsunami:

All of them are about someone else’s agenda.
Someone put a lot of thought into how they will influence you
You’re exposed to the same messages many, many times.
Most of them include pictures.

Personal marketing is based on a simple idea: We can borrow the techniques that commercial marketers use to shape our behavior, and use them to influence ourselves instead. Personal marketing combines the classic strategies and tactics of commercial marketing with the power that personal technology [...]

An Allegory
There was once a man who became a vegetarian. Because he believed that all living creatures have souls, he swore he would never again consume animal flesh. For three years, he ate only vegetable matter. People offered him money to eat meat, but he steadfastly refused.
“Will you try a turkey sandwich for $2?” a woman asked one day. “No,” he said.
“Will you try this hot dog for $20?” a little boy once asked at the county fair. “No,” he said.
“Will you try a piece of steak for $200?” asked his mother-in-law at her 70th birthday party. “No,” he said.
“Will you try a piece of ham for $2,000?” asked his wife on Christmas Day. The man considered it for a moment, but then he shouted, “No. I am a vegetarian. I will not eat meat!”
One day a crafty gentleman appeared to him. “Will you try a piece of bacon?” the [...]

In my favorite section of David Mitchell’s brilliant Cloud Atlas, Sonmi-451 is a clone who works in a fast-food restaurant in near-future Korea, a society ruled by corporcracy (a government of corporations).
In this seemingly utopian world, citizens are consumers, and their purpose in life is to spend. Commonplace items are known by their brand-names: a theater is a disneyarium, a video display is a sony, a vehicle is a ford. Television is not TV, but AdV. The word “democratic” is a pejorative.
Though there are many layers to the story of Sonmi-451, it is, at its heart, an indictment of consumer culture, and the modern society we’ve built around the “religion” of consumption.
Last week at My Money Blog, Jonathan shared a short film called The Good Consumer, which reminded me Cloud Atlas:

You are an individual, but you are also a member of a global community. Most important of all, you are a consumer. As a [...]

This weekend will be important for U.S. retailers. They’ll be counting their pennies carefully. With retail sales already down sharply from 2007, merchants are eager for a strong start to the holiday shopping season.
The day after Thanksgiving — now dubbed “Black Friday” — has become something of a ritualized cultural experience, and one of the biggest shopping days of the year. Many people view the day as a chance to grab stellar deals on Christmas gifts.
But will people be spending this year? With the economy wobbling like a top, will the American consumer come through to prop up flagging retail sales?
The merchants hope so, as do many economists, but a new study from the American Research Group shows that the amount Americans plan to spend on Christmas gifts this year is half what they planned to spend last year, and the lowest number in at least a decade.
Planned spending on Christmas gifts(via the American [...]