Wired: Stop Trying to Persuade Us
A doom-filled PBS documentary about marketing and our over-commercialized society begins to bring up an interesting point that has less to say perhaps about marketing and more about media consumption. The 90-minute piece naively looks at market segmenting and draws a largely unsupported conclusion that people are finding themselves further separated - perhaps even alienated - because marketers are targeting audiences by narrower groups. A point that may have more validity is the fact that media outlets are gearing content - for instance news - based on what they perceive narrower groups wish to hear. This makes political discourse less of a give-and-take debate and more of a pep rally affair.
