ADVERTISING AND MANIPULATION

The Weekend Guardian Magazine published an article by Cass Sunstein titled Why we need a right not to be manipulated, subtitled Advertisers are adept at using our cognitive biases against us. Here’s what to do about it. (theguardian.com/books/2025/jul/27/why-we-need-a-right-not-to-be-manipulated?CMP=share_btn_url)

Cass Sunstein is a professor at Harvard University, teaching behavioural economics. From the word go, the article amalgamates advertising with fine print and opaque small print on telephone operators' contracts. This is not advertising; it is marketing literature conceived by the client, not by the advertising agency.

Words like defrauded, deceived, violating, dark art of manipulation, theft, tricksters, exploit, ignorance, appealing to emotions, seductive pictures, insidious, and so forth, pepper this highly provocative article. Which is, in turn, highly manipulative and lying by omission.

Advertising is part of popular culture, along with pop music, TV/cinema, etc., a fact that is not readily admitted by some. It is an art form, think of filmmakers, illustrators, designers, part of our cultural landscape. Think Mad Men as a very successful series about the advertising industry.

So why would you think advertising and automatically associate it with people trying to sell you phones on dubious grounds? It is OK to discuss consumer protection as a subject on its own merit, but opening the article using advertising as a bait is highly hypocritical, ignorant, and, for the very least, caricatural.

Shame on that professor. I don’t want to give any credit to Trump when he criticises Harvard for wokery, but this is a very good example of what shouldn’t be taught with such sweeping statements and a misleading contribution to the debate, such as this.

Advertising is part of the economic and cultural landscape. It is a crucial part of the marketing mix. What do you want? Ban it altogether? Because that’s how it sounds. This article is so extreme that it is not credible, and I doubt that people would take it entirely at face value.

#advertising #misleadingadvertising #manipulation