La guerre des marques

Mass persuasion and social engineering

Marketing is the war of brands. [...] Of course it is a hostile work environment. We are waging war. We are trying to be the dominant brand in the wireless category. War tactics are manifested on the battlefield of media and on the battlefield called office or corporateland.

These war tactics are akin to moves in poker. In poker, one seeks to exploit positional advantages. Information is powerful, so, you have an advantage over the players to your immediate right, because you always play after them. You play after you know what they have done and before they know what you will do. While the cards will decide who wins, you always act with more knowledge than the players to your right. However, the players to your immediate left have an advantage over you. It is like an M.C. Escher painting where the steps go in a circle and every step to the left is up.

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Both marketing and poker are games of money that are won by exploiting weaker players. Most weak poker players bluff too much. Most weak marketers over-promise on their products. Bluffing garners a lack of respect. In essence, bluffing is utilizing resources for a short-term gain. While this is a viable part of business, if utilized too often, bluffing is a form of unduly exposing yourself to liability. When somebody calls your bluff, you suffer financially. In the poker game of life, you may suffer financially, emotionally, physically or any combination of those.

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Cheating is being an outlaw, or a pirate. It is taking money in a way that the casino won’t support your entitlement. But you aren’t a criminal unless you are successfully prosecuted. But the concept of cheating versus not cheating is a legal distinction. These divisions are synthetic. They don’t occur in Nature. We get trapped in our own systems, mistaking our systems for Reality. Anybody who tries to undermine the power of the system is quickly labeled a criminal. Their biggest crime is not respecting the power of the system, they point out the systems logical inconsistencies.

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Anybody who doesn’t have an inkling as to how the United States of America honored their agreements with the native people who lived here prior to our arrival should stop whatever their doing and get an education. I guarantee you these people have never heard Columbus Day called Homeland Invasion Day. Its even doubtful they’ve heard of the Fourth of July referred to as Good Riddance Day by Brits, but that’s less germane—but it makes the point that history is produced by the victors. Anyone who sees the logic of defensively attacking another country because they may eventually attack us, probably wouldn’t make a good drinking buddy for me.

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For obvious reasons, criminologists and psychologists and sociologists only study failed criminals–that is, those persons whose criminal acts led to their conviction and to punishment. If there’s a group of people out there who commit crimes and are not caught, and live happily ever after, then criminology is not a study of criminals, but of incompetents, bumblers, and ****ups and should instead be called ****upology.

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The media perpetuates ethnic distinctions because they have a vested interest in producing discrete messages. That’s how they make money, by consumers demanding their own messages. But, it’s not just a division of ethnicity, it can be age or any psychographic. Adolescence is a marketing tool, teaching kids they have special needs, which means they buy special products.