Communication, Persuasion and Control: How the instant society is shaping what we think
We know the world does not revolve around us, but for consumers in the instant society of the 21st Century, it very much looks like it does. Throughout the course of a normal day, we are bombarded with around 3,000 messages. Each one is an attempt to make an emotional connection in order to sell something a product, service, policy or even an idea.
Steve McKevitt is an expert in communication. He has spent over 20 years working for some of the world's biggest brands: from Nike to Coca-Cola. He reveals the techniques that are employed to mould public opinion, shape how we behave and control what we think. We learn what is really going on when we chose between a Pepsi or a Coke; how even the most boring product can become the most exciting brand; and ultimately discover why it is that, in a world of allegedly endless choice, most of us are living out virtually identical lives.
At times hilarious and shocking, Everything Now reveals how the constant drive to provide us with products we don't actually need demands that we are kept in a permanent state of dissatisfaction and is preventing us from addressing the biggest issues of our time.
The author has especially telling insights into how advertising and marketing attempts to sway us from one product towards another, near identical one. Read this before you shell out for a new, ever-so slightly shinier mobile phone or pay a premium for anything that goes out of its way to convince you how 'ethical' it is.
Explains why we are better fed, educated entertained and longer-lived than ever before, but not happier.
Steve McKevitt explains why having everything we want has fed our appetite for destruction.
If stuff made us happy, we'd be the happiest people in history. Everything Now explains why we're not.
McKevitt's brilliant and persuasive book highlights the gaping void in Western society, ironically created by its own success. All our needs are now met, leaving us to focus on our ever-changing, and ultimately unsatisfying, wants.
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