The Perils of Low-Grade Marketing (Mark Joyner)

A com­pelling quote from the excel­lent mar­ket­ing book The Irre­sistible Offer, by Mark Joyner:

Over time, mar­keters have dis­cov­ered that the eas­i­est way to sell some­thing is to appeal to our basest needs and
to exploit the weak­nesses inher­ent in our psy­chol­ogy. For exam­ple, rather than walk our prospects through a log­i­cal
buy­ing deci­sion and help them to pur­chase some­thing that will gen­uinely help them, we con them into think­ing that
our Wid­gets will give them hap­pi­ness and unlim­ited access to attrac­tive mem­bers of the oppo­site sex. This is but one
of the many tricks up the marketer’s sleeve employed in con­ning the aver­age con­sumer into mak­ing illog­i­cal buy­ing decisions.

The aver­age Amer­i­can goes deep into debt buy­ing silly (and some­times down­right harm­ful) things that he sim­ply does not need. This process has not just pushed the aver­age con­sumer into debt; it has low­ered his val­ues as well.