Advertising Billboards in New York. (AP)
The power of marketing — of branding a product or company — is no mystery whatsoever to Americans. We are decades now into the era of ads and jingles, ad men and “Mad Men,” as the season’s cable TV hit has it.
But journalist Lucas Conley says our long dance with marketing and branding has moved into a new stage. A stage where consumers no longer know where reality ends and marketing begins.
Where companies are building amazing brands, instead of amazing products. It’s a crazy world, he says.
This hour, On Point: Lucas Conley and “Obsessive Branding Disorder.”
Lucas Conley, contributing writer to Fast Company and author of the new book “OBD: Obsessive Branding Disorder: The Illusion of Business and the Business of Illusion.”
Adam Hanft, founder and CEO of Hanft Unlimited, a marketing and advertising firm whose clients include AT&T Wireless, Viacom, AOL Time Warner and Hertz. He writes a monthly column for Inc. Magazine and is a frequent commentator on American Public Media’s “Marketplace.”
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Tags: brands, marketing, shopping
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