If you are interested in a vivid portrayal of what is wrong with Madison Avenue, then NYU professor Douglas Rushkoff has a treat for you. In a recent Frontline documentary called "The Persuaders," he takes us behind the scenes to see some of the absurdities that Corporate America continues to embrace. 
We are told that marketers are trying to cut through the "vicious circle of clutter" and, seemingly, will do anything to accomplish this objective. The saddest case is a doomed new airline called Song, which is backed by Delta. The airline is targeted at women. But, apparently, that's not enough. Men must be publicly neutered in a hideous display of street theater marketing (see photo) to generate "buzz" and "excitement" around the Song brand. In brainstorming sessions and corporate off-sites, Song marketing managers look on helplessly as mystical branding gurus prey on their insecurities and vampirically suck their remaining cash.
Of course, some of the advertising industry's enemies are as estranged from good sense as the industry's clients. Naomi Klein, author of No Logo, describes advertisers as "roaches" in the kitchen of modern life. And then she lectures us on how we all have been programmed to go shopping just to get our emotional needs met. Meanwhile, culture critic Mark Crispin Miller offers some pious and tired complaints about the convergence of marketing and entertainment: "You'll hear [this] from novelists, filmmakers, reporters -- this is not just me. There's a kind of cultural crisis going on now..." Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Then, the camera cuts back to branding gurus as they inform us "cult brands" are replacing schools and churches with "ready-made identity." Great brands, they tell us, provide community, narrative, transcendence. They build "loyalty beyond reason." Tide detergent is a "liberator at the heart of the family." Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
John Hayes, chief marketing officer for American Express, starts off on a credible foundation: "Where else in the world can you be expected to pay more for a commodity (advertising) that is experiencing diminishing returns?" Then he goes on to ruin it by acting like those lame AmEx "webisodes" with Jerry Seinfeld were some important marketing breakthrough. As Hayes puts it (without a hint of Seinfeldian irony or humor), "We're talking about a new medium here." Please.
Some might be tempted to also dismiss Clotaire Rapaille, the French marketing guru who makes his research subjects sit in the dark on pillows while he seeks "unconcious codes" and "reptilian hot buttons." But somehow his stuff started to make sense to me as I listened close. It also makes sense, apparently, to his exclusive Fortune 100 clientele. 
I warmed up to Rapaille when I watched the narrator, Rushkoff, try to persuade him that his work on behalf of the Hummer brand was somehow politically and environmentally incorrect -- that the product should be scorned and resisted by all right thinking people. Rapaille would have none of it. He's a marketer, not a moralist, after all. The unconcious code for the Hummer is "power" and "dominance." That's what the irrational, emotional, reptilian brain is thinking, he explains patiently to his wilting critic. That's what it wants. And, as Rapaille tells us with a knowing smile, "the reptilian always wins."
