We’re Not Selling To You, We’re Selling With You

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


“In the ’50s, choosing was easier,” says Mark Barden, a partner at San Francisco ad agency Black Rocket. “There were a few large brands per category and a few TV channels broadcasting simple, ‘washes whiter’ type claims.” Most beer advertising, for example, targeted a rational beer drinker, one who chose his beer based on how it tasted. Slogans such as Miller High Life’s “The Champagne of Beers” reflected this approach.

These days, the drinking game is more complicated. In response to the microbrew trend, Miller created the American Specialty & Craft Beer Co., but more recently, it has gone in the opposite direction: In 1997, it launched a campaign for Miller Genuine Draft that boldly asserts, “It’s Time for a Good Old Macrobrew.”

The ads even mock the claims of traditional “taste” ads: “It’s time for better beer breath,” reads one. Such nudge-nudge, wink-wink rapport can only happen when advertisers stop trying to woo consumers with rational claims. In the new science of marketing, says Barden, the goal is “not simple cause and effect.” Instead, he says, advertisers establish an emotional connection, encouraging consumers “to actively consume the message and create their own interpretation.” And as long as the interpretation ends with “and I think I’ll buy this,” companies can’t complain. Sales of Miller Genuine Draft have gone up more than 2 percent since the macrobrew campaign. As Miller might say: Here’s to you.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate