01 February 2017

Black Ops Advertising by Mara Einstein

I blogged this book already – without reading it.  Now I’ve read it.

Good one, recommended if you don’t mind getting sick to your stomach. Stay away if you’re prone to paranoia. As for me, it just got me all itchy and queasy.

So far, this might not seem to be a positive review. It is one. But like most of what’s on the web nowadays, how do you know if it’s fact, advertising, fiction, advertising, drivel, advertising, truth, advertising? Professor Einstein does what she can to sort it all out.

Image resultI’ve been following this cesspool for over a decade and writing about it here for just as long. The power of Black Ops Advertising: Native Ads, Content Marketing and the Covert World of the Digital Sell is the cumulative effect of all the advertising/marketing/public relations slop roiling in digital ether – contained in one book.

Two visceral takeaways:

Rolling on the floor laughing  What a wacky virtual world we live in!  Streams of prose, pictures, videos, all not what they seem.  Alice in Wonderland, by comparison, is rather prosaic.

Nyah-Nyah  And speaking of Looking Glasses and such, it never occurred to me that my computer screen and smartphone are really one-way mirrors. (Or are they called two-way mirrors? See? It’s all so confusing!) While I stare at my screen, literally hundreds, probably thousands of people are staring back at me, following me everywhere I go, watching and recording my every move. And here I thought I was merely reading Google News and checking my email.  It makes me want to scream at each of them with that tired retort, “GET A LIFE!”

imageReviewed in
The Guardian:

Black Ops Advertising by Mara Einstein review – stealth marketing is everywhere
by Steven Poole
…Profiling may be scandalous when the police do it, but it is all the rage online…