• by Jack Feuer , September 3, 2008

The kid was up in Santa Cruz looking for an apartment and trying to get over the train wreck that was his relationship with the skinny former girlfriend, who would make Norman Bates look sane. So there went my youth-market focus group for Labor Day.

With nothing better to write about for the column this week, the Feuer Media Lab embarked on an ambitious experiment--I would attempt to go the entire holiday weekend without noticing or buying a well-known brand name.

Saturday, I bought white zinfandel from a winery I'd never heard of and frequented a neighborhood Latino Mart instead of Vons, where I purchased Guatemalan food I couldn't pronounce. Sunday, I bought boxers and relaxed fit, no-brand jeans from Mervyn's (which technically doesn't count as a brand because it was a going-out-of-business sale). Monday, I watched bass fishing on Versa instead of college football on ESPN, and had a really good nap.

But late Monday afternoon, I drank the whole bottle of zinfandel in 30 minutes and staggered in a wine-fueled trance to Vons, where I impulse-bought $100 of brand-name products that would have cost $4.95 at the Latino Mart.

I really, really missed those big names. I needed them. And I was manic for more. So I threw the Vons goodies into the fridge and raced back onto the mean streets of Thousand Oaks, jonesing for a big, juicy Whopper. But I heard somewhere that they don't sell those anymore.

So I went to McDonald's instead.

At the Arches, I ripped into two Big Macs, super-sized fries, a large chocolate shake and something else I don't remember except it was fried. I'd have eaten the whole value menu, the value menu sign and the cute little blonde behind the counter if I could have gotten away with it.

I believe my experience is instructive and, since I'm only here to help, I'd like to belabor a point we haven't heard much about lately. Possibly, because it's cynical but true, probably because everyone is too busy gushing about the new platform-neutral-except-if-it's-analog-then-we-hate-it reorganization of their agency.

Here it is: Despite all the lean-forward, push-pull, consumer-control hooey, marketing still addicts people. Not informs. Not engages. Addicts.

This is comforting, don't you think? One of those verities I like to write about.

You can still make people do what you want them to do. Not with specificity, maybe. Not all the time, certainly. But you can still get people to buy crap they don't need, at prices they can't afford. And for no other reason than you've bludgeoned the brand name into their brains relentlessly enough that they have become consuming zombies who will do your bidding unwittingly and unerringly. The marketing version of full retards.

All you need is--wait for it--brand advertising! Yes, that's right. It still works. I proved it this weekend.

You're welcome. Now, excuse me, I have to get back to the Feuer Media Lab. For my next experiment, I'm going to try and make Advertising Week relevant.