Century of the Self claims that marketing in the naive old days prior to Bernays was like how the ad idealists picture it: if you want A, B, C, then our X can p

Century of the Self claims that marketing in the naive old days prior to Bernays was like how the ad idealists picture it: if you want A, B, C, then our X can provide that for you. But people like Bernays realized that it was better to manipulate people’s wants rather than to simply respond to what people wanted. One example being “freedom sticks”, i.e. marketing smoking to women as a form of emancipation. And arguably this form of marketing is necessary under consumer capitalism since you need people to use a lot of their income on consumption in order to keep the economy going. This form of marketing and advertisement has been around for over a century and there is no going back.