Advertising shifted from selling product qualities to selling user identity

Evidence

“We made a decision,” he later recalled, “to stop talking about the product, and start talking about the user.” He thus conceived of marketing Pepsi without reference to its inherent qualities, focusing instead on an image of the people who bought it, or who should be buying it. They were the people of the moment: the young, the rebellious, those who (to borrow a later slogan) “think different.” They would be known, in Pottasch’s new formula, as “the Pepsi Generation.” — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 550

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is a clear articulation of the identity-based marketing turn that defines much of the attention economy that followed.
• XREF: Directly anticipates platform-era ‘brand communities’ and the shift from product to user in social media marketing. — connects to: Platform profits come from harvesting user attention and selling it back to advertisers — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 43; Advertising budgets, not product merit, determine what consumers buy — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 175; Google’s data shifted from improving services to generating ad revenue — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 52 (+12 more)

Broader Connections

• Advertising shifted from promising cures to selling consumers a better version of themselves #corroborates (0.95) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 213
• Advertising converted attention into revenue by selling consumers a receding ideal #contradicts (0.72) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 225