Market Magic and New Media

In reading Clark’s work on marketing last week, I couldn’t help but wonder what role new media contributes to the pessimism and disenchantment Clark discusses about markets. Clark states, after noting strategies to improve markets, that “such strategies may not overcome widespread disenchantment and the sentiments of popular dismay, outrage and skepticism that have flowed into the spaces vacated by magical thinking (or perhaps that were already there but suppressed by the discursive weight of market populism).”

During a journalism-based monetization class this past week, the guest speaker, Sasha Strauss from branding company, Innovation Protocol, informed us that the old model of branding was built for a world before new media. He asserts that thanks to new media, the big leaders in the markets could no longer hide their secrets.  Like the printing press changed religion, now new media is changing everything for all institutions. The doors were blown wide open, and once trusted brands became public enemies, a mistrust brands are still trying to win back since this shift in new media, and the negative views of the market around 2008.

Strauss says brands should appeal to consumers by developing trust and creating an emotional bond. Because consumers now have “equal” access to the tools of production, consumers are much savvier about what they see and what they invest in. Distrust is still very high. The last slide of Strauss’ Power Point presentation included a graphic that demonstrated how all institutions in the new branding landscape are now equal—corporations/brands, educational institutions, government, religious institutions, non-profits and consumers. This is painted with a lot of optimism, the “market magic” Clark cites and neoliberalism (and convergence culture), which is really what Strauss hinted at.

While Strauss was very convincing, as a branding expert, he was clearly operating within a neoliberal paradigm, that the new media allows each individual to create their own brand that can compete with any other brand out there. New technologies and the increasing affordability and ease of producing allow stories to be told that weren’t possible before. Suddenly, each individual can build their own brand that will grant them parity with every other brand out there, whether this is a big corporation or another individual. 

This being said, as the readings mention, neoliberalism and the idea of a free market, which sounds great but does not overturn the existing system or power structure in practice. Because of this, I don’t know that the public disenchantment Clark notes around 2008/2009 has disappeared, nor should it. If anything, new media has given more of the public the tools to express their outrage to fill the "spaces vacated by magical thinking."