We have all endured them — jingle-ridden radio commercials, intrusive television ads, billboards, logos, product placements in movies. We are exposed to hundreds of commercial messages each day. Estimations range from 247 (Consumer Reports ) to 3,000 (Union of Concerned Scientists ). By the most common estimate of 600 per day, we are exposed to more than 200,000 messages per year.

Behind each campaign, each piece of copy, and each painstaking photo, is a mad marketer who consumes research about why we buy. They read white papers exposing how tweens influence the purchases of their parents. They use color to influence behaviors. They create new car smells in a laboratory so that they can make sure that car triggers the right feelings of newness, or pipe aromas into the lobbies of bakeries to increase our hunger and our impulses to buy more than we should.Read More »