Brand loyalty and the eternity of buyers remorse

In the article Millennial Ideologues we examine the increasing trend of overt professional narrative enforcement in the public consciousness. During the build up to the Covid-19 situation, there were opinions voiced in the media with the general theme of;

Do we need a reality Czar?

There really is no way to answer such a question without using a variety of expletives and epithets, most of which pertain to the mental inadequacy of anyone stupid enough to ask it. Nonetheless the great British news outlets gave over sufficient columns and airtime to leave an indelible mark on the exopolitical blotting paper. In fairness, this was at the same time that such campaigns as "Beware of giant killer hogweed" were being dragged out again and foisted on the British public as something to augment their already palpable fear levels.

To sum up the causality of this crushing blow to credibility itself, so much utter disinformation has been infused into the reality of the average consumer that they don't know what to believe any more. The endless opinions masquerading within scientism and trope culture have confused the population to the point that they would rather not think about anything more complex than that which occupies their daily lives. This is a problem, not for governments and control groups but for the long term goals of humanity itself. The aforementioned organisations absolutely do not have a problem with the population immersing themselves in the minutia of their daily existence. In fact they far prefer a group think, herd mentality mindset which proscribes questioning the status quo.

"The last thing anybody needs is the human race waking up and realising who they really are."

_{Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzeziński}

Without the ability to use critical thinking and improvisation, the human condition is subject to greater influence from external sources. In other words, if you allow yourself to be easily lead, you most certainly will be and it probably won't be along the best possible path in terms of value for you. There are no ends of control mechanisms employed (by more groups than could be counted) to shape public behaviour in ways which are profitable. While this is generally perceived to be something that occurs at a macro level, it is regularly manifested in granular social settings.

Dave sits at a restaurant table near Bill. As it turns out Dave has enjoyed the wine a bit too much and voices his opinions on immigration too loudly. These opinions jar with those held by Bill and he feels that this overly verbose diner represents a threat to the stability of his chosen belief structure. This is a natural reaction that is repeated in many settings across the planet on an ongoing basis. How Bill chooses to deal with this threat is where certain forces perceive there to be profit. Not necessarily in terms of immediate revenue generation, but in terms of shaping the opinions of certain demographics. It would not be unusual for both Theresa and Belinda sitting nearby to do a quick search on their mobile devices. Theresa may search for information related to "hate crime" and Belinda may do a search for "alcohol problems". As a result the control measures employed to seed the contemporary consciousness with polarised social views have scored a massive victory. The fact that either Theresa or Belinda relate this bombastic gastronomes behaviour to social issues is no accident. Everyone has been programmed to react to certain stimuli in general or sometimes, quite specific ways. Following this example through to it's technological conclusion there are further areas of concern as a result of contemporary surveillance policy.

Everybody in the restaurant has their mobile phone switched on and many are within direct range of Dave and his misanthropic monologue. As a result, all audio captured by every single mobile microphone within range becomes an active resource which can be monetized. This suddenly represents something far more sinister. What was initially a bit of a raised eyebrow and dismissive huffing and puffing, now becomes a vastly complex and elaborate series of network communications. The plausible threat of right wing extremism becomes a label on a digital file held by private companies who are not accountable in terms of duty of care. The End User License Agreement of everyone's mobile operating system means that there are algorithms simply waiting to pick up salacious commentary for the purposes of potential profit. By the time everyone has left the restaurant, several dozen customers handsets have provided justification for entirely commercial organisations to engage with even greater surveillance methods. Both Dave and Belinda will have data attributed to their profiles which can be construed in negative ways. Anyone logged into their browser and doing a search for 'alcohol problems' is going to experience this, so Belinda really should have known better and only has herself to blame. Dave will in all probability find certain campaigns being promoted to him on social media. These will be intended to lead him into more extreme or 'radicalised' social groups. If Dave engages with this guidance, yet more loading of his clandestine digital footprint occurs until he's worthy of referring to some form of governmental authority. The entire process is by no means isolated. This exact type of manipulated information jamboree occurs with literally millions of people every hour of the day and night, all over the world. The fact that Dave, Bill, Theresa and Belinda are completely unaware of this does not make it illegal and certainly doesn't prevent it happening.

But remember the surveillance state is ok because you've got nothing to hide .. right?

A demonstrable ability to control how people think proves that those engineering it can control how these people will behave. Being in control of large sections of predictable public behaviour is actually worth quite a lot of money. The endless statistical analysis of consumer behaviour patterns has become a very sophisticated science. Entire programming languages have been created to facilitate the querying of vast purchasing pattern based data sets. Custom algorithmic software is created to mine high value data patterns from the buying habits of millions of people. The information recovered then dictates much of the succeeding promotions and pricing decisions. This overwhelming deluge of behavioural science based social control is primarily built on the technology powering 'big data'. This technology has been manifested in the popular consciousness over the past half a century. However, the movements of the people have been monitored and controlled for much, much longer. In times past, the popular consciousness did not include cloud based KYC databases, nor did it include Tap to Pay or NFT's. Instead, various guilds of tradesmen met on a semi regular basis and conducted various anti trust operations to manipulate prices and monopolise markets. Unsurprisingly, these guilds did not become extinct and continue to subject the worlds resources to their own particularly unique pricing structures. Due to the fanatical adherence to free market concepts, spreading disinformation about your competitors product is considered perfectly fair game. Going even further than this and shaping the way that entire sections of society think and feel about products and services is now a multi million dollar industry.

During various cultural shifts in social programming the concept of no frills, utilitarian produce is expressed by the commercial world. Packaging becomes less complex and advertising budgets reflect the austerity of the packaging. Consumers are periodically invited to disregard the aesthetic methods used to incentivize them in their purchasing patterns. Often the minor differences in product are overlooked and shoppers become 'Own Brand' converts. Many are not converted permanently due to certain control measures, many of which they are not consciously aware of. A certain stigma surrounds 'Own Brand' products which rarely have anything to do with their comparative quality. This even extends to the exact same products packaged in less luxurious formats. The in-house brands associated with supermarket retailers acquire their products from a multitude of household name manufacturers. The supermarket boxes of a dozen 100g teacakes are made to the exact same recipe as the manufacturers use for one of their other brands. Because the other brand includes eight 150g teacakes and each one is wrapped in coloured tinfoil, certain sections of the community will always purchase the other brand over the supermarket version. There's absolutely no qualitative difference between the products, but something about the supermarkets own brand deters certain consumers.

The social stigma of value based versus brand identity consumerism sits in the arena of market analysis. In there with it are behavioural patterns exploited in the promotion of 'Low ethical footprint' products. A section of the consumer base is delivered a stigmatised deterrent to purchasing products that will make them appear poor or low rent. Their brand loyalty ensures sustainable profit for those brands invested in major advertising. Meanwhile the ethical compulsion of giving workers a reasonable price for their labour cashes in on the virtue signalling egos of another, distinct section of the consumer base. While the majority of the consumers don't really care too much about it, they have been manipulated into consistently spending their money in a particular way. The organisations responsible for directing these substantial vectors of ongoing purchasing power become an indispensable service to any manufacturer or retailer active in the market.

In the late 1980's a major experiment in purchasing habits was carried out on the British public. For many generations Salt and Vingear crisps had been packaged in blue bags. Cheese and Onion were packaged in green and Prawn Cocktail in pink. Not withstanding the fall from grace of everything Prawn Cocktail circa 1999, we still see the two major flavours marketed according to this packaging colour mandate.

Then for no apparent reason, one of the biggest manufacturers (Walkers) suddenly swapped the packaging colours. This coincided with crisp displays becoming more prominent in shops and petrol stations. Several other manufacturers followed suit and several did not. For many years, people repeatedly made errors while purchasing bags of crisps. It became known as somewhat of a meme.

Imagine if you will, the shock to the system experienced when drinking an unexpected drink or eating something of a distinctly different flavour than you expected. The brain has already preformed an idea of what the drink or foodstuff is going to taste like. The taste buds have been stimulated and the subconscious is anticipating the experience it is accustomed to. As a result of repetition, the course of events is known and trusted. Any risk evaluation was concluded thousands of experiences earlier and as such it is perceived to be risk free. Then you taste the wrong flavour of crisp and all hell breaks loose with your senses. With Salt and Vinegar already representing a known risk in terms of having a strong and acidic taste, the mind has already prepared responses to prevent any gag reflex or eye watering coughing fits. The exact opposite is true of Cheese and Onion. Being a more savory and less acidic flavour, the mind has prepared the neurological system accordingly. This plays into the ego and the recent wrong choice of foodstuff creates a feeling that there has been a con involved somewhere. The instinctive human reaction to this experience is basically one of being deliberately poisoned. It's really quite a profound reaction. This is what was happening to literally millions of people all over the country.

Obviously a somewhat negative experience based on an incorrect choice in the flavour of a bag of crisps isn't going to make many people give up eating crisps entirely. However the extensive confusion caused by a seemingly irrelevant packaging turnaround certainly caused some purchasing pattern upheavals. The initial marketing feedback would definitely indicate that the public wanted the colours back the way they had always been. Many manufacturers complied. Yet at Walkers HQ, this decision was never made. Instead the fried potato snack manufacturer doggedly stuck to their new world crisp order, as they still do today. Over quarter of a century has passed and there is still a negative association made by people beyond a certain age when it comes to trying to choose a packet of crisps. What seems disproportionate, is the fact that Walkers insist that they never made any swap and that the colours have always been as they are today. It's simply not true and literally millions of people have been confused and left feeling that they can't trust their own memories. What would otherwise be interpreted as a concerted effort to promote a mind control assault method, latterly known as 'the Mandela effect'.

In any event, what can be counted on is that this was a very deliberate move which flew in the face of reason and probably cost Walkers quite a lot of money. They did it anyway and continued to stick to it, which means that whatever their reasons were, they took them very seriously. There must have been some form of value in this move for shareholders of Walkers or their parent company Pepsi Co. In fact, the lack of financial incentive and the logical downturn in consumer confidence indicates that the true motive probably had a lot more to do with proving an ability to manipulate the public than it did any marketing imperative. This brings us back to the point that if a group can prove that they can control large sections of the public then they have proven that they are qualified (and thus permitted) to manipulate a large section of the public. The reasoning is circular but that's exactly the type of thinking displayed by groups who have cornered a market and wish to use said market for purposes beyond making profit. The control becomes the motive and the profit is secondary, if it's even considered at all.

It starts with a bag of crisps and before you know it, your destiny is being hijacked by a shady qabal of fried potato snack mandarins.

Much of this exceedingly mercenary philosophy has bled out into the industry of public relations and image consultation. Perhaps the most obvious is that of the professional politician. We now live in an age when the average campaign for the presidency of the USA costs hundreds of millions of dollars. The role pays less than half a million dollars per annum. The candidates are not in a position to pay for these campaigns themselves and are consequently reliant on external donors. As a direct result these donors will expect favourable decisions made in terms of policy during the selection of government contractors. This model extends across much of what humanity calls politics, from POTUS to Swiss Burghers.

Beyond being pushed and pulled to choose between political figureheads, the population are constantly being directed into opinion based choices by the media. The last thing any news outlet is going to do is blatantly tell it like it is. Monitoring regional news outlets often reveals the true nature of the population. Suddenly the journalistic commandment of 'if it bleeds it leads', becomes massively deprioritised. Were any outlet to list all the grotesque examples of the inhumanity of the national population over the past twenty four hours, readers would just want to kill themselves. They wouldn't browse the holiday section, the real estate section, the agony aunt column or even the suduko special on the back page. They'd probably throw the paper in the bin or emphatically close their browser window in disgust. This raises the question of why exactly they would behave in such a way. The reality of mans inhumanity to man is hardly a secret. People are quite aware of the full extent of our ability to wreak havoc with the lives of others. However they just don't want to look at it. Even if the news is free, they don't want to contaminate their fragile equilibrium by acknowledging that they inhabit a town, country, continent or planet where such barbarism occurs daily. It's all just terribly overwhelming and most importantly, really quite ugly.

As a result of this rose tinted and selective blindness becoming the norm, anyone who steps outside of this cognitive dissonance is considered to have been radicalised in some way. The plain truth is that people who have broken free of these social blinkers do not represent any threat to anyone other than those who manufacture blinkers. Controlling millions of individuals through their opinions and belief structures is the remit of many interest groups. From the numerous iterations of the church to the International Society of Beverage Technologists. Those with direct financial interests in the way people behave have always sought to influence said behaviour. Anyone questioning the elaborate layers of narrative and opinion formation must surely be some kind of outsider or provocateur of some kind. Therefore they must be identified and monitored and within this mantle of perceived need, accountability is considered to be of secondary importance, if even considered.

Extensive investment has been made recently in the surveillance and espionage industry. Technology previously limited to accountable sections of the government and police is now being used by private firms seeking to guide the opinions of consumers. While this may not leap off the page as justification for a meltdown outside City Hall, it still represents an issue with the concept of the free market. The freedom to compete in markets has now been interpreted as the freedom to manipulate markets using covert methods.

For several decades, there has been an opinion among researchers that metal detectors are in fact capable of reading the Mylar strip contained within the leaves of the bank note. This means that visible or covert metal detectors are counting the value of all paper currency held by those going through them. So entrenched is this belief that claims have been made of retailers having such technology built into the infrastructure of their premises. As you travel through the entrance of the generic retail store, the thinking is that depending on how much cash you have on you, store assistants will adjust the way they deal with your transaction with a view to up-selling additional products. What else may be happening with the data is a matter of much speculation. Arguably this represents a blatant disregard for the civil liberties of the population. Conventionally such invasive methods would be covered under an implied acceptance of the Terms & Conditions maintained by the retailer premises. However in the case of the cash detectors, no reasonable notice or opt in procedure exists. The store management and PR advisors certainly do not broadcast the fact that the store will count your money on the way in. Neither will the airport security operators inform you that your money may be counted before you board your flight. There's nobody giving out fliers with this information clearly displayed on it and hardly anyone even knows about it. It seems to be either a totally whacko, tinfoil hat, load of paranoid fantasy or alternatively - a heinous indicator of totalitarianism. Being often indistinguishable from each other the former can be dismissed as mere frippery, but the latter clearly means that the secrets of commercial organisations are considered to be of greater importance than the privacy rights of the individual or consumer. In fact given that we know corporations certainly do have more rights than the individual, it's probably a totally legitimate and unacknowledged trade secret.

With the growth of big data and information sharing between commercial and public sectors, the amount of money that someone has on their person could be of definite value to one of the affiliated partners. If an individual has their cash counted several times and their database profile is updated accordingly they will be considered to be of a higher net value. Should this individual fill in a form which queries their income, this hidden information regarding their higher net value may well be cross referenced at some point. Should there be a discrepancy between the stated income and the amount of cash they have been recorded as carrying around, this discrepancy can contribute to a suspicion of fraud or some other form of financial impropriety. The suspicion of fraud is sufficient grounds for any qualified party to request a full financial records history from your bank, building society, mortgage provider and even your employers accountants. The requirement is generally issued with a stringent reminder that the details of the request are to remain confidential. In other words, we don't want the individual to know that we're scrutinising them. The simple truth is that very, very few of these requests have anything to do with national security or the prevention of crime. The organisations holding the data are generally under zero legal compulsion to hand over the data, but they do anyway. This eager capitulation is not as a result of fear, but more a confirmed belief in the use of big data to push the little man around. That and the increasingly prevalent attitude of Go along to get along.