Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy. by Martin Lindstrm

Marketing visionary Martin Lindstrom has been on the front line of the branding for over twenty years. In Brandwashed, he turns the spotlight on his own industry, drawing on all he has witnessed behind closed doors, exposing for the first time the full extent of the psychological tricks and traps that companies devise to win our hard-earned money.

Lindstrom reveals eye opening details such as how advertisers and marketers target children at an alarmingly young age (starting when they are still in the womb), what heterosexual men really think about when they see sexually provocative advertising, how marketers and retailers stoke the flames of public panic and capitalize on paranoia over diseases, extreme weather events, and food contamination scares. It also presents the first ever evidence to prove how addicted we are to our smartphones, and how certain companies (like the maker of a very popular lip balm), purposely adjust their formulas in order to make their products chemically addictive, and much, much more.

Brandwashed is a shocking insider’s look at how today’s global giants conspire to obscure the truth and manipulate our minds, all in service of persuading us to buy.

Martin Lindstrom, chairman and founder of Buyology Inc, was voted one of the World’s 100 Most Influential people by Time magazine. Among the globe’s foremost marketers, Lindstrom advises top executives at companies such as McDonald’s Corporation, Procter & Gamble, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Mercedes-Benz, and Microsoft. His most recent book, Buyology, was a huge international bestseller and he is also the author of Brandsense and Brandchild (both published by Kogan Page).