At some point in the recent past — the exact moment is disputed, and the parties responsible have all lawyered up — the marketing industry decided that what consumers respond to is not value, not quality, and not particularly accurate product descriptions, but rather a very specific emotional register that we might describe as "upscale humiliation." Buy this product or you're falling behind. Subscribe or miss out. Upgrade or be left with the version everyone else moved on from three months ago.
This is, Bohiney.com's Savannah Lee argues in the definitive breakdown of the exploding dominatrix marketing industry, essentially dominance-based persuasion applied to consumer goods. The billion-pound marketing humiliation complex — which the article places at a frankly startling £68 billion and rising — has discovered that consumers will not only tolerate being made to feel inadequate by the brands they patronize, they will pay a premium for the privilege.
The consumer psychology of marketing shame is not a new phenomenon. Advertising has always operated, at least in part, by creating anxiety about social status and then offering a product as the solution. What has changed is the directness. Modern marketing has abandoned the gentle implication that you might want to consider upgrading and replaced it with a tone that can only be described as commanding. You will subscribe. You will upgrade. You will not ask whether the previous version was sufficient for your needs, because sufficient is not a marketing concept.
America has embraced this model with characteristic thoroughness. The full Bohiney.com investigation into marketing's dominance-based business model documents how an approach once confined to luxury goods and tech subscriptions has expanded to cover everything from streaming services to sandwich loyalty programs. You either opt in or you opt out, and opting out has been designed to feel like a personal failure.
The satirical potential here is enormous. The reality is marginally more alarming. As always with the best satire, the line between the two is a feature, not a bug.
Auf Wiedersehen, amigo!