Addendum: Corporate Terrorism

The following addendum is not my summary of any part of the Kleppner's textbook, but rather is my own essay.

Chapters
Chapters 1 & 2: Basics of Advertising Chapter 3: History and Brands Chapter 4: Target Marketing Chapter 5: Agencies and Services Chapter 7: Media Strategy Chapter 13: Internet Marketing Chapter 24: Economic, Social and Legal Aspects of Advertising Addendum: Corporate Terrorism

Corporate Terrorism

In recent times, we have seen the rise of what can only be called "corporate terrorism" in the realm of the everyday consumer's experience.

Corporate terrorism are acts taken specifically to terrorize the public and to make examples of key individuals. Corporate terrorism may coincide with state terrorism if the corporation can influence the state to act in such a way.

In the past, corporate terrorist attacks had mainly occurred mainly against workers. Many examples exist, such as:

In the form of paramilitary attacks on union leaders in Columbia by the Coca-Cola Company.
The 1914 Ludlow Massacre in Colorado.

But today, coinciding with the rise of the corporate police state, we are seeing a new form of corporate terrorism emerge that targets consumers. It consists of deliberate planning and actions to make the consumer feel terrorized -- not merely trapped, exploited, or burdened. No, the terrorism has the purpose of maintaining corporate power and profits by changing consumer behaviors that risk to reduce profits.

Because modern corporate terrorism is a kind of communication, it is appropriate to categorize it as a form of advertising, hence the inclusion of this essay in my summary of Kleppner's Advertising Procedure.

Indeed, advertisements have appeared to convey the terrorists' messages in the media. A tame example is this ad.

Two extraordinary terrorist organizations that have arisen to strike fear into the consumer. RIAA, takes children, college students and old women to court on suspicion of illegal music downloading, and MPAA which does the same to suspected movie downloaders. Each organization conveys descriptions of their exploits to the media (as to civil liberties groups) in an effort to make examples of their victims.

RIAA and MPAA work on the assumption that people need and want to their products and that consumers can be bullied into submission to the effect that people will then pay any amount for music or movies. They seem to believe that making examples of isolated individuals will cause the masses to cower and cave in to their demands. But time and again the public has proudly opposed such terrorism.

As with for instance Islamic terrorists, the modern corporate terrorists also spout deranged ideologically-motivated beliefs and threats. The corporations' ideology is called neoliberalism. (Read Let there be markets.)

RIAA has even stated that it wants to shut down the Internet. (Inquirer story.) RIAA has also said the cost of a CD should be around $34. (WHAS story.) Unfortunately the rising American police state is supportive of the corporate terrorists. (PrisonPlanet story.)

All the while however, the ugly truth about the music industry is being revealed to show that the true "pirates" are the media companies themselves. Remember: To pirate is to steal a thing and seek to grain profit from that stolen thing, which is essentially what music companies do to the majority of musicians. Essay by Courtney Love. Essay by Steve Albini.

Corporate terrorism by RIAA and MPAA is a kind of intimidation-advertising whose purpose is to allow the exploitive pirates called large corporations to avoid the paradigm shift to a new model of ownership of intellectual property, in which RIAA's and MPAA's backers will have much less power. Their approach cannot succeed but it is clear that they will try to make examples of many individuals before they have lost.

Spying on the consumer is one major tool of the corporate terrorists. Unfortunately, Microsoft is complicit in this effort. Their new operating system Vista is believed to represent a major attack on consumer privacy. This fact is however never communicated by those who seek to profit from corporate terrorism.

Thus you can see that in modern corporate terrorism, a message is being shaped. It is harsh and manipulative. It identifies only the good and the bad, no shades of gray. It omits mention of the mechanisms of spying. It is advertising.