Find a few trusted sources of uncontaminated information, Lucas Conley advises.

Topic: Ways Consumers Can Escape Brand Bombardment

Lucas Conley: Beyond our do not call registry and our spam blocker and our TiVo, I think the- finding brands that extol your virtues, if it’s Google and it’s don’t be evil, though I would agree- disagree with some of their privacy issues recently, if it’s Apple and kind of their push to try and be a greener company lately, if it’s Method soaps and they make very green, environmentally friendly, design-friendly products, to kind of talk with your wallet. Put the money where the products matter to you because that helps to kind of reinforce the companies that are doing the right marketing. If you look at companies that are marketing or spamming or after you in ways that are annoying to kind of consider that your dollars pay for that marketing right down to when you go to Wal-Mart or Target and you buy that box of Sudafed versus the generic brand. You’re paying for commercials to be made. So that would be one of my top tips is to kind of think of your dollars as marketing dollars and that they’ll be transferred in to your environment, be it your computer, be it your... the billboards on your street, be it your radio, your television, the media that surrounds you, and have a media diet. Give yourself a few trusted sources of information that you can rely on that aren’t influenced by advertising. Increasingly, marketers are finding their way in to the programs we watch and McDonald’s is now paying to have iced coffee cups in front of morning news anchors around the country, so understanding that you’re dealing with media sources that are not taking part in marketing campaigns and are not influenced by their advertisers, which is hard, increasingly hard, as we look at the few owners of media...mass media in the country.

Recorded on: 7/23/08