The Manipulators: Unmasking the Hidden Persuaders --- The Conspiracy To Make Us Buy

It wasn’t by chance that the 1960s became “The Swinging ‘60s.”

Nor was it by chance that what happened on Madison Avenue in the years leading up to “The Mad Men” Decade --- when Vance Packard wrote “The Hidden Persuaders” --- and what has happened as a result of those years, has changed the world.

This is a story about casting spells. About filling our heads with some catchy tune or a neat slogan that will throb gently in the hidden layers of our brain. About touching buttons; parceling intellect and emotion together; finding ways of saying one thing on the surface and something else beneath it; targeting our hopes; remolding our ambitions; allaying our fears; helping us mascara the face we put on to meet other faces. About selling us back ourselves; priming us for that singular moment when we spot their product somewhere and find ourselves reaching for it, almost uncontrollably, dropping it in our shopping basket, paying for it and bringing it home; then making that product an integral part of our lives, all of this without us ever wondering, why?