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charms
This page considers corporate marketing of astrological
services and charms.
It covers -
introduction
Mumbo-jumbo is big business, an industry that involves
major media groups and retailers rather than being restricted
to individuals and small operators.
Secularisation of societies in the West has not necessarily
banished superstition and much steam-age (or stone age)
hokum has migrated online and into the shopping malls
frequented by intelligent, affluent and educated consumers.
That has been accommodated by law in Australia and elsewhere.
It has also been accommodated in marketing codes of practice
that feature disingenuous declarations such as
Marketers
should not exploit the credulity, lack of knowledge
or inexperience of consumers
It
has been reflected in the shape of litigation by consumer
protection agencies, typically directed against traders
who have been overly enthusiastic or merely stupid in
the wording of particular claims and have failed to satisfy
commitments regarding refunds to unsatisfied customers.
it's in the stars
Tabloids, 'women's magazines' and even some upmarket newspapers
have traditionally featured syndicated astrology
columns and inhouse astrologers who advise readers and
letter writers. Much of that content is recycled from
past items, appropriated from other journals with with
a cusory edit, or ghosted
(eg after the supposed author has unexpectedly departed
for the spirit world or is merely out marketing books
and videos or making guest appearances on the psychic
expo circuit).
Some broadcasters have also provided a venue for those
supposedly in touch with the infinite, variously providing
generic horoscopes on air, responding to postal and email
requests or even providing responses in a talk-back format.
Media groups (such as News Corp through its Jamster subsidiary)
have taken some of their psychic publishing online, in
competition with independent operators, offering generic
or individual astrological information. Some offer SMS
astrological services - for example revealing what the
stars fortell for a relationship or whether the texter
has a compatible star sign with that of a partner.
Some offer premium-rate 'dial a psychic' services, with
callers paying to hear a recorded message or chat with
someone who can read the digital tea leaves.
As with erotic chat services, the business model is based
on keeping the customer on the line, so consumers typically
complain that they endured hold-music before actually
getting to interact with the psychic and then facing a
standard suite of questions. Skeptics of course note that
true psychics would not need to extract cues from the
person on the other end of the line and would merely rely
on polishing the crystal ball or other paraphernalia.
mystical bling
Mainstreaming of mystical bling - crystals, faux First
Nations 'spirit catchers', 'kabbalah red string' ("protection
from the influences of the Evil Eye, a very powerful negative
force"), "energy water" - has seen such
merchandise move from side streets and car-boot sales
to retail malls, department stores and boutiques in upmarket
locations.
That is a reflection of demand, changing expectations
about what is respectable and cold hard economics - margins
for red thread and quartz are low, margins for 'red string'
and 'crystals' are higher than for Limoges and Balenciaga.
It is also evident in spam such as that touting Zodiac
Power Rings, complete with an unspecified "a money-back
guarantee" and described as enhacing "the willpower,
confidence, assertiveness & concentration of the wearer"
to
help you excel in your business, job, studies, profession,
career, relations, etc., by improving your personality.
They help reduce all the anger, mental tensions, mood
fluctuations and stress felt by the human body, thereby
increasing our productivity on the whole.
The
magic rings
start
taking an effect on you just within fifteen minutes
of wearing the ring. A person starts getting the knowledge
of the power coming to him just within seven days of
wearing the rings. You have to wear the Zodiac Power
Rings on the right hand only. It can be worn on any
finger, including the thumb, except the middle or the
tallest finger.
just believe
The net has been used to promote faith-based belief systems
such as The Secret, which proclaims
Without exception, every human being has the ability
to transform any weakness or suffering into strength,
power, perfect peace, health, and abundance
and
that "The only reason any person does not have enough
money is because they are blocking money from coming to
them with their thoughts".
Michael Shermer acutely questioned the cosmic 'law of
attraction' promoted by The Secret's vendors, commenting
You
don't need science to prove The Secret is codswallop
- just a modicum of thinking. If wealth and poverty
are the result of nothing more than our thoughts, should
we blame those poor starving Zimbabweans for being just
a bunch of pessimistic sourpusses? And what about the
victims of Auschwitz? If the law of attraction is true,
then every oppressed, enslaved or exterminated group
in history had it coming. That idea is beyond wrongheaded
- it's evil.
regulation
David Harvey's 'Fortune Tellers in the French Courts:
Antidivination Prosecutions in France in the Nineteenth
and Twentieth Centuries' (PDF)
in 28(1) French Historical Studies (2007) comments
that
Whether
seen as harmless entertainment, a source of consoling
'medicine for the soul', or part of an individual quest
for spiritual fulfillment, fortune-telling has found
its place in a more heterogeneous, less exclusive, French
public sphere.
Regulatory
regimes regarding astrology and similar beliefs are distinctly
ambivalent, reflecting a tolerance for heterodox belief
(and the bureaucratic inconvenience of having to grapple
with questions of civil
liberties by determining that one belief system is
a cult, another is religion, another is a commercial scam).
As the preceding pages indicate, savvy individuals and
organisations thus have substantial leeway if they are
prepared to be careful about how they characterise their
products or services.
The Los Angeles Times for example indicates that
"The astrological forecast should be read for entertainment
only".
The
UK Committee of Advertising Practice similarly advised
(PDF)
marketers in 2007 -
- Marketers
of services that involve the prediction of the future,
or the promise to make specific dreams come true, should
advertise their services in a way that is neither misleading
nor likely to exploit vulnerable people. Claims that
marketers will successfully solve all problems, break
curses, banish evil spirits, improve the health, wealth,
love life, happiness or other circumstances of readers
should be avoided because they are likely to be impossible
to prove.
- Claims
of 'help offered' should be replaced with 'advice' and
the emphasis should be on the individual helping him
or herself rather than events or changes happening to
them as a result of some external force
- Marketing
communications for lucky charms or other products with
unproven supernatural properties should not imply that
these products can directly affect the user's circumstances.
- Psychics,
mediums and religious organisations may be able to make
some claims about healing only if it is clear that they
are referring to spiritual, not physical, healing.
Supposed
one-ness with the astral forces and ability to discern
the future sometimes deserts purveyors of new age products
and information.
In 2001 the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission
noted
that an Australian business, Purple Harmony Plates Pty
Ltd has been found by the Federal Court to have engaged
in misleading and deceptive conduct under the Trade
Practices Act 1974 (Cth) in relation to "making
unsubstantiated health and other claims for its products"
on the net.
The court accepted that Purple Harmony had made unsubstantiated
claims about future benefits for its products, included
that its anodised aluminium plates (presumably easier
to maintain than eye of newt) -
- protected
against electromagnetic radiation from computers, televisions
and mobile telephones
- "energised"
water
- "lowered
body stress and fatigue levels", increased general
health, helped strengthen the immune system and accelerated
healing
- improve
plant growth
-
ionised car fuel to allow a more complete fuel burn.
Unsurprisingly
the judge found that Purple Harmony could not reasonably
demonstrate a basis for any of the claims. As noted elsewhere,
the site's operator was subsequently fined and jailed
over failure to comply, with Justice Goldberg commenting
Mr
Lyster is labouring under a delusion that he is the
head of a non-existent state and that his conduct is
beyond the reach of the laws of Australia. Mr Lyster
should realise he is quite wrong in this respect.
Four years later the ACCC noted
action against other problematical online marketing, including
sites -
-
marketing a multi-coloured shirt claimed to relieve
stress, make the wearer more intelligent and perceptive,
improve concentration, allow the wearer to continuously
exercise, and stimulate and strengthen the immune system
-
promoting the use of magnetic fields and colloidal silver
suspended in water to cure AIDS and boost the immune
system.
studies
Studies of the astrology business and belief include Astrology
and the Popular Press: English Almanacs 1500-1800
(Ithaca: Cornell Uni Press 1979) by Bernard Capp, The
Stars Down to Earth and Other Essays on the Irrational
in Culture (London: Routledge 1994) by Theodor Adorno,
How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World (London:
Fourth Estate 2004) by Francis Wheen, Why People Believe
Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions
of Our Time (New York: Holt 2002) by Michael Shermer
and New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism
in the Mirror of Secular Thought (Leiden: Brill 1996)
by Wouter Hanegraaff.
Other pointers feature in the discussion of astrology
here.
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