We are what we buy | Salon Books

Instead of being more hostile to what he calls “commercial persuasion,” the consumers he observed seem very much involved with brands and products. If traditional advertising has become a less effective way of fostering that involvement, the commercial persuasion industry has in turn been fiendishly resourceful in coming up with alternative methods, infiltrating hitherto unexploited aspects of our lives. The result, as Walker sees it, is a culture in which there is a “secret dialogue between what we buy and who we are,” a dialogue that shapes us even as we pretend to be untouched by it.