Word: walker
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...point, Kennedy asked Cox, who served as Kennedy’s solicitor general, about the prospect of arresting Barnett as well as General Edwin A. Walker, a former military officer who is said to have urged an anti-integration crowd to resist federal actions violently...
...favorite armchair, smugly clicking the remote for your TiVo, sure that you've outrun those pesky advertisers. But have you? Despite all the ways Americans try to skip over ads and get to the good part, "we live in a world defined by more commercial messages, not fewer," proclaims Walker, the New York Times Magazine Consumed columnist and author of this fascinating new book. What's worse, he argues, most of us are unwitting participants in our own personal Truman Show. "We can talk all we want about being brandproof, but our behavior tells a different story...
...iconography of brands is Walker's specialty. With a compelling blend of cultural anthropology and business journalism, he makes us fess up about our dependence on brand-name products and explains our nearly irresistible urge to use what we buy to broadcast our identities. Marketers spend millions, Walker says, to attach a story to every object they sell. "If a product is successfully tied to an idea, branding persuades people--whether they admit it to pollsters or even fully understand it themselves--to consume the idea by consuming the product," he writes. "A potent brand becomes a form of identity...
...seduce consumers, companies resort to elaborate feats of marketing sleight of hand. Walker draws back the curtain on the pioneering branding campaign that created a mystique around the energy drink Red Bull, which was introduced in the U.S. in 1997. As the corporate saga goes, Red Bull was invented by Dietrich Mateschitz, an Austrian entrepreneur who "supposedly came across a syrupy tonic favored by rickshaw drivers in Thailand, called Krating Daeng." Rather than rely on a traditional TV ad campaign, the company mounted an expensive stealth-marketing campaign, enlisting extreme-sports enthusiasts to ride wind-powered kiteboards to Cuba...
...Walker does his best to help us wise up, but don't feel too bad the next time you enjoy your iPod or gulp down a Starbucks Frappuccino. You just can't help...