Dr. Mara Einstein, an author and professor at Queens College (CUNY), visited Seton Hall on March 19 to discuss her latest book, “Hoodwinked: How Marketers Use the Same Tactics as Cults.”
Einstein worked in advertising and marketing for five years before she received her Ph.D. in media. For the past 30 years, she has conducted research and written books about the dark side of marketing, specifically how marketers trap people into buying things they don’t need.
Earlier this year, Einstein released her eighth book, “Hoodwinked: How Marketers Use the Same Tactics as Cults.” The book was inspired by documentaries she watched during the COVID-19 lockdown from her home in Queens, New York, according to Einstein.
“Every morning, I went downstairs, got on my elliptical, and I [watched] various documentary series,” Einstein said. “Two I started watching back to back are ‘The Vow,’ which is about the NXIVM cult, and ‘LuLaRich,’ which is about LuLaRoe.”
After watching the two documentaries side-by-side, Einstein had a realization.
“I said, ‘Holy cow, those are the same thing we're talking about,’” Einstein said. “The first one is about a cult. One's about multi-level marketing. Those two things are the same thing.”
This realization led Einstein to new research: multi-level marketing. She said she spent three years researching this topic, finding that she was not the first person to have this realization. She redirected her focus.
“I took a step back and said, ‘Okay, what do I know about the intersection of marketing and cults, and brands?’” Einstein said. “I had done work on brand cults, starting back in 2012 when I wrote my book, ‘Compassion, Inc.,’ and so I began to think, is there a broader way for us to think about the intersections of cults and marketing?”
Throughout her presentation, Einstein emphasized that brands aid in identity creation as they help define who we are. They tap into our want to be a part of a community. Marketers use cult tactics for this reason, according to Einstein.
“There are specific tools that cults use as part of their recruitment and retention tactics, and there's a series of about nine of them,” Einstein said. “It is almost one-for-one, [brands use] the same pattern that cults use.”
She added that companies manipulate us into buying their products, making us feel that we need to fill a void that only they can fill. Einstein referred to her research that it is a new way of thinking about how marketers grab us by the throat to get us to buy.
“I was recently in the documentary, ‘Buy Now: The Shopping Conspiracy,’ and it's all about how companies manipulate us to get us to buy things,” Einstein said. “[My book] is in conversation with that documentary to say that we need to think about why we are buying. What is that hole that exists in us that is telling us that we need to fill [it]?”
She explained how the methods companies use to influence people to buy their products resemble how cults convince people to join them by playing with their need to be in a community.
“What cults fundamentally do is to play on our need for being part of a community, and so because there are so few places where we find a community, now, the marketplace has come in to fill that void for us, and at the extreme, those turn into cults,” Einstein said.
But, Einstein emphasized, that doesn’t mean everything around us is a cult.
“If something is a cult, it doesn't mean that everybody who interacts with the product is part of the group that is the cult,” Einstein said. “The rule of thumb for advertising is that 20% of the people buy 80% of your products, so…somewhere in that 20% are the people that you're going to find that are going to be part of the cult.”
Dr. Ruth Tsuria, an associate professor of communication, invited Einstein to Seton Hall to discuss her book for an event hosted by the Institute for Communication and Religion (ICR). Einstein said that the two have been friends for more than a decade.
“I love the kind of work that Dr Einstein does. I think it's really influential,” Tsuria said. “When her book came out, [Einstein] asked me to review the book, and the moment I finished reading it, I was like, she needs to talk [at Seton Hall].”
Tsuria said that both she and Einstein are members of the International Society for Media, Religion, and Culture. Tsuria is also a part of Seton Hall’s ICR, which is dedicated to the exploration of communication topics important to religion in society within the College of Human Development, Culture, and Media.
Tsuria said that the most important message she took away from Einstein’s book was about anxiety and knowing that there are intentional tactics when we use social media.
“We're harming ourselves,” Tsuria said. “[We should think critically] about those needs that we have as religious beings…and how, when we fill that gap with friends or influencers. We have to remember that those relationships are made based on financial benefit for them, not for us.”
Dominique Mercadante is the head editor of The Setonian’s Campus Life section. She can be reached at dominique.mercadante@student.shu.edu.
