Francis Ford Coppola Instagram – Advertising is not always what it purports to be. It has more to do with people than “products.” What is being sold is not a thing, but rather a state of mind or being.    The products are metaphors for the things that are linked to certain types of people: cool people, successful people, admirable people, classy people, sophisticated people, whatever kind of people most other people wish they could be. The brand is being sold more than the product: If you buy certain furniture, you must be cool, affluent, and tasteful, so that state of being is what’s being sold to you, not a chair or a desk. Those items are incidental and essentially interchangeable. You want to be those kinds of people, NOT because you want to necessarily own a particular item, but because you want to be seen as someone who owns that item.    This could be viewed as tampering with people’s psychological being, the most valuable “property” we have. What could be more valuable than the essence of who you feel you are and who you wish to become? When one speaks of property, the most valuable property anyone has is themselves.  These thoughts are inspired by the highly recommended book by Clive Hamilton, “Growth Fetish” and Juliet B. Schor’s “The Overspent American” What is Utopia, and/or how to achieve it is one of the many themes behind @megalopolisfilm