It’s easy to overlook how much advertising works. We each have a limited supply of bandwidth for perceiving the world we live in. The result is a high demand for undermining that perception and using it to manipulative ends.
Authoritarian dystopias from books and films usually illustrate force because force is more immediately graphic. It also reflects the dismal state of a dystopian existence. Manipulation would look a lot different. Fear of manipulation is a fear of knowing someone else is trying to manipulate you.
We don’t regularly notice evidence of brands and companies trying to manipulate us, but most of us understand they are incentivized to.
I have worked in advertising for almost a decade and the truth is much worse. Although individuals who work at companies may be on your side, they get paid to spend their days doin what the company tells them to. Even managers and CEOS may be great people but when they go work, they are an employee. They have a duty to the company. And, the more efficient and skilled we get at manipulating members of society into behaviors which direct money our way, the employees will remain working for the company.
Are the employees immoral? Not from the perspective of the family they support. And whose opinion is more important? The family’s. It’s pretty simple that we cannot expect individual decisions to compete with those of the profit-motivated companies they work for.