Instagram is full of "lifestyle" or "aspirational" marketing. After years of pragmatic search engine marketing it's an entirely new way of thinking about selling your product or service. Instead of "our product does x, y and z" it's "here's my wonderful life with this product, don't you want it (the life) to be yours?"

> an entirely new way of thinking about selling your product or service

> here's my wonderful life with this product, don't you want it (the life) to be yours?

What, seriously...? That concept definitely- at least- pre-dates the invention of search engines. I could probably dig up a relevant 90-year old essay by Edward Bernays if I cared to take the time.

"People don't buy products, they buy better versions of themselves."

There's a sibling thread about this on HN right now.

Reminds me of this movie: http://m.imdb.com/title/tt1285309/

Lifestyle advertising is not new: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsi_Generation.

It's not that old, historically speaking, either.

In the context of mass marketing, though, it is again very old. PR is basically propaganda, where these emotional manipulation techniques are very important.

In a way, Holy Church has been doing it for ages.

Like TV did when I was a kid.

TV, movies and especially music-clips now has even more "hidden" advertisement than ever before.