This lovely illustration and web of brands that own brands was featured on reedit.com today and reveals something very interesting about our choices as a consumer or, if you will, lack of choices. It’s titled, “The Illusion of Choice”.

If you look at the brand groupings, it makes a lot of sense. Of course Nestle owns a bunch of animal feed, candy, cosmetics, and powdered food companies, they’re probably all made from the same ingredients. It’s the clothing brands that throw me. Perhaps some of the dehydrated horse meat they make the dog food with is set aside, and the best cuts are used for belts.

Regardless of how it goes down, all these brands seem to all be owned by about ten larger brands namely Kraft, Nestle, Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Co, General Mills (very fitting), Proctor & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Mars, and Unilever.

It’s not just our products:

If you found “brands that own brands” to be shocking, than you should also take a look this infographic on who now controls the media in this country. It seems as if their’s hundreds of media choices, but in the end it all boils down to just a handful.

In 1983, 90% of America’s media was owned and powered by over 50 companies. As of last year, the media is owned by 6 companies. Talk about the illusion of choice. GE, Time Warner, CBS, Viacom, Disney, and News Corp. are controlling everything. No wonder it’s the same thing on every channel. How can the media be impartial when all the real decisions are made by only a few people?

Perhaps that’s a narrow-minded view, but this direction we seem to be moving in doesn’t sound like it’s very good for the greater good. Maybe I’m wrong, these people who own all this stuff are probably the nicest, most caring folks out there. How else could they be so successful? I’ll leave it up to you to decide.

Twitter Reacts to The illusion of choice: