I have heard of it, funny book, the guy was 100% full of crap. 250 years later there's still plenty of thrift (in fact thrift is what WalMart has built its empire on), deferred gratification (people still save up to buy big stuff), and hard work (my whole department got two days off in October, plenty of hard work here). We have managed to get rid of no frills Scottish Presbyterianism, and thank God for it, we only get so many trips around the sun might as well enjoy one or two of them.
The messages and images of the mass marketer were created by very capable people seeking one thing and one thing only: YOUR MONEY. They chase the dollar, they fill market niches, any profitable market niche they don't care. You're right that they don't care what it does to society, but you're wrong to say they're trying to harm society, they just want the money, societal ramifications aren't in their equation, only the dollars.
Schumpeter was right on the money. Thrift means putting money in the bank, not WalMart. Americans are among the lowest savers on the planet. And Americans are indebted to an absolutely obscene level (if people could charge their mortgage down payments they would).
The mass marketer is not evil, just destructive. He has an agenda of subordinating the voices of church, family, and culture to his own. And since his bullhorn is the loudest, that makes him destructive. He is destructive of parental authority since it is his goal to turn children into walking bullhorns themselves (do you think the prevalence of smart mouthed teenagers talking back to their parents on sitcoms is accidental ?). Do you have any idea how much marketing Disney and Nickleodeon are saturated with ? How painstakingly marketed Britney Spears and the Olsens were and Hillary Duff and Lindsay Lohan are ? Do you think that the people doing this don't have a specific set of values they want your child to absorb ?