Manipulative Marketing: Priming You To Buy More

Modern advertisers reach farther and farther into your brain, often without you knowing it.

I would be willing to guess that marketers know more about human motivations than anyone else. Trouble is, they are using this advanced knowledge against us. 

Neuroscientists captured by the marketing industry have gone deeper than ever into our brains, and getting you to consume automatically without thinking is the goal. 

Their tricks appeal to both your conscious and subconscious, so some you may be conscious of, while others remain hidden to your awareness. But knowing about these mind manipulations can help you mount an effective resistance. 

Retail outlets of Big Business all use subtle techniques to get you to buy things you don't need, or according to them, don't yet know you need. 

Let's look at some of the manipulative marketing tools that they use to influence consumer's thoughts and behaviors without conscious reflection or consideration.

1. Smellvertising - smells have a powerful effect on shoppers. Our sense of smell is wired directly to the limbic system, which is associated with memories and emotions, both of which are used against us to trigger subconscious cravings and desires. 

This happens quickly, and we are not even aware of the dopamine rush that leads us to anticipate making a product purchase. 

Some fast food joints blow synthetic burger smells through their vents to trigger memories of comfort food which will lead us to their counter with a serious craving. 

In one study smell researchers found that when a vanilla scent was released in a women's clothing store, sales increased by 50%.


 

 2. Product Placement - integrating products into movies, plays, video games and tv shows is increasing. At the same time it is becoming more subtle, or you could say, sneaky.

That is because research has shown that consumers are easier to persuade when they have not engaged their conscious decision making faculties. When you are watching something, then, your defences are down, and advertisers are ready to pounce. 

Viewers have no conscious recall of exposure to the products, but when they see them in stores, and other settings, the implicit memory is set loose, and a purchase often results. Note: The effect of product integration is so powerful that since a 1998 agreement, tobacco companies can no longer pay to have their products placed in any programming. 

 3. Packaging Colour - marketing experts believe that the product’s (or its packaging’s) color has a significant—if not the dominant— impact on purchase decisions. 

We can not look at all the information about every product or we would become overwhelmed. Therefore, we rely on snap judgments to help us make decisions quickly and efficiently. This helps us avoid cognitive overload, but opens us up to marketing manipulations, like the colour of a product package, or the colour theme of a store setting. 

Such manipulations affect decision-making by consumers, such as when they associate eco-friendly with the colour green and pictures of trees on packaging, whether the product is good for the environment or not. This association is often subconscious. 

You may have noticed that advertising is increasingly moving away from an informational approach. Very few ads give information about the product, because information can be refuted. What can you say about a bunch of junk that no one actually needs? 

In this case, they want you to bypass the rational mind. If advertisers can appeal to consumers subconsciously, and trigger powerful memory and emotional responses, people will be programmed to create attachments to products that often last for life. 

Eventually, the increased use—or misuse—of neuromarketing and sensory marketing research to influence consumers at a nonconscious level is likely to prompt calls for regulation. But then there is the fact that governments also use manipulative mind control techniques against their populations. 

Perhaps best, is for consumers (and citizens) to know what is going on, and how they are being manipulated to buy things (or ideas) they don't even know they want. Yet.

I Am Free

The Advertisers Are Laughing

Advertising changes people, and it changes cultures. It might be more accurate to say that it destroys traditional cultures while it homogenizes us into a singular mass of non-descript consumers.

Advertising is everywhere. It plays to the ego's eyes and ears and creates a new narrative in our minds. Over time it becomes difficult to tell the difference between our original, real desires and goals, and the ones put there by the marketing industry. First Nations in the Canadian north provide a case in point.

Inuit elders realized the destructive power of southern-based TV and advertising when transmissions became available for the first time beginning in the late 60s. Some communities, such as Igloolik, initially voted to refuse television fearing irreversible damage to their lifestyle.

Television and advertising did fill the air waves of the north, and the people felt the effects almost immediately. TV is not solely to blame for the social transformation of Inuit life, but it has played a large role.


TV advertising, and the promotion of the lifestyles of the industrial south, had effects on Inuit language, culture, and day-to-day life in traditional settlements. Today's Inuit youth are no longer socialized within a value system that emphasizes the importance of mutual cooperation and sharing.

Many Inuit, some have noticed, have become more materialistic, and therefore desire highly paid jobs in the industrial world rather than engage in traditional forms of subsistence.

Graburn (1982) has gone so far as to suggest that television is a form of cultural genocide.

And the advertisers, the world re-arrangers, laugh.

To What Are We Paying Attention?

Don't Be A Prisoner To Advertising Lies

For several decades, if not centuries, we have been paying attention to the wrong things. Why? Advertising has hijacked our minds.

The word 'advertising' comes from the Latin 'ad vertere', which means 'turn the mind toward'. Advertising has become so all pervasive that it has succeeded in turning our minds away from what is true, beautiful, and eternal. It implores us from every nook and cranny of life to pay attention to false promises.

Advertisers desperately want you to care about their message, product, or service. They want you to care about what other people think. In the advertisers cruel, profit-oriented world, love is a conditional commodity to be dispensed only to those with the right stuff.

They are lying in order to exploit our most deep seated fear - the fear of not being loved.

We are social creatures, and love is a requirement of life. To love and be loved is the basic human condition, not something that can be purchased. Advertisers don't want you to know this; you don't need any of their stuff to be loved.

Most people don't care about what you own, or where you holiday, or how many little green pieces of paper you have stashed away, although countless messages tell us differently every day. Most people will care about you regardless, because that is what humans do.

We can refocus our attention and turn our minds toward more rewarding pursuits, like the betterment of the human condition across the planet. That is what humans do for each other when they aren't distracted.

There are a number of things that you can do to reduce the influence of advertising.

Living: Lifestyle Changes

• Kill your TV
• Get off the computer
• Burn all glossy magazines
• Get into nature and escape advertising altogether
• Relax, meditate

Learning: Media Literacy

• Learn about media literacy and the methods of exploitation employed by advertisers
• Share what you learn with your kids so they are more media savvy, and can think critically about the purpose of media messages
• Learn about creating an environment free from excessive corporate graffiti.
• Call out corporations with questionable marketing campaigns
• Help to influence legislation - support anti-advertising organizations, and sign petitions calling for increased governmental regulation of the advertising/marketing industry (The American Psychological Association has called for regulation of advertising geared towards children. The American Medical Association has questioned the motives of big pharma in the push to market drugs directly to patients, a multi-billion dollar undertaking larger than budgets for researching and developing new drugs)

Loving: Letting Go

• let go of fears that are magnified by advertising - we have everything we need to be loved the moment we are born.
• give in to human nature and love unconditionally - practice forgiveness

The best thing you can do is take back control of your mind, and not care a stitch about the false promises of uncaring advertisers. They are not worth your attention, or your money.

Amish Get Last LOL

There is nothing funny about millions of people losing grid power, but when I saw the Amish meme going around since Sandy hit, I had a bit of a chuckle. Those Amish are obviously on to something.

Amish members live simple lives and tend to be wary of modern day conveniences. They live by the rules of the church, (outlined in the Ordnung, which means 'order'), which regulate day to day living. Among other things, the Ordnung includes prohibitions on the use of things like cars, telephones, and grid electricity.

There are restrictions against grid electricity because the Amish wish to be disconnected from the greater society and modern values that are inconsistent with their teachings. Connecting to the grid would allow worldly influences to enter their homes, and could spark a competition for what they call 'status goods'.

Trying to think like the Amish, I came up with a possible scenario:

Grid power = TV/radio/computer = exposure to advertising = manufactured desire for goods and the status they confer = competition = discordance in the community.

This is certainly the scene played out endlessly in the consumer world by which the Amish are surrounded. Unlike the outside world, I doubt that Amish kids beat each other up in order to steal trendy sneakers, or ball caps, or coats, or ipods, or any other status item.

The Amish aren't against electricity however, and do make their own moderate amounts of power using generators, solar panels, and other technologies that allow them to be self-sufficient. It is enough power to do certain limited things, but not enough to be used indiscriminately and wastefully.

The Amish are not afraid of manual labour, and consider it to be character building. Therefore, labour saving devices hold little appeal for them, although you might find a washing machine hooked up to a generator in some communities. These simple living folks may seem backward, but they aren't stupid (not that it is stupid to wash clothes by hand, it is just really difficult, especially if you have 7 kids).

The Amish are indeed on to something, and that is - use electricity (and modern conveniences) selectively, and only if they are powered by self-generated electricity. Living more simply allows them to use less power, be energy self-sufficient, and enjoy the benefits of good old manual labour. Green on green on green, Amish style.

The Amish Action Plan

1. Take a page from the Ordnung regarding electricity use.
2. Read it by candle light.
3. Get rid of most of your power hungry appliances and electronics. 
4. Set up your solar panels/wind generator and say goodbye to the power grid.
5. Be gentle on the earth, live well, and be prepared for the next extreme weather event.

No TV Monday

It's been great since we gave away the TV -
I could feel my neurons shutting down.

A comment about televisions that I read recently struck a chord with me - "You only think you need TV if you have a TV".

It has been a month since we liberated our home of our television. The post I wrote about it continues to be well read, and elicited several comments about readers' experiences with kicking the TV habit.

I enjoyed reading about the alternate activities that people are engaging in instead of spending time passively in the glow of the boob tube.

I read, listen to music, knit, etc. . . anything but watch TV. One of the benefits is that I sleep better.

We actually "do" things. Things like ride bicycles, walk, talk, read, cook and make meaningful decisions based on our own wants and needs and not based on what the television tells us what we need.

I prefer sitting in front of a computer, controlling the content that I am exposed to. 

Now that we do not have a TV, we see no need for one. I could quickly brainstorm 100 good reasons why we should not have an 'idiot box' (my dad's favourite term), but will spare you.

The problems with TV have always been known, but are becoming increasingly obvious.

More and more people are breaking free, and deciding to have no TV.

It is an encouraging trend.

Going TV-Free

Must...turn...TV...off...and...get...it...out...of...house.

For much of our time together Linda and I have not had a TV, but we have had one for the past several years. For most of that time it did not get used much. It wasn't because we didn't like TV, but because we liked it too much. We knew to be wary of its mesmerizing, time-sucking qualities.

Since we have never had cable, we usually only had one fuzzy channel, our national broadcaster, the CBC. Our viewing time was minimal.

Then I got the bright idea of hooking up the TV to the cable outlet just to see what would happen. Big mistake - about 10 free channels came in clearly, and they immediately began their near-irresistible screen seduction. We were drawn in and soon the remote was never far away.

As viewing time increased, so did our exposure to advertising, and programming that is advertising thinly disguised as 'entertainment'. HGTV, MTV, and programs like My Super Sweet 16, where clueless kids born into wealth throw lavish, over the top parties for themselves, were perversely hypnotic.

Television pushes 'the good life' on passive viewers 24 hours a day. I didn't like how quickly I became one of those slack-jawed vessels. It was scary looking in to the dark side, a skewed view of the world where everyone wants more everything as soon as possible.

Eventually we started to feel tainted by what we were seeing on our mass-indoctrination device. Advertising and excessive lifestyles - and damn the consequences - plus all the negative news, were like dystopic hallucinations.

We had to ask, "Is owning a television adding quality to our lives?" It did not take long to arrive at our answer - "No."

We changed our minds several times, but when it came time to retire our microwave recently, we garnered our bravery and gave away our TV at the same time. We are feeling much better now.

The time that has been freed up will be spent in activities that do add quality to our lives - listening to music, reading, cooking, napping, getting outside, singing and playing guitar, enjoying nature, gardening, and participating in real life with our friends, family and community.

"So, please, oh please, 

we beg, we pray,

go throw your TV set away, 

and in its place you can install, 

a lovely bookcase on the wall.  

~Roald Dahl