Imagine a world without branding
It isn’t easy even if you try. Because, ultimately, even though we don’t like to be manipulated, we will endure it if it’s done creatively.
EVER heard of subliminal advertising? Most likely you have.
The classic example of subliminal advertising is messages spliced into film. Usually simple orders like “Buy Cola, Thirsty”, or – in horror films – “Kill Kill Kill”, and the idea is that we don’t consciously perceive the message but subconsciously we do, and it affects us.
Subliminal advertising is illegal and viewed as unethical, so it’s not employed these days.
What studies have found is that subliminal messages like these can affect us, but not strongly. So that “Kill Kill Kill” message isn’t likely to cause anyone to kill anything at all. One study showed that subliminal messages designed to influence whether moviegoers drank water or iced tea had no effect on people who were very thirsty and had a strong preference toward a certain beverage. Who it did effect were people who weren’t thirsty who were asked to choose a drink. Presumably, these people didn’t really have their minds made up and their subconscious was affected by the subliminal message.
Subliminal messaging is illegal and unethical because it operates on some level we’re not aware of; the idea is we should be able to make up our own minds without being affected in the deeper submerged iceberg that is our subconscious. But isn’t that what advertising already does?
Long past are the days where advertising was simply a presenter outlining the reasons why buying Ronny’s Runners is better than buying Tommy’s Trainers. No, psychology is firmly implanted in the marketing of everything being sold to us now. The whole concept that brands sell a lifestyle is itself manipulation.
Instead of focusing on Ronny’s Runners having the best shoelaces available, we see Ronny stepping out of a helicopter, jogging along a beach before retiring to a yacht full of bikini-clad women. Selling Ronny’s Runners isn’t about the merits of the shoe, it’s about the life that buying that shoe is related too. And be sure, tapping into our subconscious desire for success, or our fear of failure, is a strong motivator.
Every choice a brand makes in its advertising is designed to make us feel a different way. Even colour choices are important. Red is bold, blue is sincere, green is competent – this is what we feel about these colours even if we don’t really know why.
Advertising is constantly appealing to Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs*. Most ads appeal to either our need for safety, love, or esteem in a bid to make us feel like purchasing whatever product is being sold. And again, fulfilling these needs is something we don’t necessarily choose, it’s something ingrained in each of us.
Watching American commentator and TV host Bill Maher this week, I thought that he made a great point about Facebook and smartphones in general: That the CEOs in Silicon Valley may present themselves as friendly, T-shirt-wearing nerds who want to make the world a better place but really, they’re all about creating habit-forming behaviours surrounding their products.
Your need to constantly check your likes on Instagram? That behaviour is the desired and planned response from the people running the app. Research says that the average person checks his or her phone 2,600 times a day, which is testimony that app creators are indeed creating a massive habit.
But this all goes back to something we have no control of: dopamine. Dopamine is released when eat, and when we have sex, and it is also released in drug use – which is what makes drugs so addictive. You know when else dopamine is released? When we learn something new, and when we receive likes on social media. So app creators are figuring out how to keep us jonesing for that dopamine fix by constantly checking their apps until it becomes a habit.
Because making something a habit is a great way to get people hooked on your product or service.
Just ask the people selling cigarettes. What’s interesting here is that companies are spending a massive amount of money using psychology to manufacture demand for products and services we don’t really need, and yet only subliminal advertising is deemed illegal and unethical.
Modern advertising is psychology, and it’s all operating on a much deeper level than just sharing the merits of a certain product with the public. But isn’t it all subliminal messaging? Isn’t it all triggering deep-seated emotions and feelings in our psyches that we can’t consciously control? So why then is subliminal advertising wrong but all the psychology that triggers our innate desires and needs fair play?
In my mind it seems like it’s wrong because of how crude it is. When we hear about that study showing how psychology is used to sell cars, we think, wow, that’s clever! When we hear that some theatre spliced the words “BUY DRINKS” into their movies in a bid to get people to, well, just buy drinks, we’re disgusted by how unimaginative the whole endeavour is.
Ultimately, we don’t like to be manipulated but we’ll endure it if it’s done creatively.
Now this is a stretch, but maybe we need to live in a world where there is no branding, no advertising, and no psychological manipulation to make us buy things. Yes, our grocery stores would look a lot more boring, but maybe instead of spending so much effort and resources trying to manipulate each other, we could spend it improving humanity.
A world without branding could be a very good one.
In 1943, American psychologist Abraham Maslow proposed that humans have needs that are arranged in a hierarchy, with some needs, such as physiological and safety needs, being more primitive or basic than others, such as social and ego needs.
Catch Jason Godfrey on Inspiring Homes on Life Inspired (Astro CH 728).