Mesmerizing Marketing

8/13/2019 Mesmerizing Marketing

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/mesmerizing-marketing 1/14

Mesmerizing marketing:a compact cultural history

Stephen BrownSchool of Marketing, Entrepreneurship and Strategy, University of Ulster,

Jordanstown, UK

AbstractPurpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the widely-held belief that marketing holdscustomers in thrall and persuades them to buy things they otherwise would not.Design/methodology/approach – Rather than adopt a scientic approach to the mesmericmarketing phenomenon, it embraces an artistic perspective, focusing on three crucial cultural“moments” in the emergence of the great manipulator mindset.Findings – Whereas innumerable scientic experiments show that subliminal advertising does not

work, except in certain circumstances, the cultural approach demonstrates that subliminals are, in fact,enormously successful. Regardless of scientic evidence to the contrary, most consumers believe thatsubliminal advertising not only works but is an established marketing practice.Practical implications – The paper suggests that marketers should place less reliance on thescientic paradigm. Marketing science has its place – a very important place – but not everything canbe captured in a simultaneous equation or linear regression model. Cultural components analysis is just as signicant as principal components analysis.Originality/value – Received wisdom concerning subliminal advertising is challenged andcreatively reinterpreted from a supra-science standpoint.Keywords Marketing, Advertising, Cultural studies, Marketing theory, Psychology,Individual psychologyPaper type General review

Up close and personalAbout 50 years ago, an uncontrolled marketing “experiment” was conducted by theCanadian Broadcasting Corporation. In the course of a popular current-affairsprogramme, Close-up, a subliminal message was ashed 352 times. Perhaps,unsurprisingly, given the enormous controversy that was raging in America at thetime, many of Close-up’s viewers reported an overwhelming urge to drink Coke and eatpopcorn. The only problem was that CBCs subliminal message did not mention soda orsnacks or indeed any kind of comestible. It said “Ring Now”. But nobody did. Canadiantelephone trafc showed no deviation from the norm and CBC received no unusualcalls from Close-up’s pre-programmed audience (Streatfeild, 2006).

Dubious methodology aside, the abject failure of CBCs “experiment” should come asno surprise. Subliminal advertising is one of the biggest MacGufns in the history of marketing (Rogers, 1992/1993). It has long been recognised that James Vicary’sadventures in persuasion – his infamous claim to have exposed 45,699 New Jerseycinema-goers to subliminal ads which caused 18.1 and 57.4 per cent increases in Cokeand popcorn sales, respectively, – never took place as described[1]. Five years after theinfamous “subliminal scare” of 1957-1958, Vicary confessed that his Coke/popcornconfection was a publicity stunt that got completely out of hand (Boese, 2002).Designed to promote his struggling market research agency, it careered out of controland morphed into a modern marketing myth, an urban legend on a par with

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available atwww.emeraldinsight.com/0955-534X.htm

EBR20,4

350

European Business ReviewVol. 20 No. 4, 2008pp. 350-363q Emerald Group Publishing Limited0955-534XDOI 10.1108/09555340810886611



early eighteenth century, who unashamedly indulged in buy-now-or-burn-in-hellpromotional stunts (Moore, 1994); or the notorious quack doctors of the seventeenth,with their purportedly palliative pills, potions, panaceas and purges (Porter, 2000); orindeed the Magi of the ancient Greek marketplace, who sold amulets, charms, magicspells and soothsaying services like there was no tomorrow (Brown, 1998), thepreternaturally persuasive power of the pitchperson has long been recognised(and feared) by consumers (Friedman, 2004).

However, the belief that one person, or group of people, can subliminallyinuence/shape/determine the behaviour of others, owes much to the career of FranzAnton Mesmer (1734-1815), an experiential marketer avant la lettre (Watereld, 2002).Aptly described as the “Wizard from Vienna”, mesmer was a highly respected memberof bourgeois society. A fully qualied medical doctor, with a protable upper-crustpractice, he married into money and was a patron of the avant-garde arts (oneWolfgang Amadeus Mozart, in particular). Until fate intervened just before his fatefulfortieth birthday.

A friend of the family, Francisca Oesterlin, was suffering from a particularlydebilitating form of nervous prostration, which no amount of bleeding, purging orblistering could alleviate. Observing the ebb and ow of her attacks, Mesmermaintained that she was aficted by an imbalance in “animal magnetism”, an invisibleforce eld, akin to gravitation, that suffused the entire cosmos and all its componentparts. Magnetism, fortunately, provided a means of channelling this universal “uid”and by passing a pair of magnets over Ms Oesterlin, Mesmer was able to induce arelaxed, trace-like state, stimulate violent cathartic convulsions and thereby effect alasting cure. He “mesmerised” her, in other words (Forrest, 1999).

Anton, admittedly, was not the rst to recognise the therapeutic value of strokingmedicine, autosuggestion and what was later termed “hypnotism” (Meyer, 1980)[4].But he was the rst to offer a formal theoretical explanation, the rst to place the

phenomenon on a scientic basis and the rst to seek the approval of the medicalestablishment. The last of these, unfortunately, was not forthcoming, despite Mesmer’slong line of satised customers, since the very idea of invisible universal uids wasconsidered much too close to quackery for comfort. As the procedure also involvedsuspiciously intimate relationships between (male) doctor and (female) patient, it wasmorally questionable to boot. Indeed, when a nubile patient of Mesmer’s, MariaTheresa Paradies, refused to leave his care and return to her parents as instructed, theensuing scandal forced the Herr Doctor to high-tail it out of Vienna.

By the time the defrocked physician reached Paris, his animal magnetism roadshowhad added an all-important element of marketing, of hyperbole, of razzamatazz (Brown,2008). The magnets were abandoned for a “mesmerising” stare, elaborate hand wavingexercises and a singularly striking pose, which can only be described as akin to acongenital constipation sufferer caught in the moment of realisation that Ex-Laxworks. Happily untroubled by low self-esteem, furthermore, the perfumed, periwigged,purple-clad peacock took the city by storm. Such was the popularity of his therapeuticsalon – an eighteenth century combination of the Betty Ford Clinic, Walt DisneyWorld and the Four Seasons Hotel – that Mesmer was forced to develop a system of mass therapy, a kind of proto-production line. This consisted of several baquet ,enclosed wooden boxes lled with “magnetised” water, the healing power of whichwas transmitted by protruding metal rods. Padded “crisis rooms” were set up for

EBR20,4

352



individuals unable to control their baquet -induced convulsions. Musicalaccompaniment was provided by pianoforte and the “glass harmonica”, a contraptionconsisting of half-lled bowls of water that emitted musical notes when struck. Theconstantly-circulating consultant-in-chief armed himself with a healing “wand”, whichpole-axed passing patients when pointed in their general direction. And severalhandsome pre-operatives prepared the mainly female clientele by staring meaningfullyinto their eyes and gently stroking their . . . well, you get the picture[5].

Not content with staggering nancial success and enormous popular acclaim,Mesmer wished to have his system endorsed by the scientic establishment. Afterextensive political manoeuvring by a well-connected protege, Alain Delson, a royalcommission was set up in 1789 and charged with investigating the animal magnetismoutbreak. This twelve-man task force was headed by Benjamin Franklin, then USambassador to France, and included such luminaries as Guillotin and Lavoisier(the latter had an unfortunate brush with the former’s famous mechanism ve yearslater). Empiricists, rationalists and sceptics to a man, the commission allowedthemselves to be mesmerised (unsuccessfully), spent long hours roped together at abaquet (without so much as a twitch, let alone a convulsion), and conducted variousexperiments on patients known to be particularly strong conductors of animalmagnetism (they fell into trances when misinformed that a mesmerist was present andfailed to respond when an exponent was hidden behind a paper screen). It concludedthat while healing unquestionably occurred, this was not due to animal magnetism butto “the imagination” of the patients (Gould, 1991).

Look deep into my eyesAlthough Anton Mesmer’s brilliantly successful method fell at the rst scientichurdle, rejection by the medical establishment did not inhibit its development. Quitethe opposite. The nineteenth century in certain respects was the century of Mesmerism.As Winter (1998) shows in her comprehensive study of mind control in Victoriansociety, countless practitioners of the ignoble art followed in the Wizard from Vienna’sfootsteps. Particularly noteworthy in this regard were the Marquis de Puysegur, whoeschewed elaborate hand movements when inducing the mesmeric trance and effectedcures without cathartic convulsions; John Elliottson, who promoted mesmerism inEngland by means of a dedicated periodical, The Zoist , only to be forced out of hisprofessorship at University College Hospital; James Esailade, who mesmerisedelephantiasis sufferers in imperial India and then performed eye-watering operationson their unanaesthetised scrota; James Braid, who not only coined the term“hypnotism” but also abandoned Mesmer’s physical explanation of the patients’soporic state for a psychological one; and Jean Martin Charcourt, who specialised inthe treatment of hysteria, that peculiarly Victorian condition, and one of whosestudents, Sigmund Freud, went on to greater things (Miller, 1995).

The apotheosis of nineteenth century mind control, however, was the so-calledTrilby phenomenon (Purcell, 1977). In 1894, George Du Maurier, a cartoonist andillustrator for Punch magazine, dashed off the notorious novel. To his own (and hispublisher’s) immense surprise it instantly became an enormous bestseller, not only inGreat Britain and the USA, but throughout the civilised world[6]. It raced throughnumerous reprints (seven in the rst year alone), was quickly adapted for stage andscreen (at one point 24 separate companies were touring the show) and, although exact

Mesmerizingmarketing

353



sales gures are hard to ascertain (due to pirated editions and lax copyrightprotection), Du Maurier’s pot-boiler is widely considered to be the best-selling novel of the nineteenth century and (thanks to the rise of circulating libraries) by far the mostwidely read (Pick, 2000).

Trilby tells the tale of three British bohemians in 1850s Paris, who are entranced byan Irish artist’s model, Trilby O’Ferrall. Despite her decidedly racy background – scandalously, she poses in “the altogether” – one of the British bohemians, Little Billie,falls madly in love with the saucy minx and wishes to make an honest woman out of her. But as Ms O’Ferrall is an eminently unsuitable match for the upper-middle classman about town, she is persuaded to do the decent thing by his understandablychagrined relatives. The tart with a heart of gold nobly spurns Little Billie’s love-struckadvances, much to her unsuitable suitor’s heart-wrenching regret.

So far, so melodramatic. However, the real twist in the tale – the twist that turnedTrilby into a masterpiece of manipul-lit – transpires on Trilby O’Ferrall’s reappearance.Endowed with a singularly sonorous voice, if unable to carry a tune, Trilby re-emergesas La Svengali, an operatic diva whose astonishing musical prowess is the talk of Western Europe. Her nightingale-like trills hold spellbound listeners in thrall, albeitTrilby herself is under the spell of Svengali, a malevolent mesmerist, whose hypnoticpowers of persuasion are the source of the soprano’s unearthly talent. Standing at theside of the stage, Svengali coaxes High Cs out of his melodious creation, until thedreadful day when he dies unexpectedly! Trilby immediately loses her operatic ability,performs disastrously during her grand London debut and, her stellar reputation inutter ruins, duly expires from nervous prostration. Her last words, naturally, are“Svengali . . . Svengali . . . Svengali” (Du Maurier, 1994, p. 261).

Laughable though the cliche-ridden story seems at this remove in time, it isimpossible to overstate Trilby’s impact on the late-Victorian psyche (Pick, 1994). Just asthe ctional heroine mesmerised her rapt audiences, so too Du Maurier’s mega-selling

novel hypnotised western society. It was the Harry Potter of its day[7]. Apart from thestupendous sales of the book itself and its massively successful theatrical adaptations,the world went wild for Trilbyana. Countless newspaper and magazine articles werewritten about Trilby and its self-effacing author. Copy-cat novels and egregiousparodies soon appeared. A mind-boggling array of tie-in merchandise – hats, shoes,sweets, sausages, soaps, toothpastes, brooches, hearth-brushes, kitchen implements,ice-cream sundaes, to name but a few – were sold by make-a-quick-buck marketers.There were public performances of the music mentioned in the novel; Trilby waltzesand Svengali marches were written and performed; numerous stage magicians adoptedthe Svengali moniker and captivated audiences with their demonstrations of Mesmerism. Earnest academics held colloquia to debate the themes in Du Maurier’spage-turner. Learned medical journals praised him for capturing the essence of thehypnotic trance. The virtue of the heroine – was she molested by her Machiavellianmanipulator? – was much debated in salons and at soirees the world over. Preachersponticated from their pulpits on the moral lessons of the immoral novel and thehellish consequences for its protagonist. A new town in Florida named itself after thetragic heroine (its attractions included Svengali Square and Little Billee Lake).The original manuscript was placed on public display by the London Fine ArtsSociety, where crowds queued round the block to see the holy artefact in its lockedglass case. The author, furthermore, was inundated with fan mail, he was accused of

EBR20,4

354



plagiarism, he was sued by litigious artists who recognised unattering portraits of themselves and, according to his friend Henry James, he was harried to an early graveby the outcry that accompanied his bestseller. Du Maurier died less than two yearsafter publication (Lodge, 2004).

Trilbyana did not expire with its creator, though. To the contrary, Du Maurier’suntimely end merely added to his allure, as is often the case in the cultural industries.Trilby hats continue to slip in and out of fashion – they are very much in at present,thanks to Justin Timberlake, Pete Doherty and Daniel Day-Lewis among others – andthe story is constantly retold in various cinematic and theatrical forms[8]. Moresignicantly from a marketing perspective, the notion of a malign, manipulative,Svengali-like gure is deeply entrenched in our collective unconscious (Pick, 2000).Whether it be pop music (Elvis’s Colonel Parker, Led Zeppelin’s Peter Grant, SpiceGirls’ Simon Fuller, Pop Idol ’s Simon Cowell) or politics (Tony Blair’s Peter Mandelson,George W. Bush’s Karl Rove, Adolf Hitler’s Joseph Goebbels) or indeed the oakenboardrooms of big business (charismatic CEOs like Steve Jobs, Jack Welch, ConradBlack, Martha Stewart, who hold whole companies spellbound) the concept of acommanding, conniving, coercive controller is a stock gure of our time (Booker, 2004).

The hidden ipersuadersAs the Mesmer scandal and Trilby episode artfully illustrate, we have long been inthrall to the idea that we are in thrall to a powerful other[9]. And nowhere is this belief in an “alien enchanter” better illustrated than in the Coke/popcorn panic of the late1950s, when marketing was elevated to the role of manipulator-in-chief. In this regard,it is noteworthy that when the second edition of The Hidden Persuaders was publishedin the early 1980s, Vance Packard admitted his book’s success was almost entirely dueto the associated subliminals scare. Intriguingly, kooky though the bulk of the bookproved to be, it was his scary description of “sub-threshold” effects – supplied by aparticularly engaging informant, one James Vicary! – that lit the blue touch paper of bestsellerdom.

Better yet, if somewhat ironically, the great subliminals scare did wonders for theadvertising industry. Demand for motivation research soared in the aftermath of Packard’s polemic (Hine, 1999). Ernest Dichter, no less, wrote to the outspoken authorthanking him for the additional business his shock-horror expose had stimulated.A bemused sociology professor reported that whereas 10 per cent of his class werehorried by Packard’s revelations, 60 per cent planned to pursue a career in subliminaladvertising (Horowitz, 1994). Indeed, it is arguable that Packard’s attack did more tospread the idea that marketing was an all-powerful persuader – the be-all-and-end-allof business – than any number of contemporary studies on the benets of customer-centricity (Keith, 1960; Levitt, 1960a; McKitterick, 1957). He endowedmarketers with superhuman powers, powers that marketers did not actually possessbut were prepared to pretend they did, especially when it came to selling services toimpressionable clients.

The idea of subliminal advertising, then, quickly entered the pantheon of post-warconspiracy theory (McConnachie and Tudge, 2005). Alongside the inexplicableassassination of JFK, the suspicious death of Marilyn Monroe, the manifest fakery of the American moon landings, the Roswell Incident, the Philadelphia experiment, theGemstone le, the Trilateral Commission and countless other outpourings of the


355



conspiracy-industrial-complex, subliminal persuasion was as much part of the 1960scounterculture as long hair, ared jeans, hippie beads, hallucinogenic drugs, tie-dyeT-shirts and open air rock festivals, man (Thompson, 2008).

What’s more, just as hippie chic comes back into fashion every decade or so, toosubliminal advertising rears its hideous head on a regular basis (Moore, 1982, 1992).In the 1970s, for example, a Canadian marketing academic called Wilson Bryan Keynoticed that the word S-E-X was secretly embedded in magazine ads for Gilbey’s Gin.He also spotted penises sprouting on packs of Camel cigarettes, to say nothing of nakedbreasts, heaving buttocks and unnatural acts involving donkeys in Howard Johnson’srestaurant menus. As if that were not enough to be getting along with, he furtherinformed his aghast/agog public that an unspeakably erogenous expression appearedno less than twelve times on every single Ritz cracker.

Crackers, clearly, was a word widely used in connection with key, though that didnot stop him writing four books on subliminal seduction, all of them huge bestsellers(Key, 1973, 1977, 1981, 1989). Nor did it stop the subliminal debate re-emerging in

the 1980s, albeit this time in the form of self-help tapes, which contain sub-audiblemessages designed to assist listeners’ attempts to lose weight, stop smoking, increasecondence, improve memory and more besides. Yet despite substantial scienticevidence that tapes do not work, the market quickly grew to an estimated $50 millionper year (Pratkanis, 1992). Whether these self-help sales were boosted by associatedsubliminal advertising – Do not drink Coke! Do not eat popcorn! – we will probablynever know.

What we do know is that, the 1990s saw another iteration of the subliminalscontroversy, this time courtesy of Judas Priest (Streatfeild, 2006). When two Nevadateenagers committed suicide after listening to the band’s brand of heavy metal, it wasalleged that one of the tracks on their album stained class contained the hiddenmessage, “Do It”. This was what tipped the drink- and drug-fuelled youngsters overthe edge. A much-publicised court case ensued and, with the assistance or numerousexpert witnesses (key included), the testimony covered everything from Vicary’spopcorn experiments to the rumours that leading rock bands slip scary satanicmessages onto their best-selling albums. After several weeks of televised courtroomconfrontation, during which key confessed to seeing sexually explicit subliminals onthe ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, between the pages of sears mail order catalogue (andmany more beside), Judge Whitehead ruled that subliminal persuasion, if not quite acrock, was pretty close to a crock.

Whitehead’s ruling did not make a blind bit of difference, however. As with ofcialcondemnation of Mesmer, Du Maurier and Vicary’s popcorn palaver, the more apractice is condemned by the establishment, the more popular it becomes. Thus,the “backmasking” controversy is still alive and well in the rap music community,where leading recording artistes stand accused of including subliminal allusions toupscale brands and advertising slogans. Subliminal self-help tapes are still goingstrong, though these days it is CDs and digital downloads and computer programmesthat zap mouse potatoes as they surf and scarf. Shock-horror books are still beingpublished on seductive subliminal advertising campaigns and real-world controversieserupt on a regular basis (as when the word RATS was ashed during a RepublicanParty ad for George W. Bush).

EBR20,4

356



The current decade, what is more, is witnessing a worrying twist in theinexorable subliminals spiral (Taylor, 2004). Not only is the scientic evidence nallycatching up with cultural conviction – albeit the success of subliminal priming fallsfar short of out-and-out persuasion (Bargh, 2002, 2007) – but a whole new“cybliminal” strain has also come to the fore. As everyone knows and fears, theworld wide web is full of endish phishers, who are conspiring to steal our identities,buy luxury goods at our behest, visit pornographic XXX-rated web sites while, wesleep and run up massive credit cards bills which hang round our innocent neckslike virtual albatrosses. The subliminal advertisers of the 1950s may have persuadedconsumers to buy what they did not want, but at least the unwitting customers gotto keep the merchandise. Nowadays we end up paying for stuff – and suffer thecollateral credit-rating consequences – without so much as a glance at the goodies.Our computers, likewise, are no longer under our personal control, thanks to sneakytrojans like the Storm virus that are linked to collective spam farms in the Caucasusor wherever. It would not be too long surely before television programming insecond life is interrupted by subliminal ads and a bonkers academic sees S-E-Xembedded on Linden dollars, billboards, Ritz crackers, et cetera. Do avatars dream of cybernetic sheep?

Subliminal schlbiminalCybliminal persuasion may or may not represent the next big outbreak of alienenchanter panic – much depends on whether governments continue to treatunencrypted personal data in a cavalier manner – but it is fair to infer that somethingsimilar will appear on the mesmeric marketing horizon. The archetypal idea of an evilwizard, someone who possesses superhuman powers and persuades people do whatthey otherwise would not, is very deeply engrained in the collective unconscious (Pick,2000). It nds expression in innumerable narrative forms from Satan and Shylock toSvengali and Osama bin Laden (not forgetting Sauron, Steerpike, Snape, the Sith, tosay nothing of the superego-shackled Freudian id).

In archetypal terms, subliminal persuasion is the commercial equivalent of Saddam,Stalin and similar Big Brothers. And it follows that no matter how many studies“prove” subliminal advertising does not work, or is a fairly minor inuence onconsumer behaviour, the belief in subliminals, or something very similar, is nevergoing to go away. Scientic refutations only serve to fuel the ames, in fact, becausethe results simply serve to bring the topic to the public’s attention once again and aresubject to classic conspiratorial counter-argument, “they would say that, wouldn’tthey?”

Perhaps, it is time to admit that subliminal advertising does work. It may not workin a strictly scientic sense, as the CBC “experiment” showed 50 years ago andcountless carefully conducted experiments have shown since (Broyles, 2006)[10].Nevertheless, it works in a cultural sense. Popular culture is replete with references tosubliminal persuasion, whether it be the X-Files or The Simpsons or Fight Club or,heaven preserve us, Josie and the Pussycats (Archer, 2000). Retail stores reputedlyemploy subaudible messages to deter shoplifters (presumably pet shops do somethingsimilar with dog whistles) and state penitentiaries in America allegedly use them toquell criminal impulses (and no doubt to discourage breakouts, escape tunnelconstruction and riots in Cell Block No, 9). Studies have shown that more than


357



80 per cent of the US population is aware of subliminal advertising and 68 per centbelieve it is employed by the necromancers of Madison Avenue (Bargh, 2002; Broyles,2006; Twitchell, 1996). Marketers routinely exploit this customer conviction throughtongue-in-cheek references to subliminal persuasion. Less than nine months after theoriginal subliminal scare, Butternut coffee was spoong the effect on Americantelevision. In the 1990s, Seagram ran a series of award-winning ads with S-E-Ximpregnated ice cubes and similar “hidden pleasures”. No so long ago, sprite wasparodying the hidden persuaders patter in its Sublymonal Advertising campaign(“lymon” being a neologistic combination of “lime” and “lemon”).

Indeed, ads about subliminal advertising are particularly effective because theyatter the audience and co-opt their seen-it-all, cannot-fool-me cynicism. They say, ineffect, we know you are marketing savvy, we know you are cool and smart and hip andstylish, we know you are not the kind of person who did succumb to subliminals, evenif they did exist. And so are we. Now buy our product, please! They are, in manyrespects, the epitome of post-modern marketing insofar as they og the uff of marketers’ naval-gazing (Brown, 1995).

They also – and this is arguably the most important point about the controversysince Close-up encouraged Canadian consumers to call – illustrate the existentialdilemma at the heart of marketing. The vast majority of marketing educators,researchers, executives, spokespersons, thought-leaders and what have you continue tosee the subject in scientic or proto-scientic terms (Svensson and Wood, 2006). Thereality, however, is that marketing is not a science and never will be. What it really is amassive and enormously inuential cultural formation, akin to the music business orthe lm industry. It should be viewed, interpreted, understood and written about incultural terms (Holt, 2003; Schroeder and Salzer-Mo¨rling, 2005). Marketing scientistscan pooh-pooh subliminal persuasion till the cows come home humming “I’m lovin it”,but the cultural proof is unassailable.

Subliminal persuasion is just the tip of the cultural iceberg, furthermore. Many of today’s anti-capitalist protesters maintain that marketing is an alien enchanter, fullstop. Marketers, they believe, employ their nefarious wiles (subliminal embedsincluded) to foist sugary snacks on innocent children, induce body-image anxietyamong impressionable adolescents and encourage shopaholic, binge-drinking, junkfood-lled adults to buy unnecessary brand name goods (Zuboff and Maxmin, 2003).Marketers, they contend, are malevolent wizards who possess special powers, are quiteprepared to use them and, despite the caring-sharing facade, remain utterly ruthless intheir pursuit of prots (Mark and Pearson, 2001). Marketers, they maintain, enchant,enthral, tempt and torture their victims with alluring images of the good life, therebyencouraging consumers to sell their souls to the devil (or acquire a Satanic plastic card,at least).

Professional marketers, naturally, beg to differ. Marketing, we counter, is customerfocussed, caring-sharing, socially responsible, environmentally friendly, bound bydraconian codes of conduct, etc. Yet however much we protest our innocence it isalmost impossible to escape marketing’s allotted archetypal niche. Half a century onfrom the subliminal scare of 1957-1958, marketing still stands accused of egregiouslymanipulative behaviour. Despite overwhelming proof that subliminal advertising doesnot work, the belief that marketers possess secret weapons of mass persuasionis irrevocably embedded in consumer consciousness. Marketing, for many people,

EBR20,4

358



is a modern day mesmerist, akin to the eponymous eighteenth century physician andthe ctional yet deeply inuential Svengali gure of the nineteenth. Marketing is theMesmer of materialism, the Svengali of shopping addiction, the Simon Cowell of consumer society.

That being the case, perhaps it is also time to admit that marketing is not just themesmerizer it is the mesmerized as well. Just as Svengali was enthralled by thecrystal-voiced creature he had created, and just as Mesmer was obsessed withobtaining ofcial recognition for his therapeutic system, so too marketing is captivatedby the idea of customer centricity, it is in thrall to the rigorous requirements of properscience, it is mesmerised by the notion that marketing is A good thing (a view that, toput it charitably, is not shared by society as a whole). About 50 years on from the greatsubliminal scare, maybe it is time to snap out of our scientistic trance. Maybe it is timeto accept that marketing scholarship is suffering from a severe case of autosuggestion,self-hypnosis, intellectual somnambulism. Maybe it is time to break the spell of Ted Levitt’s subliminals-precipitated marketing concept. Maybe it is time to accept

that marketing is not actually about myopia, it is about mesmerization.

Notes1. In early 1958, a student from Hofsra University checked out Vicary’s story (Rogers,

1992/1993). The owner of the New Jersey cinema where the alleged experiments took placeknew nothing whatsoever about them and indeed the auditorium was simply too small toprovide the 45,000-plus sample size that Vicary claimed. Vicary also claimed to have a patentpending on the mechanical device that projected the subliminal messages – hence hisreluctance to reveal the nitty-gritty details of his exhaustive research – but searches of thepatent ofce archives reveal no such application (Streatfeild, 2006). The curious thing aboutthe whole kafufe, the thing that no one noticed, is that the subliminals-salted movie wascalled Picnic. And, yes, its central scene comprised a slap-up, al fresco eating and drinkingoccasion! Perhaps, the uplift in Coke and popcorn sales had more to do with the actual moviethan the alleged embeds.

2. Lest there is any confusion, it must be stressed that the phenomenon of unconsciousprocessing had long been recognised by cognitive scientists (LeDoux, 1996; Oatley and Jenkins, 1996). What is more, some very interesting research on subliminal priming iscurrently in train (Bargh, 2002, 2007). There are big differences, nevertheless, betweenprocessing, priming and persuasion.

3. As epitomised by the inter-war critic Benjamin (1973), cultural research methods often focuson the unique, the idiographic, the individual incident or artwork that illuminates the whole.This is, in many ways, a reformulation of the old, pre-scientic idea that the part contains thewhole, that the universal is in the particular and vice-versa. Such ideas are a commonplace inbusiness and management – case studies, for example – though they are rarely celebratedoutside the interpretive research paradigm (Holbrook, 1995).

4. A particularly important precursor was Valentine Greatrakes (1628-1683), an Irish faithhealer who cured by the laying on of hands.

5. Nothing if not public-spirited, Mesmer also magnetised several nearby trees so that theindigent could grab one of many dangling ropes and get their magnetic inux for free, albeiten plein air . Indeed, an enraptured acionado of the great man’s system suggested that, theheadwaters of the Seine be magnetised at source, thereby ensuring that the entire Pays deFrance beneted from Mesmer’s remarkable medical breakthrough!


359



6. Trilby , incidentally, was the very rst novel to top the very rst bestsellers list, published byThe Bookman in February 1895 (Purcell, 1977).

7. A rerun in many respects of Trilby -mania, even down to the alien enchanter gure,Lord Voldemort, the Harry Potter books are by far the biggest sellers of our time. They have

a mesmeric hold on the reading public, as the pandemonium on publication day bearswitness. They have been turned into monster hit movies (and computer games, theme parks,soundtrack albums, etc). They have incited court cases, plagiarism suits, innumerablemagazine articles and television programmes, hellre and brimstone sermons and a moundof tie-in merchandise, everything from candy wands to whooshing broomsticks. Countlesscash-in, copy-cat and para-parody publications have appeared and the author has beenplagued by rabid fans and paparazzi alike. Earnest academics organise colloquia on thereception and mythopoetics of the bedazzling boy wizard. Perhaps, the most striking parallelbetween the two is that Harry Potter, like its Victorian forebear, is self-reexive, insofar as itanticipates its own reception. Just as the hypnotised singer had a mesmeric hold on heraudiences, so too Harry Potter presupposes Harry Potter’s enormous popularity. The veryrst page of the very rst book states that Harry is a world-famous wizard, which is exactlywhat he turned out to be.

8. For example, The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux (serialised in Le Gaulois,1909-1910) was directly inspired by Du Maurier’s original.

9. Most notably the “little devil” that’s supposed to sit on our shoulder, urging us to overeat,overindulge and generally succumb to temptation. Meanwhile, the cherubic angel that is ourconscience squats on the other shoulder, begging us to resist, to refrain, to reconsider,usually unsuccessfully.

10. In this regard, consider David Letterman’s celebrated talk-show confession, “I don’t believein subliminal advertising. Then again, I went shopping yesterday and bought a combineharvester!”

ReferencesArcher, B. (2000), “Blink and you’ll miss it”, The Guardian , 4 February, p. 13.Bargh, J.A. (2002), “Losing consciousness: automatic inuences on consumer judgment,

behavior, and motivation”, Journal of Consumer Research , Vol. 29, pp. 280-5.Bargh, J.A. (2007), Social Psychology and the Unconscious: The Automaticity of Higher Mental

Processes , Psychology Press, New York, NY.Benjamin, W. (1973), Illuminations , Fontana, London.Boese, A. (2002), The Museum of Hoaxes , Orion, London.Booker, C. (2004), The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories , Continuum, London.Brown, S. (1995), Postmodern Marketing , Routledge, London.Brown, S. (1998), “Tore down a la Rimbaud: illuminating the marketing imaginary”, in Brown, S.

et al. (Eds), Romancing the Market , Routledge, London, pp. 22-40.

Brown, S. (2001), Marketing – The Retro Revolution , Sage, London.Brown, S. (2008), Fail Better! Stumbling to Success in Sales & Marketing , Cyan, London.Broyles, S.J. (2006), “Subliminal advertising and the perpetual popularity of playing to people’s

paranoia”, Journal of Consumer Affairs , Vol. 40 No. 2, pp. 392-406.Burnett, T. (2005), Conspiracy Encyclopedia: The Encyclopedia of Conspiracy Theories , Collins &

Brown, London.Cooper, J. and Cooper, G. (2002), “Subliminal motivation: a story revisited”, Journal of Applied

Social Psychology, Vol. 32 No. 11, pp. 2213-27.

EBR20,4

360



De Graaf, J., Wann, D. and Naylor, T.H. (2005), Afuenza: The All-consuming Epidemic ,Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco, CA.

Du Maurier, G. (1994), Trilby , Penguin Classics, London.Forrest, D. (1999), The Evolution of Hypnotism , Black Ace Books, Forfar.Friedman, W.A. (2004), Birth of a Salesman: The Transformation of Selling in America , Harvard

University Press, Cambridge.Gould, S.J. (1991), “The chain of reason versus the chain of thumbs”, in Gould, S.J. (Ed.), Bully for

Brontosaurus: Reections in Natural History , Hutchinson, London, pp. 182-97.Halberstam, D. (1993), The Fifties , Ballentine Books, New York, NY.Hine, T. (1999), Populuxe: From Tailns and TV Dinners to Barbie Dolls and Fallout Shelters ,

MJF Books, New York, NY.Holbrook, M.B. (1995), Consumer Research: Introspective Essays on the Study of Consumption ,

Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA.Holt, D.B. (2003), “What becomes an icon most?”, Harvard Business Review , Vol. 81 No. 3, pp. 43-9.

Horowitz, D. (1994), Vance Packard and American Social Criticism , University of North CarolinaPress, Chapel Hill, NC. James, O. (2007), Afuenza: How to be Successful and Stay Sane , Vermilion, London.Keith, R.J. (1960), “The marketing revolution”, Journal of Marketing , Vol. 24, pp. 35-8.Key, W.B. (1973), Subliminal Seduction: Ad Media’s Manipulation of a Not So Innocent America ,

Signet, New York, NY.Key, W.B. (1977), Media Sexploitation , Signet, New York, NY.Key, W.B. (1981), The Clam-Plate Orgy and Other Subliminal Techniques for Manipulating Your

Behavior , Signet, New York, NY.Key, W.B. (1989), The Age of Manipulation: The Con in Condence, the Sin in Sincere , Madison

Books, Lanham, MD.

Klein, N. (2000), No-Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies , HarperCollins, London.Lasn, K. (1999), Culture Jam: How to Reverse America’s Suicidal Consumer Binge – And Why We

Must , Quill, New York, NY.LeDoux, J. (1996), The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life ,

Touchstone, New York, NY.Levitt, T. (1960a), “Marketing myopia”, Harvard Business Review , Vol. 38 No. 4, pp. 45-56.Levitt, T. (1960b), “M-R snake dance”, Harvard Business Review , Vol. 38 No. 6, pp. 76-84.Lodge, D. (2004), Author, Author: A Novel , Secker & Warburg, London.McConnachie, J. and Tudge, R. (2005), The Rough Guide to Conspiracy Theories , Rough Guides,

London.McKitterick, J.B. (1957), “What is the marketing management concept?”, in Bass, F.M. (Ed.),

The Frontiers of Marketing Thought and Science , American Marketing Association,Chicago, IL, pp. 71-82.

Mark, M. and Pearson, C.S. (2001), The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary BrandsThrough the Power of Archetypes , McGraw-Hill, New York, NY.

Meyer, D. (1980), The Positive Thinkers: Religion as Pop Psychology from Mary Baker Eddy toOral Roberts , Pantheon, New York, NY.

Miller, J. (1995), “Going unconcious”, in Silvers, R.B. (Ed.), Hidden Histories of Science , Granta,London, pp. 1-35.


361



Moore, R.L. (1994), Selling God: American Religion in the Marketplace of Culture , OxfordUniversity Press, Oxford.

Moore, T.E. (1982), “Subliminal advertising: what you see is what you get”, Journal of Marketing ,Vol. 46 No. 1, pp. 38-47.

Moore, T.E. (1992), “Subliminal perception: facts and fallacies”, Skeptical Inquirer , Vol. 17,pp. 273-81.

Oatley, K. and Jenkins, J.M. (1996), Understanding Emotions , Blackwell, Oxford.Packard, V. (1957), The Hidden Persuaders , David McKay, New York, NY.Pick, D. (1994), “Introduction”, in du Maurier, G. (Ed.), Trilby , Penguin Classics, London,

pp. vii-xiii.Pick, D. (2000), Svengali’s Web: The Alien Enchanter in Modern Culture , Yale University Press,

New Haven, CT.Porter, R. (2000), Quacks: Fakers and Charlatans in English Medicine , Tempus, Stroud.Poundstone, W. (1993), Biggest Secrets: More Uncensored Truth About all Sorts of Stuff you are

Never Supposed to Know , Quill, New York, NY.Pratkanis, A.R. (1992), “The cargo-cult science of subliminal persuasion”, Skeptical Inquirer ,Vol. 17, pp. 260-72.

Purcell, L.E. (1977), “Trilby and Trilby-mania”, Journal of Popular Culture , Vol. 11 No. 1,pp. 62-76.

Rogers, M. (1985), “Subliminal advertising: the battle of popular versus the scholarly views”,in Hollander, S.C. and Nevett, T. (Eds), Marketing in the Long Run: Proceedings of theSecond Workshop on Historical Research in Marketing , Michigan State University,East Lansing, MI, pp. 69-82.

Rogers, S. (1992/1993), “How a publicity blitz created the myth of subliminal advertising”, Public Relations Quarterly , Vol. 37, pp. 12-17.

Rushkoff, D. (1999), Coercion: The Persuasion Professionals and Why We Listen to What TheySay, Little, Brown, London.Schroeder, J.E. and Salzer-Mo¨rling, M. (2005), “Introduction: the cultural codes of branding”,

in Schroeder, J.E. and Salzer-Mo¨rling, M. (Eds), Brand Culture , Routledge, London,pp. 1-12.

Streatfeild, D. (2006), Brainwash: The Secret History of Mind Control , Hodder, London.Svensson, G. and Wood, G. (2006), “The Pareto plus syndrome in top marketing journals:

research and journal criteria”, European Business Review , Vol. 18 No. 6, pp. 457-67.Taylor, K. (2004), Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control , Oxford University Press,

Oxford.Thompson, D. (2008), Counterknowledge: How We Surrendered to Conspiracy Theories, Quack

Medicine, Bogus Science and Fake History , Atlantic, London.Twitchell, J.B. (1996), Adcult USA: The Triumph of Advertising in American Culture , ColumbiaUniversity Press, New York, NY.

Watereld, R. (2002), Hidden Depths: The Story of Hypnosis , Macmillan, Basingstoke.Winter, A. (1998), Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain , University of Chicago Press,

Chicago, IL.Zuboff, S. and Maxmin, J. (2003), The Support Economy: Why Corporations are Failing

Individuals and the Next Episode of Capitalism , Allen Lane, London.

EBR20,4

362



Further readingGalbraith, J.K. (1958), The Afuent Society , Penguin, Harmondsworth.

About the authorStephen Brown is a best known for Postmodern Marketing, he has written numerous booksincluding Fail Better, Free Gift Inside, Writing Marketing and Wizard: Harry Potter’s Brand Magic. He is a Professor of Marketing Research at the University of Ulster, his papers have beenpublished in the Harvard Business Review, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Research ,and many more. Further details are available from his web site: www.sfxbrown.com.Stephen Brown can be contacted at: [email protected]


363

To purchase reprints of this article please e-mail: [email protected] visit our web site for further details: www.emeraldinsight.com/reprints

Mesmerizing Marketing

Documents

Transcript of Mesmerizing Marketing