Still lurking: The hidden persuaders

New Thinking

Near the beginning of "The Hidden Persuaders" (1957), Vance Packard quoted from Advertising Age magazine the first principle of the new science of motivation research: "In very few instances do people really know what they want, even when they say they do." Fifty years later, this astounding revelation has begun to penetrate mainstream economic theory. Better late than never.

American political ideology since around 1980 can pretty much be summed up in four words: markets good, government bad. Unregulated competition, in this view, is optimally efficient; governments need only enforce contracts, tend to national security, and then step out of the way. Neoclassical economics demonstrates with mathematical elegance that, if not interfered with, supply and demand, production and consumption, will glide smoothly toward a stable equilibrium.

But any proof is only as good as the assumptions it rests on. According to conventional economics and political science, consumers and voters can be counted on to make rational choices. "The assumption that we are rational," writes MIT economics professor Dan Ariely, "implies that in everyday life, we compute the value of all the options we face and then follow the best possible path." It also implies that we have sufficient information to make a wise decision, and that the context in which we decide doesn't matter - deciders are always calm and objective. It implies, as incoming Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein and University of Chicago economist Richard Thaler put it, that we are "Econs" rather than "Humans."

We're not, of course, as wise humans (and wily advertisers) have always known. A new sub-discipline called "behavioral economics" has begun to quantify this perennial intuition and assess its implications. Two engaging, enlightening new books divide these tasks. "Predictably Irrational" describes some of the research leading economists to modify many standard assumptions. "Nudge" turns these insights to account, suggesting improved strategies for individual decision-making and public policy.


Kansas, Or A Seattle Suburb?

At Mercer High School, two teachers -- Val Foubert and Jim Wichterman -- generated regular parental thunderstorms by teaching their students to challenge societal norms and question all manner of authority.  Foubert, who died recently, taught English.  His texts were cutting edge: "Atlas Shrugged," "The Organization Man," "The Hidden Persuaders," "1984" and the acerbic writings of H.L. Mencken.


With the right spin-meister the most rotten of us can smell like a rose

R whistle-blower David Michie is an expert in corporate spin, having worked in PR in London for more than a decade before writing The Invisible Persuaders, an insider's account of how British spin doctors manipulate the media. When not writing books, he still represents a few clients from his home in Perth.

He too believes it's no longer possible for corporate players to get by without the hottest spin doctor in town. "Without question the importance of good marketing has increased dramatically. I don't know about celebrities, but spin is particularly vital for companies, especially listed companies. Journos wield enormous power, and have to be engaged with professionally.

"High-level executives often lose objectivity about how a company is perceived. If you don't have good taste, it's sensible to hire an interior designer. Similarly, entrenched executives need to hire external communication advisers."

He says that Australia hasn't seen the extent of super spin doctors he encountered in Britain, the darkly charismatic control freaks who rule the world.


Coming to a marketer near you: Brain scanning

U.S. advertisers spent nearly $500 per American last year. But what makes one ad persuasive and another a dud? Two Bay Area firms have adapted brain scanning technology to gain insight into the science of spending.

"We can't read your mind, I assure you," said A.K. Pradeep, chief executive of NeuroFocus. But his Berkeley firm can do the next best thing - scan your brain to map the electrochemical spikes thought to signify attention, emotion and memory.

"This is the next generation in market research," said Hans Lee, chief technology officer for EmSense Corp. The San Francisco startup also is using electro encephalograph, or EEG, technology to correlate brain activity with physiological cues such as skin temperature or eye movement to gauge how people react to ads, computer games, even presidential candidates.

EmSense and NeuroFocus are leaders in neuro-marketing, a field that aspires to create objective measures of the effectiveness of the $149 billion that U.S. firms spent last year on advertising, according to TNS Media Intelligence, to reach 300 million Americans.

UC Berkeley neuroscientist Robert Knight, a scientific adviser to NeuroFocus, said neuro-marketing has arisen at the confluence of three trends: a better understanding of the regions of the brain; precise sensors to measure when, say, the memory center is active; and software to infer from these telltale signs whether a given message resonated with men or women of different ages.

"Neuroscience today is where physics was at the turn of the last century," Knight said. "We've had the groundbreaking thoughts and theories. Now we are measuring and testing."

Science laid the foundation for neuro-marketing by studying conditions such as attention deficit disorder, which taught researchers how to recognize the electrical signals of alertness, and Alzheimer's disease, which required an understanding of how we form memories. Such studies have revealed which areas of the brain become active when we see a tiger leap across a screen or watch a baby smile - signals captured using instruments such as sensitive EEGs.


Mall of the mind

Anderson quotes comedian Carl Reiner early in the first show: "A brilliant mind in panic is a wonderful thing to see." And Anderson's job is that of provocateur as much as announcer and facilitator. He is the punter surrounded by the industry, asking the questions we would if we knew the tricks its new psycho-persuaders like to pull these days.

He understands that the unique contribution of TV to advertising is its prodigious ability to communicate not simply information about a product but also fantasies about consumers and how they choose to live. It's where so much of his comedy comes from, after all.