Tinfoil Hat – Mind Control and Coercive Psychological Systems

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Marketing

September 30, 2011 – 12:20 pm

Part 1 of 6 in the series Boob Tube

The American Marketing Association defines ‘marketing’ as “the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.” ¹ “The roots of the American Marketing Association can be traced to the early 1900′s when the National Association of Teachers of Advertisers and American Marketing Society, comprised of marketers and marketing researchers, merged to bring together all marketers, across all specialties to collaborate and inspire one another.” ² “Many companies today have a customer focus (or market orientation),” writes Wikipedia. “This implies that the company focuses its activities and products on consumer demands.… A firm’s marketing department is often seen as of prime importance within the functional level of an organization.” ³

The American Marketing Association also defines ‘marketing research’:

Marketing research is the function that links the consumer, customer, and public to the marketer through information — information used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems; generate, refine, and evaluate marketing actions; monitor marketing performance; and improve understanding of marketing as a process. Marketing research specifies the information required to address these issues, designs the method for collecting information, manages and implements the data collection process, analyzes the results, and communicates the findings and their implications.⁴

“Marketing has many aspects, but promotion, persistence, and patience are three key elements which are critical to achieving successful results,” writes Kirk Bannerman in “Successful Network Marketing Depends Upon These Three Factors.” “The key point to be made here is that you must have an active promotion campaign designed to bring in a steady stream of new prospective downline members.” ⁵ As an historical example of promotion:

source: The Crazy Little Dot in Space

In the early days of newspapers, when newspapers were the primary method of delivering the news, when something big happened, the publisher would not only publish the normal daily paper, but would also publish an Extra. The newspapers were sold on the street, often by newsboys, who had a stack of papers and would sell them to passersby. When an Extra came out, they would chant “Extra! Extra! Read all about it!” to call attention to the fact that something big has happened, and an Extra paper has been published.

Over the years, marketing evolved from word of mouth, to printed advertisements, to radio and television, and beyond. “A Brief History of Television Advertising” by Steven Chabotte notes that “It all began with radio:”

Broadcasting was originally developed as a means for companies to sell radios. But once commercial entities realized that many households were listening to their radios a significant amount of time every day, they started to explore this medium as a way to get their message across to the masses.… By the late [1920s] radio advertising had advanced in a dramatic way. It was now dominated by advertising agencies who took control of the schedules by buying the available air time and selling it to their customers. They also handled the creative aspects of the commercials and programs and in fact even created entire series that were designed to sell one product or another.…

source: olx.com

Full time telecasting didn’t really take hold until 1948 as it took that long for the United States to recover from the Depression and World War II.… As television was a totally new phenomenon — i.e. offering both sound and moving pictures, the advertising industry moved into this arena cautiously as they were not sure what methods would work best to promote their clients products on television.… After study and many surveys, the advertising agencies determined that the most effective way to reach consumers with a strong message would be by creating shows that featured a single product or a line of products from a single company. From this concept arised the typical television shows of the 1950′s including such titles as Kraft Television Theater, Colgate Comedy Hour, and Coke Time. As with radio, these television programs were produced by advertising agencies for their clients rather than the studios as is common practice currently.…

But as the television gained more popularity and there were more people watching it,… the ever increasing costs…forced a massive change in the relationship of all the parties: the advertising agencies, the clients/sponsors and the television networks.… NBC executive Sylvester L. “Pat” Weaver…introduced the “magazine concept” of television advertising. In this arrangement, the sponsors would purchase blocks of time (typically one to two minutes) in a show rather than be a sponsor for an entire show.… Like a magazine, the networks would now control the content as no one advertiser would “own” a particular show.… By 1960, the magazine concept dominated television advertising, as it has ever since.⁶


Americhip video-in-print CBS ad in Entertainment Weekly	source: The Wrap

In September 2009, this magazine concept of television advertising got a role reversal when “a print advertisement with a small, embedded video screen [enabled New York and Los Angeles⁷] readers of Entertainment Weekly to sample 40 minutes of its upcoming shows.” ⁸ “BBC News reports that the video ad is a rechargeable chip that is about the size of a mobile phone and can store up to 40 minutes of footage,” writes The Christian Science Monitor.⁹ BBC News also notes that “it is not the first time that publishers have experimented with digital technology in magazines. [In 2008], for example, men’s lifestyle magazine Esquire published the first using e-ink technology, with a cover that flashed in alternating patterns.” ¹⁰

“Americhip creates sensory experiences in print,” the company writes on their YouTube channel. “Engaging customers, influencing the decision making process and elevating brand recall through Sound, Sight, Touch, Scent and Taste technologies. We call this Multisensorizing.” ¹¹

Cradle-to-Grave

September 30, 2011 – 12:25 pm

Part 2 of 6 in the series Boob Tube

The 1980s have been called “the decade of the child consumer,” notes Eric Schlosser in Fast Food Nation:

Hoping that nostalgic childhood memories of a brand will lead to a lifetime of purchases, companies now plan “crade-to-grave” advertising strategies. They have come to believe [that] at person’s “brand loyalty” may begin as early as the age of two. Indeed, market research has found that children often recognize a brand logo before they can recognize their own name.¹

The process of adopting new behaviors was addressed in 1953 by Howard Becker in “On Becoming a Marihuana User” for the American Journal of Sociology:

That the presence of a given kind of behavior is the result of a sequence of social experiences during which the person acquires a conception of the meaning of the behavior, and perceptions and judgments of objects and situations, all of which make the activity possible and desirable. Thus, the motivation or disposition to engage in the activity is built up in the course of learning to engage in it and does not antedate this learning process. For such a view it is not necessary to identify those “traits” which “cause” the behavior. Instead, the problem becomes one of describing the set of changes in the person’s conception of the activity and of the experience it provides him.²

The proficient use of social and psychological cues is crucial to grab an audience’s attention amongst the hundreds if not thousands of advertisements the average American is bombarded with every day.³ “The average child sees more than 20,000 commercials a year – some as many as 40,000,” writes Jim Hightower in Thieves in High Places citing the American Academy of Pediatrics.⁴ “Every waking moment of our lives, we swim in an ocean of advertising, all of it telling us the same thing: consume, consume. And then consume some more,” writes Morgan Spurlock, the investigator behind the documentary “Super Size Me” in his article “The Truth about McDonald’s and Children.” The article notes:

Today, corporations spend more than $15bn every year on marketing, advertising and promotions meant to program American children to consume.… Why? Because they realize that children not only have more expendable income of their own, but they influence how their parents spend their hard-earned bucks, too – to the tune of more than $600bn a year.…

McDonald’s and the other fast-food chains make no secret of the fact that kids are their primary targets. “We have living proof of the long-lasting quality of early brand loyalties in the cradle-to-grave marketing at McDonald’s, and how well it works,” James McNeal, a well-known children’s marketing guru and the author of Kids As Customers, has said. “We start taking children in for their first and second birthdays, and on and on, and eventually they have a great deal of preference for that brand. Children can carry that with them through a lifetime.” ⁵

Medial mogul Disney has gone even further by targeting maternity wards at hospitals. “The reps are offering new moms, within hours of giving birth, a free Disney Cuddly Bodysuit for their babies if they sign up for e-mail alerts from DisneyBaby.com,” reports NPR:

The idea is to encourage mothers to infuse their infants with brand loyalty as if it is mother’s milk.… Getting an expectant mom thinking about her family’s first theme-park visit while her child was in the womb, an exec told the [The New York Times], would be like hitting “a home run.”…

The Advertising Educational Foundation already hails infants 1 year and under as… “a more informed, influential and compelling audience than ever before.” Children as young as 12 months, the foundation adds, can recognize brands and are “strongly influenced” by advertising and marketing. Like that’s a good thing.

The truth is, some studies show that children under 8 years old can’t distinguish between ads and entertainment. Until then, they don’t fully comprehend that advertising is trying to sell them something. That gives marketers an unfair – not to mention predatory – advantage over our kids. No wonder so many other countries have tight restrictions on marketing to children under age 12.⁶

“Studies over the years have demonstrated that many people, especially young people, unquestioningly accept the reality presented by television,” notes the MindControlInAmerica.com website. “Popular culture (movies, television and music) carries messages about how society works and how people should behave.” ⁷

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What’s in a name?

September 30, 2011 – 12:27 pm

Part 3 of 6 in the series Boob Tube

Juliet:
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”

In Act II, Scene II of playwright William Shakespeare’s lyrical tale of “star-cross’d” lovers, Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet “are doomed from the start as members of two warring families,” explains the eNotes.com website:

Here Juliet tells Romeo that a name is an artificial and meaningless convention, and that she loves the person who is called “Montague”, not the Montague name and not the Montague family. Romeo, out of his passion for Juliet, rejects his family name and vows, as Juliet asks, to “deny (his) father” and instead be “new baptized” as Juliet’s lover. This one short line encapsulates the central struggle and tragedy of the play.¹

“Does your name play a role in determining what career you choose or how successful you are within your chosen profession?” asks Steve Tobak of CBS News. “There’s certainly a ton of anecdotal evidence that names and career choices are related and additional evidence that people don’t necessarily choose doctors, lawyers, and who knows what else, completely at random from a list.” ²

Rachel Emma Silverman and Joe Light write in The Wall Street Journal:

In a controversial, widely cited 2002 paper published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers from the State University of New York at Buffalo found that people were more likely to choose professions with names that are similar to their own first names. Another study, out of Wayne State University, Detroit, found that medical doctors and lawyers were more likely to have last names that somehow evoked their professions. It was published [in 2010] in the journal “Names: A Journal of Onomastics.” ³

The CBS News article continues:

Not surprisingly, there are dissenting views in academia. Frank Nuessel, professor of languages and linguistics at the University of Louisville, who edits [the Names journal] and coined the term “aptonym” — when your name reflects your profession — says he doesn’t really believe in “nominal determinism.” ⁴

The Wall Street Journal quotes Professor Nuessel: “I really don’t believe in nominal determinism. Probably most of these tend to be accidental.” ⁵

But Jozef M. Nuttin, Jr., in 1987 “showed that individuals tend to like both their names and initials, called the name-letter effect,” notes Psychlopedia. “In particular, they appear to like their initials more than other letters of the alphabet.” ⁶ According to Wikipedia, “The name–letter effect is one of the widest used measures of implicit self-esteem:”

This effect has been found in a vast range of studies. In one such scenario, participants were given a list of letters, one of which contained letters from their own name and the other of which contained other letters, and asked them to circle the preferred letter. This study found that, even when accounting for all other variables, letters belonging to the participants’ own names were preferred [Nuttin, 1985].

Similar results have been found in cross-cultural studies, using different alphabets [Hoorens, V., Nuttin, J.M., Herman, I.E., & Pavakanun, U., 1990].⁷

“The name-letter effect has been ascribed to implicit egoism, as propounded by Pelham, Carvallo, and Jones (2005),” continues Psychlopedia. “In particular, individuals like to perceive themselves favorably. Hence, any object or concept they feel is connected to the self is also conferred this favorable status.” ⁸

Brand Identity

September 30, 2011 – 12:30 pm

Part 4 of 6 in the series Boob Tube


History of branding	source: www.2-speed.com

“People become attached to the identities of well-known brands,” writes Branding Strategy Insider:

When they are comfortable with a given identity, they don’t want it changed. Changing brand identities is risky business, not only because it has the potential to reduce brand recognition, recall and key associations, but also because it could cause customer dissatisfaction.¹… Brand identity can and will evolve over time, but usually it does so incrementally so that the new identity is a refreshed extension of the old identity. In this way, one does not lose the recognition and positive associations that existed with the previous identity.²

Brand identity is more critical today than ever before, as more and more businesses and products compete for consumer attention across an ever-increasing variety of channels,” writes the ScentAir.com website. “The powerful brands of tomorrow will create a brand experience that extends the traditional paradigm of sight and sound. They will immerse their customers in an environment that not only appeals to the senses of sight and sound, but also the senses of touch, taste and smell.” ³

“Brand loyalty is hard to break for some,” writes David Butler for the Northern Colorado Beer Examiner. “The beers you started drinking when you were a young adult often become the beverage of choice later in life.… For some, it becomes part of their identity.” ⁴ According to the aysymtomatic.net website in their “Brand Addiction” article:

The big corporations aren’t worried about brand addiction to brands that aren’t their own. For example, Budweiser doesn’t care that you are brand-addicted to Miller, even though they have beer that is comparatively identical in its flavor similarity to water. They’re just biding their time until they strike the right nerve with their advertising and you suddenly switch brand loyalty. Until then, they have their own brand-addicts that they need not advertise to. It’s a big game to them.⁵

According to a 1990 paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Communication Association:

A study examined whether billboard advertising of tobacco and alcohol products is differentially targeted toward White, Black, Asian, and Hispanic neighborhoods.… The study suggests that the modeling of social cues can serve to motivate product use, disinhibit behavioral restraints, and reinforce existing habits.… Furthermore, the analyses of the content of the billboards revealed that alcohol and cigarette advertisements use social modeling cues such as anticipated rewards, attractive models, and similarity.^{6, i}

“Like adults, young children are highly influenced by branding, experts say,” writes Steven Reinberg for HealthDay Reporter:

“Children, it seems, literally do judge a food by its cover. And they prefer the cover they know,” said [Dr. David Katz, the director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut].… Most 3- and 5-year-olds who taste-tested a variety of foods said they preferred the ones in the McDonald’s wrapper — even though the foods were exactly the same.… After taste-testing, the children more often said the chicken nuggets, fries, carrots and milk wrapped in the McDonald’s logo tasted better.…

“It’s really an unfair marketplace out there for young children,” [Dr. Thomas Robinson, the director of the Center for Healthy Weight at Packard Children's Hospital and associate professor of pediatrics and of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, in Stanford, California] said. “It’s very clear they cannot understand the persuasive nature of advertising.” ^{7, ii}

Notes

ⁱ The magazine Advertising Age cited Ronald McDonald as No 2 on its list of top 10 advertising icons of the 20th century. Who was No 1? It was the Marlboro Man.
— Morgan Spurlock, “The Truth about McDonald’s and Children,” Independent/UK, 22 May 2005, at CommonDreams.org, http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0522-20.htm (retrieved: 13 May 2011).

ⁱⁱ It is estimated that McDonald’s spend more than $1 billion dollars per year on U.S. advertising.
— Steven Reinberg, “Foods Taste Better With McDonald’s Logo, Kids Say,” 6 August 2007, at http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Healthday/story?id=4508191&page=1&singlePage=true#.Tx9QFlyiO48 (retrieved: 24 January 2012).

Tinfoil Hat – Mind Control and Coercive Psychological Systems

Marketing

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Cradle-to-Grave

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What’s in a name?

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Brand Identity

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