Of Flavia Corso
Source: Heretically
For these reasons, advertising agencies had quickly realized that, to sell their products, it was necessary to "attack the unconscious" of people, cynically leveraging the secret needs of each individual. Having identified this intimate need, “the public was promised that the only way to satisfy them was to buy this or that product, from air conditioners, to cake mixes, to motorboats".
Packard had identified eight fundamental unconscious needs that communication experts used to manipulate consumer choices: emotional security (“For many, the refrigerator represents the guarantee that there is always food at home”), esteem and consideration (“many women feel they are engaged in hard work for which they will receive neither compensation nor moral recognition. It is therefore necessary […] set the «advertising on the nobility and importance of housework […]”), the needs of the ego (“The drivers felt offended and diminished by the photographs put into circulation by the company, which gave maximum prominence to the machine to the detriment of the operator, tiny figure barely visible in the control cabin”), creative impulses (“Gardening is a «pregnancy-like activity», «baking a cake is a substitute action for giving birth»), speculation on affection (“Liberace's publicity agents, the famous television singer-pianist, they played […] on the Oedipus complex to "sell" their star to women who have passed the age of motherhood"), the sense of power (“this need for power, widespread especially among men, has been identified and thoroughly exploited by industries interested in the American boat market”), family ties (“the investigators in charge of the investigation noticed that people, when he talks about wine, he often mentions it in connection with family gatherings or other festive occasions”), and the need for immortality (“what truly attracts a man, in life insurance, psychologists ascertained, it is the implicit "prospect of immortality through the perpetuation of its influence").
Developments in social science and psychoanalysis had provided fertile ground for mind manipulators: through the intrusive use of symbols, the consumer was stripped of his conscious barriers, those barriers that stood between the absolute imperative of selling at all costs and the intimate vulnerability of people, made of infantile narcissism, sense of guilt and need for prestige. It was therefore noted that sexual references strongly attracted the public's attention (especially the female one), that choosing the right colors was essential to reach a specific target of consumers, that the large automobile fascinated men so much because it gave them a sense of virility, and that even the most deep-rooted aversions towards goods of a certain type could be "cured". But perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this type of reality concerned the "psychoseduction" of children. Big companies gave great importance to new consumer generations, and they understood that influencing children from an early age was one of the most fruitful strategies for increasing sales. Packard called recruiting new consumers “man breeding.”.
At the time, Packard's book was considered too alarmist. However, the author knew well that occult marketing would develop over the decades to reach scenarios that were unthinkable for the era in which he lived. Although in those years many companies had announced to put an end to this unfair type of advertising, the intrusion of occult persuaders into our unconscious has not ceased; these, in the new Millennium, they are called “neuroscientists”, and their “neuromarketing” methods of persuasion. It's not just a matter of inserting subliminal messages with disturbing content into cartoons aimed at children, but to create an ever-increasing number of technologies capable of shaking our ancient certainties about free will. Today, many large companies use eye tracking technology (“eye tracking”): studying the movement of the consumer's pupils, it is possible, for example, develop packaging that most attracts the public's attention. Facebook, in June this year, has developed a patent to profile users using subliminal messages in advertisements, sounds inaudible to the human ear, which are produced by the TV, thus activating an environmental audio recording. The neuroscientists also wanted to express their opinion on the idea of a citizen's income, thus moving from the persuasion of the consumer to that of the citizen. In other words, neuroscience is progressively approaching the public question, not limiting itself only to the sphere of consumption. Since, through these suggestive techniques, it is in fact possible to make a product more attractive in the eyes of the public, why not put "science" also at the service of politics? Everything, in conclusion, it can become a potential commodity for experts in subliminal persuasion techniques, even an ideology. It is the triumph of economic totalitarianism at the expense of political ethics, the refusal to answer the question “why not, if it is possible?”, or even to hand it over. Packard, However, he had already asked himself this question a long time ago, and he had also given a courageous response to it.
“The most serious abuse that many manipulators commit is, in my opinion, the attempt to insinuate itself into the intimacy of the human mind. It is this right to the privacy of the mind – the right to be, at will, rational or irrational – which, io, credo, we have a duty to defend" (Vance Packard).
