depth, neurotic, puritan, alacrity, oneiric, moppets, uniformity, rookeries, cannonading, reflex

"I persuasori occulti" di Vance Packard, saggio sui nuovi metodi di comunicazione pubblicitaria edito per la prima volta nei lontani anni cinquanta, malgrado l'evidente obsolescenza mediatica conserva un grande interesse per la capire la grande capacità di manipolazione psicologica dei mass media e delle agenzie pubblicitarie in particolare. Questo libro, all'epoca della prima uscita rivoluzionario, ci fa capire che quando acquistiamo qualsiasi cosa, non la compriamo per il suo essere intrinseco ma per il suo valore accessorio. Se ho necessità di un'automobile vengo suggestionato dalla pubblicità che mi suggerisce subliminalmente che pagando x per la macchina y non compro solo una vettura ma contestualmente acquisto anche prestigio, potenza e anche, perché no, anche sex appeal.
Quando la strategia pubblicitaria incontrò la psicologia il consumismo divenne il fattore imprescindibile della crescita economica e sociale nell'America del dopoguerra e questo saggio analizza con rigore questo fenomeno, di interesse principale alla classe affluente in prima battuta ma che poi avrebbe riguardato tutti gli strati sociali della popolazione americana prima e mondiale in un secondo momento.
Dopo la rinascita economica derivata dalla Seconda Guerra Mondiale e dall'euforia derivatane negli USA si pose il problema della continuazione del boom economico e i grandi gruppi industriali si ingegnarono a creare i bisogni dell'uomo moderno teso a raggiungere le "magnifiche sorti e progressive delle umane genti." Plasmando la psiche del consumatore queste industrie, sostenute dalla grande capacità intuitiva dei "persuasori occulti" crearono i "bisogni" dei cittadini comuni offrendo loro assieme alla merce che compravano, anche i sogni che popolavono la mentalità profonda, scrutata e codificata dai nuovi pifferai magici. Scritto in un epoca in cui la televisione non era così pervasiva come oggi questo saggio conserva un grandissimo interesse per il suo valore di testimonianza storica e per la sua preveggenza sull'aspetto psicologico della proposta politica a dispetto dell'interesse generale. Che un'idea sociale oppure un tema politico potesse essere "venduto" come una saponetta o un deodorante poteva sembrare un'eresia negli anni cinquanta ma ora abbiamo tutti capito che è un concetto con cui fare in conti tutti i giorni.
Benché superato dall'inarrestabile avanzare del tempo è un testo da consigliare.

I read this waaaaay back when. Things have only gotten more so since then. Even though I think the parts about subliminal things (sexy images in ice cubes, super-fast images of popcorn on movie screens) turned out to be not so true. But advertising is both blatant and insidious, and this book was the first best seller than exposed how it works.

An intriguing little book which describes the mind manipulation techniques used to influence the general public into buying certain products, adopt certain opinions and of course persuade us which way to vote. Written in and about the good ol’ USA it would be naïve to believe this isn’t happening all around the world as demonstrated by global brands frequently popping up; Coca Cola, Budweiser, Nescafe, Chevrolet and Ford for example.
The most surprising thing is this book was published in 1957 and if persuasion techniques were a fact in the 1950’s how good /bad have they become in the seventy years since? Nowadays people actually pay to advertise brands by wearing their logos FFS.
Free west my arse.

Read it in when I was in high school about 1965. One of the most influential books of my life. Why? Timing, I guess. The naive teenager takes a peek behind the curtain. A revelation that fundamentally changed my view of advertising and the world. Made me a skeptic, of course, but also enhanced the cynic in me.

This book is going to become one of my staff picks. I heard about it from a retired psychologist.

Despite graduating with a degree in marketing, even I learned stuff as I read this book! The book has a great introduction by Mark Crispin Miller. The main drawback to me is the typos in this new edition.

Still, the information is as valid today as when Packard wrote it in the 1950s. I highly recommend it. I feel as if I could read it multiple times and glean new insights every time.

I took notes as I read of things I wanted to remember.

Motivation research is not an anomalous or even a recent trend. It is something that has been going on for decades. My jaw dropped when I read that planned obsolescence (not called this but in essence what it is) had been discussed by marketers even back to the 1930s. However, it gained additional traction in the 40s and 50s.

Packard's premise is that we are routinely and successfully manipulated by manufacturers, fundraisers, and politicians (p. 17). This book was published in 1957 and it's only gotten worse since he wrote it. Packard frequently uses the term merchandizers; which I will refer to as marketers in my notes.

The intent of Motivation researchers is not to "persuade", free us, or make us happy; rather their intent is to replace it with their own imperatives.

In the post-World War II world growing output means growing our Gross National Product (GNP) (p. 42). There is constant pressure to consume in order to grow our GNP. "An ever-expanding system requires that we be persuaded to consume to meet the demands of the needs of the production process." Packard even quotes one marketer as saying "Capitalism is dead. Consumerism is king!" (p. 43).

Chapter 3 discusses the early years of motivation research, which seeks to understand unconscious and subconscious factors that motivate people. This process seeks not just insights, but "triggers of action". Both word and picture triggers can be used to evoke desired responses.

Professor Clyde Miller who wrote the book "The Process of Persuasion", finds that people are "creatures of conditioned reflex." .... Whether selling soft drinks or political theory, the goal is to develop these conditioned reflexes by flashing on trigger words, symbols or acts.

To expand markets, marketers worked to build new frontiers with new and future consumers. They worked to create new, broader and more insatiable demand for products. One example from the book is the men's clothing industry (shoes & suits). Prior to the 1950s, men did not replace their suits or shoes frequently. They had 1 or 2 suits that they wore regularly. So advertising and marketing worked to make men more style-conscious. These efforts were successful. {As I read this, I wondered, has marketing made our entire culture more narcissistic?}

Packard spends good portions of the book discussing the basic change in the American character (individual, independent, and self-reliant) in the 20th century from inner-directed to other-directed, which was caused by or reflected by our preoccupation with consuming (p. 153). Other-directed people are largely guided by the expectancy of the crowd/peers/associates (p. 162) or a group identity by belonging to various groups and playing on teams ( p. 188). By the mid-50s many Americans viewed self as meaningless except as a member of a group.

Marketers in the 1950s started moving into the political and workforce realm too. They weren't just building future consumers - children. They were also molding voters and employees. Persuaders' aim was not just to get us to buy things ... "the aim is now nothing less than to influence the state of our mind and to channel our behavior as citizens (p. 170) and as consumers of politics.

An study by the Journal of Abnormal & Social Psychology experimented with people know to be pro- or anti-Democratic (p. 174). People listen to a 10-minute speech on national affairs, which was slanted to be 1/2 pro and 1/2 anti. Three weeks later, these people were tested on their recall of the material. The study found that people remembered information that harmonized with their political viewpoint or frame of reference; they did not remember anything that did not harmonize with their own preconceived notions.

Political marketer Murray Chotiner used the following techniques to sell a political candidate (p. 179). 1) Present them with the "Good Guy" and "the Bad Guy" 2) The use of, or defense against, the "Smear". 3) Generating the appearance of public demand. 4) Winning people's hearts with carefully stimulated candor. Do these seem familiar? I bet we can all think of examples of each in politics today.

Chapter 19 is titled "The Engineered Yes".

"To PR [public relations] men must go the most important social engineering role of them all - the gradual reorganization of human society, piece by piece, and structure by structure." --Public relations counselor G. Edward Pendray (p. 201).

Another famous propaganda man (the father of public relations), Edward L. Bernays, who wrote a book entitled "The Engineering of Consent", said: "It would be ideal if all of us could make up our minds independently by evaluation of all pertinent facts objectively. That, however, is not possible." He expounded upon this further in "The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, writing "Newsworthy events usually do not happen by accident. They are planned to deliberately accomplish a purpose, to influence ideas and actions."

Sidenote: I've studied Bernays. He was an expert in newsworthy events. He wrote several books on PR. In World War I he worked at the precursor to the CIA, the Committee on Public Information (the CPI), that marketed the war to Americans and America to the world. One of the many newsworthy events planned by Bernay was the "Torches of Freedom" parade with smoking women in the 1920s. He is also the reason we eat bacon and eggs for breakfast. Also interestingly, Bernays is related to Sigmund Freud.

The final chapter of this book is "The question of morality" (p. 231). There are benefits to exploration of human behavior. But there are also many deep, moral questions to think about. These are just a few examples of the questions Packard asks:

Should we all be "given" whatever our ids "want"?
What kind of society are these persuaders seeking to build for us?
Where is our economy taking us under the pressures of consumerism?
Is it right to manipulate human personality?
When do manipulative attempts become socially undesirable?
How do we know what (or who) to believe?

My own question as I read this. Are we really well-informed when we watch the news and listen to political speeches, or are we being manipulated?

This book can help us build up what Clyde Miller (in his book "The Process of Persuasion") called a "recognition reflex", which protect us against the petty trickery and false persuasion of persuaders and powerful leaders.

This book would pair well with "War is a Racket" by Smedley Butler and "The Smear" by Sharyl Attkisson.

A bit of a slow start. First 50 pages I wondered if I was going to enjoy it. One off the David Bowie 100 fave books list. Once I got into it, I enjoyed it. If Packard was worried about how advertisers and psychologists were influencing people back in the 1950s, he would kittens about it now! The death of the individual is in full swing as predicted in this book.

Excellent

Relevant and timeless. A fascinating look from the past that explains the false pretense of motivation research. A great read.

Packard wrote an interesting book about the move to incorporate psychologically based messaging in advertising in the 1950s. He fills his book with interesting tidbits that, read now, serve to illuminate just how strong gender roles were barely 70 years ago. In 2022, it feels like he's a little credulous about how impactful this type of advertising could be and feels a little over-worried. He is far too happy to quote market research firms' quotes about their own effectiveness at face value, rather than recognizing these blurbs as over-promising.

Towards the end, he stumbles into the larger issue at hand - the transformation of the US into a consumer capitalist society focused on increasing corporate growth. It's hard to buy into the singular focus on motivational research when corporations were focusing on getting owners of cars and large appliances to replace those working, paid-off items as often as possible - there's a larger story there about corporate greed, of which motivational research is only a small facet.

Despite this book being written in 1957 the contents and the discussions in this book are still relevant today. It is very interesting to look at things that were believed or in trend in 1957. Some of the believes are extinct (like the reliability of Rorschach test) and others are not. You will find a lot of examples that you can easily relate to the year 2018. One funny thing that I found in this book is that Packard stated, that the Democrats had very hard time in marketing and because of that were loosing their prestige and popularity which is what exactly happened 2 years ago when Democrats yet again had very bad experience in Public Relations which caused them to lose the election.

At the end of the book author provides very important reflection on the whole book which states that we must take everything that is written in this book with a grain of salt.

Despite all of this author still thinks that "we can choose not to be persuaded." which actually contradicts a lot of authors findings.

One of our reading group members has been pushing this book on us for years. We finally acquiesced to his desire and now have paid dearly with an incredible waste of time. This book may have had a great impact when it was written in the late 1950's, but not it is simply dated and exceedingly boring. Perhaps because my generation has been raised in a consumeristic culture that was forming at the time, we don't know how life could be any other way. We have been studied and manipulated to the nth degree and frankly don't care much anymore. We will discuss the book tomorrow but not sure what we can possibly talk about that is of current interest.

Of course outdated in many ways, yet still a good insight into how minds tick.