Ad Men

The Hidden Pursauders
Vance Packard
Penguin Books
1960

An introduction to the techniques of mass-pursausion through the uncouncious. A fascinating Penguin Special publication, which highlights research and practice pioneered by the ad men of Madison Avenue and other American advertisers using the subconcious mind.

For example, one piece of research looks at the increase in impulse buying in supermarkets conducted by a motivational analyst, James Vicary. He suspected that shoppers underwent an increase in tension brought on by so much choice, which then compelled them to make quick consumer decisions in panic. He chose eye-blink rate as a measure of shoppers' inner tension. The normal rate is 32 times per minute. He expected shoppers eye-blink rate to increase dramatically as they entered a supermarket. To his surprise, eye-blink rate dropped to 14 blinks per minute, usually recorded in people put into a light hypnotic trances. He records that some shoppers had a glassy stare and would not even recognise friends and family in the supermarket. And then the shoppers' eye-blink rate would race up to 50 or 60 blinks per minute when it came to paying at the till. Many people could not pay for all their impulse buys.

Vicary theorised that shoppers were under the illusion they could possess any of the goods in this self-service 'fairyland' in comparison to the experience of shopping in an old-fashioned grocershop where you could only buy what you could afford from the grocer, who would fetch it for you from behind the counter. Advertisers soon worked out that the colours red and yellow were more noticable by shoppers in their hypnotic-like state while drifting along the supermarket aisles.

The book is packed with many such 'new' experiments and collaborations between psychologists and ad men. I wonder how out of date this publication is, if any of the same techniques are still employed by the ad men.