Let’s Defeat the Advertisers’ Tricks Together!

This 5 min pitch is floating an idea and asking for ideas and connections.

We can all agree that over consumption is one part of our predicament, of which climate change is just one part. Over consumption means more mining, plant use and fossil fuels to produce the additional goods, and because they create additional waste both for packaging and whatever happens to the product at the end of its life.

And we can all agree that advertising is a significant driver of over consumption.

Many of us say “Ah yes but it doesn’t affect me”. Or “it used to – but not any more.” And I’ve been saying the same for a long while too. But, I remember in my teenage and twentys years of smoking different brands: Senior Service, Camels, Marlboro. Naval officers, with their white cuffs, gold rimmed hats, expensive watches and sports cars, we were told, smoked Senior Service. Rugged, outdoor loners smoked Marlboro.

Of course there was peer pressure too. 

But the adverts for all three, in their different ways, were playing to a basic desire that many teenage boys and young men have: To get the girl.

And to get the girl, I learned from advertising meant that I needed to be different from the other boys. Not by what I did, like being funny, or good at music or sport, but because of what I’d bought: in this case cigarettes. (And please don’t think I didn’t learn from peer pressure and films that it helped to be funny or good at sport too, or indeed a smoker. I did.)

[Separate from this argument, but no less important, I learned, again partly, from advertising my concept of beauty in women; and that my social status was strengthened by having a beautiful girlfriend – a possession.]

There are many different demographic groups who have different desires, and are deliberately spoken to by advertising. A frequently targeted group are the women with both family and job who need some me-time. Chocolate and wine are common products claimed to satisfy that desire.

Now some have tried to ban advertising,and others try to subvert them, and I honour both approaches. But I want to propose that a more powerful, and ultimately more achievable way, is to inoculate ourselves against them. By analysing how they work, and by finding ways to nullify what they are trying to do.

The book Seducing the Subconscious explains how advertising work in two primary ways:

  • there’s a conscious part where we engage with the story and the features of the product
  • and there’s a subconscious part that connects the brand icon with our basic desires; so that when we are feeling particularly vulnerable to that desire we reach for the connected brand

And, from what we know about how our brains work, every time we see the same advert there’s reinforcement of that connection. This is because our every experience is stored in our brain as a pathway of connections between different neurons. And repeated experiences result in parallel pathways. And the parallel pathways mean there’s a greater likelihood of making the connection to the brand icon, when we experience the desire.

So we’ve been programmed!

I assert that, we can re-program our subconscious responses, in exactly the same way as racing drivers improve their technique. 

They watch themselves as they drive, and they speak out what they’re seeing, the things they know they have to do, and what happens. Then they write down what they’ve said. Then later, in a more relaxed state, they critique what they’ve written, and brainstorm with others what they might do better. And then they make training exercises to learn the improved behaviours.

There are several other books and texts which offer ways to analyse the different parts of the ad; asking questions like

  • what need is this selling to?
  • what is the music trying to convey?
  • how do I react to the picture?
  • what are the cultural connections leading from the different objects in the ad?

Just imagine twenty parents and their teenage kids in Kingston, working with a few others who have relevent knowledge to experiment with these different techniques.

We might develop (say) a 10 part discussion kit that shows a few videos, asks a few questions, ……

Where might that lead us?

Let’s Defeat the Advertisers’ Tricks together!

And so contribute to reducing overconsumption, excessive energy use and waste!

Some ways to start hinking about this

We might consider these different dimensions

  • the context:
    • parents working with their teenagers
    • teenagers in a group at the Hive
    • teenagers in an online Hive group
  • the invitation:
    • Would you like to join a Hive journey that would help you save money, make you healthier, save the planet? And make you look cool? (?)
    • ……. ?
  • objective:
    • to get commitment to changing buying behaviour particularly of high resource content products and services (?)
    • ……. ?
  • syllabus

All four dimensions are interlinked – so we need to be flexible as we proceed

Resources