Buyology -- how we're brainwashed into buying stuff

We’ve always suspected those tawdry health warnings on a packet of fags were rather dumb, but never knew why. Well, it seems that, contrary to discouraging smoking, they actually encourage lighting up by stimulating the nucleus accumbens — the craving spot — in the brain.

This recent research finding in what’s called “buy*ology” is a myth-busting body blow to the anti-smoking lobby as well as the anti-booze lobby and any other bunch who would curtail freedom of choice by legislative process. The law and human behaviour don’t cross the street in the same places. Duh!

As a teetotaller (or more accurately, a recovering alcoholic) I haven’t touched a drop of booze (except Communion wine) for eight years now, so I have no particular candle to light or cross to bear for the alcohol industry. In fact, aside from being the perennial designated driver, I find pissed people screamingly funny. I was probably much like that once too.

I gave up drinking on Hitler’s birthday — 20 April — and gave up Camels (the cigarettes, man, not the animals!) simultaneously. I’ve puffed two fags since then, but immediately stopped with elegant ease. I find women who smoke (except cigars) singularly unattractive and nothing yanks the lead out of my pencil quicker than the sight of a stump of smoldering white paper dangling obscenely between a woman’s fingers. Those fingers are meant for a higher calling.

But I digress. Back to buyology. The phenomenon’s world guru is Martin Lindstrom who defines this “science” as “the multitude of subconscious forces that motivate us to buy”.

In her review of his latest book, Buy*ology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy, TIME reporter Andrea Sachs gives a potted pen-picture of Lindstrom’s more endearing findings based on his most recent research project in which he wired 65 people to special MRI machines to measure any connections between religion and brand loyalty.

As always with such research, Lindstrom got more than he bargained for, which meshed neatly on top of his existing R70-million, three-year neuromarketing study (sponsored by GlaxoSmithKline and Bertelsmann among others, nogal) that measured brain activity of 2 000 volunteers.

A lot of hunches were confirmed. A lot of marketing tripe euphemistically called “conventional wisdom” was torpedoed.

And these tie us back to Anja Merret’s recent blog on TL pondering us being brainwashed into panic and negativity, and my riposte about the equally invidious perils of being brainwashed into docile, mindless, passivity and pink-eyed intellectual slavery.

Among Lindstrom’s “findings” is that sex does not sell. I had a client yonks ago who made industrial-strength heaters out in Kempton Park to warm the tootsies and footsies of factory workers. The range of these monsters was called The Big Red and he insisted the best way to see hundreds of Big Reds in icy concrete-floored factories on the East Rand was to feature bikini-clad beauties hugging, adoring, fondling and otherwise paying homage to The Big Red.

My objections went unheeded. He was the client. This is capitalism and neither morality nor common sense pay the rent. I don’t know if he’s still in business.

What Lindstrom did find was that controversies around sex in ads do sell the product — hence the success of Calvin Klein ads and those of Abercrombie & Fitch. I wonder if that’ll work for Jake “Showerhead” Zuma?

Lindstrom also busts the hoary marketing myth about product placement on TV or in the movies. It is “generally useless” — unless it’s your product. We ordinary, simple, gullible non-scientific folk have known that for years — we just tune it out like white noise. If we do notice the product, it’ll be because it is interfering with our viewing pleasure — and that is a mental black mark against the product. Our minds instantly and automatically dump it in the neurological trash can. I have a long list of those products and it plays havoc with carefree shopping.

Our go-get-some guru also lifts the lid on subliminal advertising. Far from having fallen from grace — remember the scandalous 1957 single-frame flashes of “Drink Coca-Cola”? — the technique is alive, well and lucrative. It’s hard for movie makers in search of the grittiness of everyday life to avoid ubiquitous advertising slogans, brands and products. But if you have the budget, you can score vast mileage out of “donating” your product to a feature movie. Chrysler paid big bucks for that tank Harrison Ford cruised around in in Firewall.

And though every episode of Seinfeld featured Superman in one way or another, it could as easily have been a Big Mac, Nokia or DKNY.

Despite our turning out products and brands as simply part of the background, context can make or break even powerful names. Think about it. If, every time you saw Dr Hannibal Lecter, he was munching an Outspan orange, or the Stihl logo was clearly visible on the Texas Chainsaw boykie’s traditional weapon, or in the next remake of Stephen King’s Christine the car is a homicidal Hummer — how would you feel about the product?

Subliminal advertising is particularly odious and we saw it in its full frontal ferocity during last year’s US presidential campaign. All a fanatical campaign maven needs do is sneak a 1/3 000th of a second grab of the Twin Towers collapsing behind Obama’s head during a live TV debate and mission successful.

And don’t think our Advertising Standards Authority is that sharp either. While we ban comparative advertising in SA (typical in authoritarian states — just ban it, don’t regulate it!), our plethora of locally made soapies are bedecked in brand names. And for a healthy contribution, you can get almost any message on air. It’s the context that counts.

Our TV news broadcasts feature subliminal prejudices all the time — repeated footage of Zimbabwean police beating MDC supporters when there’s nothing to fill that space. Part of the problem is that our electorate lack the nous or sophistication to sift the background blah-blah from the forefront issue. It hasn’t mattered that Zuma had adulterous unprotected sex with a woman he knew to be HIV-positive, so what would it matter if he is seen driving a Merc — or, heaven forbid, an ultra-economy Toyota Tazz?

In many cases too, the brand is used to cement a stereotype, and in a country as fractious and hyper-sensitive as ours, that would be a kill-or-be-killed scenario.

Sachs writes: “The author insists he doesn’t study buyology … rather, he says, ‘my hope is that the huge majority will wield this same instrument for good: to better understand ourselves – our wants, our drives and our motivations — and use that knowledge for benevolent and practical purposes’. Well, maybe. But then again, he has nothing to sell us.”

We’d be well-advised to brace ourselves for the coming flood of bullboards “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” as the electioneering hots up. We’d be equally well-advised to beware the news that is pumped our way — remembering that there have been massacres of the best and brightest in our newsrooms in favour less-qualified and less costly.

And, throughout this year (despite what the “analysts” say about economic upturns), we will be very well-advised to be extra-cautious not to succumb to buyology’s seductive serenades. It’s a jungle out there and you need bush craft to keep your eye on the prize and the pinch on your purse.

Oh, and BTW, Lindstrom’s research found virtually no difference in the way the human brain reacts to religious icons — the cross, the Pope, Rosary beads, a menorrah — or to powerful brands. So much for the separation of spiritual and material worlds …