In the early 1960s My family moved back to Brooklyn from Long Island. They enrolled me at PS-197, the same elementary school Bernie went to— although much earlier— and Chuck Schumer. I volunteered to be a crossing guard and the sergeant of my corner was Dan Chaykin. We became good friends and his father invited me to dinner to meet one of his friends, the hugely famous Vance Packard, author of the best seller, The Hidden Persuaders, which had been published in 1957 and was still one of the most talked about books in the country. I was so excited and immediately read the book. I’m reading it again now.
Last night a passage caught my attention about how ad executives handled the idea of differentiating cigarettes. “The subconscious salesmen, in groping for better hooks, deployed in several directions. One direction they began exploring in a really major way was the moulding of images; the creation of distinctive, highly appealing personalities for products that were essentially indistinctive. The aim was to build images that would arise before our 'inner eye' at the mere mention of the product’s name, once we had been properly conditioned. Thus they would trigger our action in a competitive sales situation. A compelling need for such images was felt by merchandisers… because of the growing standardization of, and complexity of, ingredients in most products, which resulted in products that defied reasonable discrimination. Three hundred smokers loyal to one of three major brands of cigarettes were given the three
brands to smoke (with labels taped) and asked to identify their own
favorite brand. Result: 35 percent were able to do so; and under the
law of averages pure guesses would have accounted for a third of the correct identifications. In short, something less than 2 percent could be credited with any real power of discrimination. Somewhat comparable results were obtained when merchandisers tried 'blindfold' tests on beer and whisky drinkers. If people couldn't discriminate reasonably, marketers reasoned, they should be assisted in discriminating unreasonably, in some easy, warm, emotional way.”
Packard noted that “Pierre Marineau, a high apostle of image building, analyzed the problem with startling candor in talking to Philadelphia advertising men in early 1956. Advertising, he admonished them, is no longer just a neat little discussion of your product's merits. ‘Basically, what you are trying to do,’ he advised, ‘is create an illogical situation. You want the customer to fall in love with your product and have a profound brand loyalty when actually content may be very similar to hundreds of competing brands.’ To create this illogical loyalty, he said, the first task ‘is one of creating some differentiation in the mind— some individualization for the product which has a long list of competitors very close to it in content.’”
Now apply that to “selling” politicians and their platforms. Very few voters know anything about any politicians other than those running for president… maybe a Senate candidate. Look at this poll that came out yesterday, showing that though “Republicans in the House and Senate have proposed cuts to essential government social programs, including Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare… likely voters overwhelmingly want to increase or maintain federal funding for federal programs.”
The pollsters reported that “Nearly half of all voters want to increase funding for Medicaid, and 89 percent believe that funding for the program should either be increased or remain the same. In contrast, only 7 percent of voters believe that Medicaid funding should be cut. Republicans in Congress have proposed changes to Medicaid that would make the program more difficult to access, including cutting federal funding to Medicaid, ending Medicaid expansion, turning Medicaid into a block grant, and charging monthly premiums to recipients. However, a majority of voters reject these proposals to cut Medicaid. When shown each of the proposals, a majority of voters say they would rather leave Medicaid as is than pursue Republicans’ proposed changes. No proposal has the support of more than 19 percent of likely voters.”
And yet… voters continue to vote for Republicans. How is that possible? That’s where Packard ideas from The Hidden Persuaders come in. Political ad men are as likely to trick voters into “buying” their candidates as ad men were who tried differentiating between Camels, Lucky Strikes and Marlboros. “The image builders began giving a great deal of thought to the types of images that would have the strongest appeal to the greatest number of people… The Jewel food stores chain of Chicago, in its search for an appealing ‘personality’ that would give it an edge over competitors, came up from its depth probing with one promising answer: It decided the chain should, in its image, take on the traits ‘we like in our friends.’ Those were spelled out as generosity, courtesy, cleanliness, patience, sincerity, honesty, sympathy, and good-naturedness. But wouldn't it be even better, merchandisers reasoned, if they could build into their products the same traits that we recognize in ourselves! Studies of narcissism indicated that nothing appeals more to people than themselves; so why not help people buy a projection of themselves? That way the images would preselect their audiences, select out of a consuming public people with personalities having an affinity for the image. By building in traits known to be widely dispersed among the consuming public the image builders reasoned that they could spark love affairs by the millions.”
One journalist who writes about the confusion on a regular basis is David Sirota. I went to his Twitter feed as I was writing and randomly picked this one. You see the problem “consumers” of electoral politics face? I can’t imagine many better examples that con-sultant Mayo Pete, whose entire career has been about manipulating the media and the general public. And he expects to be president one day. Imagine a race between him and another manipulator, Meatball Ron.
