From time immemorial merchants and businesses alike have enchanted the consumer with symbols, visual images, trademarks or logos in the most unusual places under the most inappropriate irrelevant circumstances to achieve a kind of persuasion: the slow but steady attraction of consumers to their business. Upon rationalizing the existence of these symbols, most astute consumers will readily concur that their positioning on roadside billboards, in between movie episodes, or on sandwich wrappings is completely ludicrous and hilariously ridiculous, yet with repeated exposure consumers collectively start to accept these apparitions as nothing more than a normal picture of modernity which they unconsciously desire to be apart of.
But the collective acceptance of logos and other modern symbols is not nearly as powerful as their ability to influence behavior; the vast majority will do just about anything to have some kind of association to the advertised symbol or ownership of the product linked to the symbol. These symbols are inundated at the average consumer at a frequency of astronomical magnitude that it really isn’t inconceivable to have been exposed to every single public trading company on the NYSE in some way, shape, or form within the span of a mere day.
The bombardment of these images is completely nonsensical and their messages are often times far from the truth but nonetheless this bombardment is very effective at luring consumers to buy. What is going on?
To possibly understand this epidemiology we need to look back at the motivations that governed ancient prehistoric man.
The Mother of Humanity
Anthropologists named her Lucy. She was part of the hominid, Australopithecus afarensis species, which means “southern ape from the region of afar”. She was initially an herbivore but then transformed herself purposely into a carnivore in order to gain acceptance from a group of prehistoric humans when she was left all alone in Ethiopia. She needed to fit in and gain the group’s approval to survive. The team was always more powerful than the lonely individual in the face of hostile enemies. At least that was the case in prehistoric times. [1]
To conform or not to conform, to be seduced or not to be seduced—A difficult battle
Although humans are still today unconsciously possessed by a powerful need to conform at almost any cost, this fear of exclusion from a social organization doesn’t necessarily equate to life or death, as it did in Lucy’s time, but it certainly produces social anxiety and concern for social status, which together make humans cooperative and conformist to a large degree.
In the human’s zeal to avoid banishment, they may commit too deeply or for too long. They are so keen on fitting in that they fail to ask whether they really benefit from an affiliation in the first place.[2]
Our genetic heritage has made our desire to fit in very strong, but it can certainly distort the consequences of rejection. Not getting a group’s approval, today, will not mean death and the effects will neither be global nor catastrophic. In fact insisting on being affiliated with a group at all costs blinds you to new opportunities and creates a global sense that you will always be rejected. [3]
Social psychologist Yair, argues that existential insecurity and uncertainty drive action in the individual and motivates him to conform and emulate the majority in order to ultimately reduce his insecurities and uncertainties. Actors in uncertain conditions tend to seek certainty, even at the price of negating their own perceptions and sacrificing long-term personal interests. In that context the famous rod-length experiments by Solomon Ashe show that actors choose to be existentially secure in a supporting social group rather than being empirically correct in isolation. Rational action suggests that actors work to maximize personal existential security within support networks rather than achieve objective payoffs.[4][5]
Surely if humans are constantly being bombarded by images, eventually these images become familiar and with all familiar subjects a kind of security surfaces and anxieties dissipate. Unknown territory, alien products elicit a horrific reaction in humans and often times than not humans simply avoid these are all costs. Subliminal marketers synthesize this unconscious familiarity and security among their incognizant viewers so as to ultimately get a large of them to start adopting the product/service that is being communicated to them. As a large population repeatedly uses the particular product/service others tend to follow simply because they want to belong as social psychologist Yair so eloquently discussed.
The Emergence of the Individual
In his famous book “The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy”, Jacob Burckhardt saw the Renaissance, not only as a period in which art, music, and literature flourished but also as an age with its own social and psychological characteristics. Jacob thought that the most important thing that developed in the Renaissance was “individualism”—the need to achieve, to create, to express the self conscious. This self consciousness suggested to Jacob Burckhardt that Renaissance Italy was the beginning of the modern world.
Today subliminal marketing most definitely has an impact on consumer behavior but today more than ever people are questioning and doing more research than ever before. They may certainly be mesmerized, captivated and comforted by the familiarity associated with certain symbols or brands but the modern consumer will demand to dig beyond that mere surface.
[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/prehistoric_life/human/human_evolution/
[2] Pelusi, Nando “ Clinging to Your Crew”, Psychology Today; May/Jun 2007, Vol 40 Issue 3, p 65-66, 2p
[3] Pelusi, Nando “ Clinging to Your Crew”, Psychology Today; May/Jun 2007, Vol 40 Issue 3, p 65-66, 2p
[4] Yair, Gad “ Insecurity, Conformity and Community :Theoretical Model of Action” European Journal of Social Theory 11(1): 51-70
[5] Yair, Gad “Existential Uncertainty and the Will to Conform” Sociology Volume41(4) :681-698
