Misdirection and advertising’s holy grail

Posted by Adrian Toll on April 22nd, 2008

At a party in Bristol a few years ago, I met a barrister who had recently started to train as a magician.  He was an intense person, standing a bit closer than people normally do, and fixing me with a stare.  When I realised that he was dangling in front of me the watch that he’d removed from my wrist, I have to admit I was impressed.  It’s a pretty standard trick, but I count myself as being an alert person, almost to the point of edginess, and it’s unusual for something like that to escape my attention.

What he was using is called “misdirection” – a simple trick where the magician makes you more interested in something else (in this case his close proximity and the close attention he directed at me) while removing your watch.  (Having said that, and to his credit, you still have to be extremely dexterous to do something like that).

Another more threatening example was when my mobile phone got stolen.  I was sitting outside a cafe when some kids came up to me and one thrust a piece of paper with something scrawled on it into my face, mumbling something unintelligible – all my attention was on the fact that the first kid was too close for comfort, and I didn’t notice that the second one had simply picked my mobile up from the table until they were long gone.  Misdirection can seem like magic, but in a different context you can feel like you’ve been conned.

Advertising and marketing have adopted this trick of misdirection, except it’s more subtly done, and it aims to avoid the feeling that you’ve had the wool pulled over your eyes – on the contrary, it aims to please.  This move towards misdirection has been recent, as advertising has become steadily more sophisticated.  Have a look at this Persil advert from the 1960s:

It’s easy to see that advert and wonder how on earth people fell for it.  But this advert was only made during the early stages of advertising and marketing’s move from simple claims for a product – that Persil washes whiter, for example – to the use of psychological techniques, and particularly those based on the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud.  These techniques allow advertisers to transfer a much subtler non-verbal message than “I felt ashamed because Jimmy’s shirt wasn’t as white as Tom Williams’ shirt”.

This process was charted in “The Century Of The Self”, a documentary by Adam Curtis, which examines the strong influence of Freud’s theories on advertising and marketing in the 20th century:

Who among us would say that they’re not influenced by advertising?  If you’re not the target market for a Persil advert then it’s easy to scoff – but what happens when, for example, a Jean-Luc Godard fan sees an advert for a High Definition DVD boxed set of his films, or a Mac user sees an advert for the latest video iPod, or a gardener sees a new kind of hybrid rose in a catalogue?  She can resist the temptation, but there is no-one among us who wouldn’t be tempted by something.  Here’s Bill Hicks on marketing and advertising – the really interesting part starts at about 01:20 when he starts talking about the “anti-marketing dollar”:

As advertising has become more sophisticated, so have audiences in a psychological arms race.  Just as the Persil advert above seems ridiculously simplistic, over time people’s intellect adapts to advertising’s techniques as they start to consciously notice how these new techniques make them feel – and something that you notice you can resist.  Advertising’s Holy Grail is an advert that totally circumvents people’s rational thought and in the process side-steps their ability to resist by thinking about it, creating an unmediated desire for a product.  There is a tacit understanding of this in the stricter regulations governing advertising to children.

Misdirection in advertising is mostly used to remove the audience’s barriers to buying a product, to reassure them about buying something that they have rational reservations about.  This is particularly useful when public opinion turns against a group of products in a way that cannot be tackled head-on, and a good example of this is cars and car use.

Leaving aside the truth or falsity of global warming, which is another subject altogether, I think we would all accept that being “green” is now a prerequisite for companies and their commercials.  No company can afford to be seen to be unconcerned about environmental issues (unless they’re going for the anti-environmental dollar).  Because of the weight of public opinion that global warming is a real problem and that car use is a major contributor to this problem, in terms of advertising messages car manufacturers have the choice of accepting that opinion, or telling their potential buyers that they’re wrong.  The second strategy risks completely backfiring and alienating their potential customers – particularly in an age where the customer is always right, or “you’re worth it”.

In this situation, car companies basically have two options:

1. Completely and radically change the way they build cars, and the infrastructure that revolves around it, and advertise these profound changes.  This would be an enormously risky bet because if, for example, they started building large quantities of electric cars, not only would they have to bet on a completely new worldwide charging-point infrastructure being built, but they would have to completely change their manufacturing methods which would be vastly expensive.

2. Make as little change to their manufacturing processes and business model as possible, but make these changes the centre of attention in their marketing, just to the point where people can reassure themselves that it’s actually OK to buy a new car.

All the major car companies are currently taking the second course.  And no wonder, because without being able to share the risk with someone who has very deep pockets, the outcomes for the first are either glory or death for the company that tries it – not something that you want to take to a meeting with shareholders.

Here’s an example of how the second approach works when it comes to advertising.  This is Honda, telling you how environmentally friendly their new diesel engines are:

At the core of this advert, Honda’s message is “buy more cars” – no more or less than that.  But “buy more cars” is a culturally unacceptable message now, even if that’s something that people would really like to do, and this environmental barrier is one that needs to be overcome.  The bright colours, lovely cartoon animals, reassuring voice and soothing music all go to make up a very reassuring, if sickly sweet, context.  Honda’s cartoon animals – obviously exercising the will of “the environment” – kill off all the old, smoky diesel engines and then frolic with Honda’s new engine in a blissful environmental heaven.  If this was all the advert was, most people would be sickened by all the schmaltz – and so to undercut this, the song is about how it’s good to hate some things.  A very simple clash of opposites, but the irony that it generates allows enough of a knowing feeling to forget that in fact the core message, deeply buried, is “buy more cars”.  Or, more accurately, “that submerged desire that you have for a new car is ok – you go ahead and buy it”.  The fact that the song is about hate also prevents any feelings that Honda are being wilfully naive and ingenuous.  

There are many examples of this kind of misdirection in advertising, particularly combined with the message that it’s ok to desire and buy things like cars, removing barriers put up by rational thought.  Thought is anathema to this kind of advertising, which wants to take the shortest route to the viewer’s feelings – creating stronger desire, damping down negative feelings about a product and so on.

If you’re not in the least moved by an advert, you’re probably not the target market – perhaps you’d be more moved by a Jean-Luc Godard DVD boxed set, a new iPod or a new kind of hybrid rose.  And if you’re still unconvinced, here’s Derren Brown, who was that barrister-turned-”mentalist” in Bristol, getting one over on the advertising industry themselves: