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Operant Conditioning and Psychoanalytic Tactics In Advertising:
B.F. Skinner, Sigmund Freud, Shiny Pennies &
GoogleBill MacConnelJanuary 27, 2017
Operant Conditioning:
Skinnerian Skinnerian Operant Conditioning.
When behavior is followed by a positive outcome.
If the consequences are good, the actions that led to it being repeated become more probable. Click Clip the coupon
Call 1-800
Operant Conditioning:
+ Low hanging Fruit From the Happiness Tree Very evident in social media; helped along with
a rewarding oxytocin payload, as your selfish and ego blow up on Instagram or Facebook.
The same chemical released when a mother bonds with a child, you make money, have a great meal, pleasurable activities.
…and saving money through clipping coupons, clicking, and calling 1-800 releases the feel-good brain chemical Dopamine.
Objective Provide an overview of the
psychological practices co-opted by advertising and used as tactics by both General and Direct Response advertisers.
Of Two Minds. One Goal:
Persuade us to buy
Approach A look at two iconic and wildly successful
campaigns from the past firmly rooted in psychoanalytic and Skinnerian tactics.
Direct advertising- Columbia House Record Club. 1955-2000
General advertising – American Tobacco/Lucky Strike. 1929 single event.
Two Approaches: One Major Distinction
The difference between Direct and General advertising is interaction with the message. Direct requires immediate physical action; call, clip, click… general does not.
Direct Response- communication constructed to require the customers immediate participation.
General- communication to create ongoing emotional awareness and engagement with the brand.
Different Creative Approaches:
Direct
Action predicates compelling and correct target audience incentive. Could care less about being trendy, hip, or cool. The proud nerd of advertising before nerds existed. It’s all about measurable results.
Different Creative Approaches:
General
Creative is king. Striving to hit that sweet spot where we find a poignant reflection of ourselves in the brand.
“Get a Mac” 2006 TBWA Media Arts Lab
Different Creative & Strategic Approaches:
Two Industry Pioneers
Lester Wunderman PC guy
Jay Chiat Mac guy
Lost in the Code 21st-century ad industry focus is on
algorithms and big data. The co-opted role Psychology plays in
sustaining mass consumerism is overlooked. Specifically- B.F. Skinner's techniques
applied in Direct Response and Sigmund Freud’s theories used for General Advertising.
Math +Understanding the Unconscious=Engineering Desire
Now equal parts math and persuasion; algorithms and data, in a powerful alliance with Freudian and Skinnerian methods.
Advertising has emerged as one of the most sophisticated businesses. Based on a model that was envisioned and presented at MIT 40 years ago by industry pioneer Lester Wunderman.
“ System of interactive transactions that would restore a measure of dialogue and human scale to the way we made, sold, and bought things.”
-Lester Wunderman
MIT 1961
Lester’s Landscape With Amazon and Facebook part of the mix,
advertising has formed into the system Wunderman envisioned in 1961.
Moving beyond the envisioned human scale and flirting with the monolithic.
Direct Vs. General
Skinnerian approach
• Operant conditioning• Click the Google ad and
save!• Clip coupon and save!• Call 1-800 number now!• Press the button to like a
brand
Freudian approach
• Understanding unconscious desire.
• Inadequacy• Fear• Love• Sex• Validation among peers:
real, imagined, or desired.
Direct General
A discussion best left for another day; Social media firmly anchored in operant conditioning. With the perplexing, and the often troubling element of personal profiles, and shared photos: more polished, contrived, and unblemished than the brand's advertised inches away. People aren't brands. Don't buy it.
Direct Vs. General
Skinnerian approach • Immediate.• Counter intuitively; a more
personal advertising experience.
• Accountability driven by highly sophisticated and immediate metrics.
• Click, Click, Click.
Freudian approach • Ongoing.• Emotional acceptance.• Image focused. • Highly creative effort to
subvert the rational mind with the emotional.
Direct General
Direct Response:Skinnerian
Skinnerian Operant Conditioning. when behavior is followed by a positive
outcome.
If the consequences are good, actions leading to repeated engagement become more probable.
Direct Response:Skinnerian
Behavior triggered by a call to action with an incentive:
Call 1-800 now! and save! A tactic invented by Lester Wunderman.
Clip coupon 15% discount. Click Google ad for savings. Click button to validate and be validated. Like me, I’ll like you.
For Just One Shinny Penny!
Columbia House Record Club Direct Response Industry pioneer, Lester
Wunderman, developed the concept of the Columbia House Record Club.
“One penny” for 13 records! Tape a penny to the order form. Stamps of desired albums selected and removed
from master sheet. Lick and attach to order form. Mail to Columbia House records.
For Just One Penny!Columbia House Record Club
Operant ConditioningColumbia House Record Club
All carefully thought out steps in a method to place the consumer in a more active and personal role in the advertising process.
The opposite of General advertisings pushed effort towards emotional acceptance and image making.
The Skinnerian Record Club
Again, the ad asks the consumer to tape a penny to the postcard, in addition to tearing out stamps of the desired albums, licking the stamps, and placing them, along with the penny, attaching to an order form, and mailing to Columbia House records.
How Did They Make Money?
Giving away all those albums for a penny, how was money made?
Negative option billing model. The customer agreed to have the “monthly club selection” mailed to them unless they specifically declined it prior to the billing cycle.
A practice used extensively today. Netflix Low monthly repeating costs for apps that
can quickly add up.
How Did They Make Money?
Also kept bill collectors busy, tracking down 14-year old gangster’s in the Midwest; taking the music loot, and stiffing Columbia House.
Perhaps the fine print wasn’t read by kids, or, like today, anybody.
A questionable business model built on converting complacency into profit.
Canadian Parliament tried to outlaw it in 1996, and in October of 2016, the practice led to the FCC fining Comcast $2.3mm.
Working For The Google Man
40-years after Wunderman’s MIT lecture, technology caught up with his vision.
In 2002, with Google Adwords overhauled, and cost-per-click pricing in place, the “system of interactive transactions that would restore a measure of dialogue and human scale to the way we made, sold, and bought things” arrived.
More, Lester “People, products and services are
all seeking an individual entity. Taste, desire, ambition and lifestyle have made shopping once again a form of personal expression”
Lecture at MIT on October 1,1961, introducing the concept of modern “Direct Marketing”.
Feed me Your Personal Data,
Say’s the Google Machine
Operating brother Jeddah’s hot type press?
what’s the alternative?
Feed me Your Personal Data,
Say’s the Google Machine
To navigate through modern life, even at the most basic level, we weigh our limited options and comply.
No Pennies RequiredJust Your Personal Data
A call to action for clicking on a Google ad remains anchored in the same basic Skinnerian concept, though certainly less labor intensive as those developed by Wunderman for Columbia House records.
With the specificity of results improving; in tandem with sophistication, interpretation, and implementation of data.
Allowing for anticipating desired consumer intent, and the “reward” motivation to convert intent into action.
No Pennies RequiredJust Your Personal Data
Clicks are more likely to be repeated as the ad experience becomes more personal.
Counter-intuitively; through math, machine, and data.
…and perfected operant conditioning will remain just a click away.
General Advertising
1984 Apple Computer/ad by
Chiat/Day
General Advertising Freudian
General advertising has co-opted a Freudian Psychoanalytic approach.
Understanding humans, at heart, are irrational creatures, driven by unconscious desires of power, sex, and longing for worth in the eyes of their peers.
Emotional appeal wins over rational thought.
General AdvertisingFreudian
Freudian psychoanalytic insight to affect the outcome of the unconscious struggle between Id and Super-ego.
Opening a receptive path for desire over reason by way of symbols and emotional appeal.
Leading to what is often called the pleasure principle…
… down the path of, “Inventing Desire”, the title of Karen Stabiner’s 1993 book about general advertising maverick, Jay Chiat, and his agency, Chiat/Day.
General Advertising Freudian
Edward Bernays was the first to use Freudian Psychoanalytic techniques in advertising and was the nephew of Sigmund Freud.
Understanding that the unconscious makes links between symbols and desires.
General Advertising Freudian
Front row and center, and a clear understanding of how to utilize Freudian psychoanalytic techniques.
Bernays co-opted the methods into what he called "the engineering of consent." most famously in his “Torches of Freedom” campaign.
His successful effort to persuade women to smoke.
Torches of FreedomSmoking as a Feminist Act
General Advertising Freudian
After being assured by the psychoanalyst, A.A. Brill, that, indeed, it was “normal” for women to smoke, you got it… “Oral fixation”…Bernays was confident to proceed.
Oy, Psychoanalysts, oy, Mad Men. Cigarettes presented to women as a symbol
of equality with men.
General Advertising Freudian
With Bernays paying models to smoke as they walked in the New York Easter parade; defiantly smoking in public, en masse, shocking, and never seen before.
Presenting smoking as a protest for equality. The campaign was wildly successful,
increasing Lucky Strikes market share by 200%.
General Advertising Freudian
Turning rebellion into money, as the late poet Joe Strummer sang.
Bank for lucky Strike, Bernays, and Freud.
Cancer for Bernays wife, and deep lingering regret for Bernays.
Percent of Cigarette Purchases By women
1923
1929
1935
1977
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35%
5%
12%
18%
33%
Torches of Freedom- single event. Easter 1929.
Purchase by women remained around 33% post ’77, though declining over the last decade, in parallel with overall U.S. smoking trends; with awareness, cost, and availability reducing use.
Beyond Metrics The success of Berneys campaign of
positioning smoking as a defiant feminist act, transcends simple numerical measurement.
It became the go-to creative and strategic tactic for reaching women.
A multi – generational manipulation that directly caused death, wrecked families, and burdened the health care system, which continues today on all fronts.
Beyond Metrics
Cancer, all about gender equality; sickness and death for feminists, women and the patriarchy alike.
Beyond Metrics
Can you imagine the altered world history had psychology not been co-opted by Bernays? Or women buying into the cynical message.
Or if Google, could unleash their deep bench of talent and technology into a campaign to reverse it?
Suddenly that self-imposed metric of all metrics “making the world a better Place”
Would move from punch line to life changing reality.
Google Monolith Advertising
Advertising terminology often overlaps. “Branding” is often interchangeable with
“General” Google is taking the weakness of Direct, or
more fairly; qualified unconcern; creative that didn't’t need to reach the soaring heights needed for a successful branding campaign.
Improving it, and leveraging the big data and analytics of Direct, into a digital hybrid of both.
Bringing it All Together:
Merging Direct and General
“In all my years with DoubleClick and Google, we've never been closer to the ultimate promise of brand advertising in the digital age: to efficiently and effectively run highly relevant, creative, responsive and measurable brand campaigns,”
-Sean Downey Managing Director, Americas Platform Solutions & Innovation, DoubleClick
General + DR =Best of BothA Programmatic Path to The
Future Combining strong creative associated
with General/brand with deep audience insights and analytical tools associated with Direct Response.
1. Organize audience insights2. Design compelling creative3. Execute with integrated technology4. Reach audiences across screens 5. Measure impact
Programmatic Path Forward
Programmatic isn’t just efficient media buying- it also helps craft more sophisticated and targeted campaigns. Keeping with the latest analytics and case studies on real time bidding; connecting consumers to mircomoments.
Programmatic Path Forward
The path forward; a remarkably potent mix including the psychology of old; though reaching beyond operant into a profound understanding of motivation via oxytocin and dopamine payloads.
All beautifully dovetailing and supercharging it into helping personalize mass reach; into a tool of remarkable digital brand building.
And the future…