Nothing Exists Until You Sell It
This feature is from Bartek Dziadosz, a filmmaker and manager of the Derek Jarman Lab. This post first appeared as a ‘scrapbook’ feature in May 2020, for Birkbeck Arts Weeks.
First, a few words about the book:
Vance Packard’s The Hidden Persuaders (1957) was the first major critical assessment of the advertising industry’s use of motivational research. It explored Madison Avenue’s ability to use depth psychology to tap into people’s emotions in an attempt to manipulate their buying choices.
The book appeared at a pivotal moment in the history of American consumerism. A growing understanding and suspicion of psychological research coincided with a rapid expansion of America’s advertising agencies. Critics such as Packard suggested that these apparently glamorous organisations were having an increasing impact on shaping people’s behaviour and aspirations. Many in the industry refuted Packard’s accusations and challenged his claims about the exploitation of the unconscious mind; others accepted or even claimed to be inspired by his findings.
Either way, Packard has opened up new questions about the rationality (or otherwise) of the consumer’s decisions. His work prompted many other explorations of adland’s persuasion techniques and its capacity to target our innermost fears and desires.
Nothing Exists Until You Sell It (2019)
The film was meant to be about Packard’s book, and its paradoxical legacy as a revelation that stimulated both scorn and interest. The Hidden Persuaders’s accusations launched a popular outcry in the late 50s that have been suspended mid-air ever since. They never hit their targets very hard. The accused were engaged in a very different kind of dilemma. While the general public might have been concerned about the perniciousness of the ‘dark art’ of advertising, the marketers frowned quizzically asking themselves: ‘Dark art? Bring it on. But does it actually work?’
I found it fascinating — worldviews conversing at cross purposes. Mad scientists selling their lab tubes to salivating traveling salesmen. Investopedia recommending Oliver Stone’s Wall Street as wielding ‘incredible power as a recruiting tool’ for bankers. The world of advertising itself — torn between exuberant creativity and the reality of a sales spreadsheet.
The internal discourse in advertising circles would not frame social responsibility in the same way that Packard did. Perhaps it is a white elephant. Or maybe Packard belongs to a generation that valued autonomy and inner-direction more than the generations that followed. Still, Paul Feldwick’s The Anatomy of Humbug — a historical account written by an industry person — essentially revolves around the same issues of our rationality and susceptibility to persuasion. There is no denying anymore that science can enhance intuitions of marketers and help them sell products, PR stories, or political views. The question then is not whether we are influenced by advertising exploiting our unconsciousness. We are. Willy-nilly we are exposed to covert persuasion every day. The truth is that we are not particularly rational beings at the best of times, let alone when watching 24 targeted association triggers per second. There are some, like Rory Sutherland, who argue that seemingly illogical thinking might not be such a bad thing after all. Upholding the pretence of logic and delusional post-rationalisation are more dangerous in everyday lives because they lead to an escalation of mistakes. Yet there are some real causes for concern as well. Tamara Ingram hints at them in her interview. The line separating advertising and PR from the sphere of public debate is increasingly blurred. ‘Blurred’ might already be an understatement. Cynics would say there is no difference between them. When it is difficult to discern between a planted PR story and a factual account, the risk of distorting political process is more than a collateral of the market economy. It is an existential threat to the democratic order.
Full disclosure, the film features interviews with Tamara Ingram, Paul Feldwick, Daniel Pick, Marcia Holmes, Rory Sutherland, Federico Pernechele.
Nothing Exists Until You Sell It was initially titled The Couch, the Cigarettes and Snake Oil. Then I came across a treasure trove of recordings from Don Joyce’s live-mix radio show ‘Over the Edge,’ a free-form audio collage broadcasted on KPFA FM in Berkeley, California. One of the episodes from 1992 was titled ‘Nothing Exists Until You Sell It’ and was re-purposing all sorts of tutorials for admen. Joyce’s collage had a low-key, irreverent air to it, which rendered its constituent clippings beyond surreal. Here are a few of them.
Clippings from an episode of ‘Over the Edge’
Epilogue
At the time of Packard’s writing, it was Freudian ideas and their popular interpretation that were the cause of anxiety and excitement. In the last two decades they have been replaced by an onslaught of disciplines with the prefix ‘neuro.’ In a 2004 article Nature Neuroscience was wondering sceptically whether using fMRI scans for market research is money well spent. Fifteen years later, Harvard Business Review was able to offer a thorough overview of methods established in the burgeoning field of neuromarketing, ranging from facial coding, to eye tracking of gaze and pupillometry, to the most expensive and seemingly most effective fMRI. The same questions arise, and the same muddled answers are given. According to Eben Harrell, neuromarketing seems creepy but we are already being influenced anyway. To ease our fears he writes that ‘it’s currently almost impossible to use neuroscientific tools to physically manipulate people’s brains without their consent [emphasis in original].’ Almost?!
Further links:
The BFI has a great collection of old British commercials.
Here is a selection of commercials used and almost used in the film. Classics, as well as the weird and wonderful.
Transcript of a radio show with Ernest Dichter and Vance Packard (NBC Radio, 1957)
Motivated or Manipulated? Ernest Dichter and David McClelland at Work (a blog post on the Hidden Persuader’s website)
The film was produced as part of the Hidden Persuaders Project led by Professor Daniel Pick at Birkbeck, University of London. It was made possible by a Senior Investigator Award from the Wellcome Trust. Many thanks to the project’s team: Sarah Marks, Lizzie Burns, Marcia Holmes, Ian Magor, Charles Williams, Katie Joice, Naomi Richman, Emma Smith, and Rachel Fleming-Mulford.