
Ads work by cultural imprinting, not emotional inception - philh
http://www.meltingasphalt.com/ads-dont-work-that-way/
======
salmonellaeater
There's an excellent book called Rational Ritual[1][2][3] which develops this
idea much more fully. The thesis is that common knowledge (I know something,
_and I know everyone else knows it too_ ) is very powerful and rationally
drives people's behavior.

One of the arguments in the book revolves around the absurd pricing of
advertising during big public events like the Super Bowl. If advertisers
weren't concerned about the common knowledge aspect of their messages, they
would air their ads when the cost per viewer is lowest. And you do see this
with non-social goods, which tend to be advertised during off hours. But
companies producing social goods like beer pay much more per viewer for prime-
time and Super Bowl slots in order to get their product into the cultural
zeitgeist. If you see something in a Super Bowl ad, you know most other people
have seen it too.

[1]
[http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9998.html](http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9998.html)

[2] PDF of the original 2001 manuscript:
[http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/cpworkshop/papers/Chwe1.p...](http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/cpworkshop/papers/Chwe1.pdf)

[3] [http://www.amazon.com/Rational-Ritual-Culture-
Coordination-K...](http://www.amazon.com/Rational-Ritual-Culture-Coordination-
Knowledge/dp/0691114714)

~~~
chrismcb
I would imagine the cost per viewer for a Super Bowl commercial isn't that
high. Super Bowl commercials are expensive because there are so many viewers.
In addition to the extra press surrounding them.

~~~
salmonellaeater
Super Bowl ads cost about the same per viewer as prime-time TV slots ($35 per
thousand in 2014). Both cost about four times as much per viewer as daytime
TV.

Primetime:
[http://www.tvb.org/trends/4718/4715](http://www.tvb.org/trends/4718/4715)

Daytime:
[http://www.tvb.org/trends/4718/4710](http://www.tvb.org/trends/4718/4710)

~~~
makomk
With daytime TV you can only reach consumers that are watching TV during the
daytime though. That's a lot of potential customers that will never, ever see
any of your ads.

------
dgreensp
I agree that the primary mechanism of ads is to affect the "landscape of
cultural meanings" so that a product is associated with a broader meaning or
image, but I don't think this is so different from the Mad Men philosophy, or
that making purchasing decisions to feed your external image is so much more
rational, and more relevant, than feeding your self-image.

Maybe _you_ choose your household cleaners just to impress your guests. You
wear Axe Body Spray because of what it communicates about you ("Hey girl, I'm
wearing Axe Body Spray right now"). I don't need bystanders while I drink
Corona in order to feel like I'm the kind of guy who'd rather be chilling on a
beach far from the daily grind. I'm making a statement to myself about the
kind of person I am, one who endorses those values or that fantasy.

There's got to be a way to take the bystander out of the equation. If we want
to maintain the idea that we are all rational thinkers -- only "culture" is
irrational, or _other_ people's subconsciouses! -- how about: the advertiser
is selling us a bit of meaning, thereby increasing the value of the product.
Meaning is hard to obtain, and making purchasing decisions based on
advertisements is one way for rational individuals to obtain this scarce
resource.

------
_Adam
A comment to the author of the article:

I don't agree with your point about non-immunity. Cultural imprinting works
because it leverages the desire that humans have to portray a certain image or
belong to a certain group.

As rational humans, we can eliminate the pull of such ads by building our own
understanding about the group the ad is appealing to, and how that ad appeals
to the group. Equipped with this understanding, we can find far more effective
ways than drinking Corona to portray the image of being chill and relaxed.

Alternatively, we can reconsider our willingness to be included in that group.
Once we realize the only thing binding Corona drinkers together is their
collective vision of some beach, we might realize that there's more
interesting people to drink with.

~~~
analog31
From the article:

>>>> The problem is that there's no escape, no immunity, from this kind of ad.
Once we see it — and know that all our peers have seen it too — it's in our
rational self-interest to buy the advertised product.

No it's not. That's where non-immunity falls down. For one thing, peer
pressure is still only one factor in choosing a product, and we can still use
our rational brains to weigh it against other factors. It only adds to the
information at our disposal, but doesn't necessarily outweigh other
information.

We might decide that tasty beer is more important than personal image, or that
the social impact of our beer choice is either negligible or not worth paying
extra for.

------
comex
Maybe I'm just less aware of what other people do than others, but I find this
fundamentally unconvincing (the argument that this explains most of what's
usually considered emotional inception, not the existence of the phenomenon in
some cases).

> Beer, soft drinks, gum, every kind of food (think backyard barbecues).
> Restaurants, coffee shops, airlines. Cars, computers, clothing. Music,
> movies, and TV shows (think about the watercooler at work). Even household
> products send cultural signals, insofar as they'll be noticed when you
> invite friends over to your home. Any product enjoyed or discussed in the
> presence of your peers is ripe for cultural imprinting.

Your choice of coffee shop or fast food communicates something to your peers
_if_ you're seen there, which, as far as I know, is often fairly uncommon,
depending on your situation. It's nice to be culturally aware, but that
doesn't constrain your consumption of music, movies, and TV too much
(especially music) unless you watch very little. Nobody notices what brand of
sneakers you're wearing... at least, I rarely even look down that far, and I
can't believe other people are that different. Household products? Maybe once
in a year.

Nor do I find all of the anecdotes convincing.

Bed sheets - sheets themselves may not be the hottest product category, but
I've seen many mattress and mattress store commercials. Tempur-pedic, Sleepy's
(I have heard that jingle so many times I doubt I will ever forget it), etc.

Gas stations - don't advertise because usually you don't have multiple
stations right next to each other. Since the service is a commodity, everyone
goes to the closest station.

Why not two-faced - because it's easier to remember something if it's clear,
well-defined, and repeated often, and that includes unconscious associations.
No need to bring in cultural factors.

~~~
Retric
Gas stations do advertise. Fill in the blank '___ with Techron'. You also see
a list of gas stations at an interstate exit sign.
[http://www.kentucky.com/2011/09/05/1869947/ads-at-
interstate...](http://www.kentucky.com/2011/09/05/1869947/ads-at-interstate-
exits-mean-revenue.html) (third immage bottom right.)

Anyway, there are lot's of forms of advertizing. From informative "talk to
your doctor about ED" to simply memorable.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVcbasIb8lQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVcbasIb8lQ)

However, the cultural inception idea is not about some sort of Pavlovian
response. You don't actually get to taste what's for sale in a supermarket, so
it's an abstract choice. And with little to no information to work off of you
make a split second decision after split second decision which is draining. In
that situation simple familiarity is worth a lot. Similarly, your not actually
going to test drive every car in your price range on the market.

That said, signaling is a big part of advertising. If nobody knows you just
spent 20k on a watch it's harder to justify the purchase.

~~~
davemel37
> Anyway, there are lot's of forms of advertizing.

I think this article is specifically referring to branding advertising as
opposed to educational, informative, direct response, etc...

re: watch purchases, those that spend 20k on watches are usually people who
can appreciate the amazing craftsmanship, mechanics, and art form behind it.
Here is a mindblowing video of a Corum Golden Bridge being made.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOdmoGoh3ck](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOdmoGoh3ck)

I am not discounting the status symbol of owning a $20k watch...but I could
just as easily impress lots of people with a TAG watch for 1/10th the price.
or a Patek Phillipe for half the price.

~~~
Retric
I agree mechanical watches are fun.

However, for comparison Intel is manufacturing at 14 nm which means their
features size is ~30 atoms wide. Or ~1 million times more precise than those
watches and few people care. High end watches became a status symbol in the
16th century and technology has simply progressed to the point where there low
tech by comparison.

Anyway, people who buy 20k watches are generally the kind of people that can
afford to buy them. It's simply not a major purchase to most of them.

~~~
davemel37
Its not about the tech perspective of the mechanics, its about the fact that a
human being crafted by hand this amazing mechanical watch. Personally, I am
blown away that its even humanly possible to craft watches like this Golden
Bridge by hand. Its like wearing an original picasso on your wrist.

There are plenty of people that can afford to purchase them that don't as
well. I think you need a deep appreciation for the art to be comfortable
dropping $20k on a watch even if its a drop in the bucket for you.

------
tedks
Oh man. That's a doozy. Well, uh.

>We may not conform to a model of perfect economic behavior, but neither are
we puppets at the mercy of every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a billboard. We
aren't that easily manipulated.

Yeah. Yeah we are.

It looks like the author of this is just some random engineer without a lot of
backround in marketing or persuasion psychology. That's a shame because he's
clearly interested in it and it's a really cool field. Like the author, I'm
not going to cite specific sources in this comment, but anything in it is
probably covered in Cialdini's _Influence_ (a _fantastic_ starting point for
persuasion psychology) or Gass & Seiter's _Persuasion_ (which is not as easy
to read as Influence but is a better textbook).

First off, advertisements definitely do work via simple association. Humans
use liking as a heuristic for virtually all decisions (we decide in favor of
things we like), so increasing liking increases purchases fairly reliably. A
warmth appeal like a Coke ad with smiling faces _will_ reliably create an
association between Coke and positive emotions just because that's how humans
are wired. If you activate two concepts together, you link them. This is just
how humans work and is the basis of most of cognitive psychology. Many, many
things make sense once you start to see things in terms of co-activation and
priming.

The author calls this emotional inception, but that's sort of... not a real
term, so I'll just call it association, which is the actual term. You do
associate Coke with positivity after seeing it often enough. That's the basis
on which observational learning works, and observational learning is pretty
obviously a thing. If you don't believe me on that you can pretty simply
replicate some Banderas experiments with a 6 year old if you happen to have
one lying around.

The current cognitive model of persuasion closest to the truth (IMHO) is
Kruglanski's Unimodel. But it's too complicated to explain here and the older
models will work, so I'll use an older model here for the purposes of
explanation. Older persuasion models posited that there were two _routes_ to
compliance: the central route, through the target's careful, rational
consideration of options, and the peripheral route, through cognitively quick
decisions made mostly on factors that are heuristic. This is a natural way of
viewing things in a System 1/System 2 algorithms vs. heuristics world (for
more on this see Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow).

Humans almost never spend enough time on a decision for it to be considered
rational in any way. Humans are wired with a fairly small amount of heuristics
and we use those for literally everything. Liking, availability, and
conformity are all we can muster in most cases. The author dislikes this, but
doesn't offer any reason why it isn't true, and doesn't present any science as
to why it isn't true, so... sorry man, but you might just have to accept
humans aren't rational. I know it might be difficult to be a libertarian after
that, but I'm sure you'll deal.

Because of this, virtually all advertising is targeted at the peripheral
route. _All_ of the mechanisms the author discusses are peripheral cues:
Associational priming to create liking, mere exposure effects, appeals to
authority (sorry, saying 4/5 doctors recommend X is not a rational cue to buy
X), brand image, resource expenditure (as if people who buy more expensive
engagement rings are less likely to cheat -- I'd bet money the opposite is
true!), and finally, what the author calls cultural imprinting, but is
actually something like a mix of self-image manipuulation. Because of the
mechanisms used for observational and social learning, images that don't
actually give us food can create these cognitive links that later do cause us
to buy products.

When you see the Corona add, you notice a few things. The first is probably
the attractive person of the gender you're attracted to. The advertisers
nicely put two of them there, so you could be anything but asexual and have
something to salivate over. You notice the open space and clear skies, and the
beach, something you probably have a positive association with already with
lots of nice sensory cues. Very last, you'd notice the text, which you have to
manually process, and you'd notice that it says "Find your beach", which
implies that drinking Corona will make you feel similar to these things. The
ad has communicated that Corona will make you attractive, calm, and relaxed,
which are all nice things on their own. The ad also does, as the author points
out, establish another association on the meta-level, between people who drink
Corona and people who have these qualities. This isn't terribly different from
any of the other aspects of the ad, though, and it's certainly not a different
mechanism. Ultimately it all comes down to making associations.

I really hope the author and other interested people get into the actual
science behind persuasion. It's a really fun field and it's very rewarding.

~~~
GuiA
> It looks like the author of this is just some random engineer without a lot
> of backround in marketing or persuasion psychology. That's a shame because
> he's clearly interested in it.

Little parenthesis: if you're interested in a subject, make the effort to read
about it from well established sources (very often, books). The author of the
posted article relies on sources like LifeHacker and pop psychology journalism
to build his knowledge and make his claims, but those are clearly shallow,
insufficient, and inaccurate.

I feel like this is a problem that the internet has created- it makes it
possible to feel knowledgeable in certain topics after reading a lot of
informal web pages on a given topic, but very often that content is far from
being authoritative. Reading less blogs/pop journalism/etc. and more books
from established academics is one of the most beneficial moves you can do for
the depth and accuracy of your various bodies of knowledge.

~~~
jessriedel
That sounds nice, but in practice it's extremely difficult because academics
have very little incentive to make their rigorous research discoverable, much
less accessible, to laymen. I agree that arm-chair theorizing is almost always
a waste of time, but a layman probably contributes more by trying to bring his
own particular expertise (software engineering or whatever) to bear on the
problem -- on the off chance that he makes a novel insight -- than by sinking
himself in the literature.

~~~
tedks
Influence is maybe a hundred pages, very accessible, and written by one of the
foremost persuasion researchers out there.

You're just justifying laziness. Software engineering does not, in fact,
qualify you to comment on human minds, which are very different from software.
Presumably you wouldn't accept design advice from a doctor because of some
claimed way to bring medical practices to bear on software engineering.

~~~
jessriedel
I don't do software, I'm an academic. At least in my subfield, I have a pretty
good idea how many unnecessary barriers stand between laymen and the expert
wisdom, and how how often experts use their expertise as a way to dismiss
outside views without consideration. That's true even though, at the same
time, most outside views are a waste of time (as I mentioned).

He's writing a blog post, and you don't need to be qualified to do that.

"Influence" is a fine book and I encourage everyone to read it _including the
OP_. But that does't mean OP did something wrong, or was lazy, by using his
finite amount of time to write up his thought.

------
mieses
This argument is spot on but we resist it because we think we are above
culture, too smart for it, that we can reduce everything to science, analysis,
and engineering. The opposite is true. Culture is everything. Your brain does
not receive ads in a kind of tabula rasa clean room environment. Thanks for
articulating this!

------
Htsthbjig
"So if a theory (like emotional inception) says that something as flat and
passive as an ad can have such a strong effect on our behavior, we should hold
that theory to a pretty high burden of proof."

When I was adolescent I went to a(my first) music concert, it was an
incredible experience, I even met my first girlfriend there. I was surprised
that it was Coca Cola everywhere.

For me this was freedom(from my home environment), adventure, joy, friendship,
and even sex.

Way more than pixels on the screen.

Today is not Coca Cola. I do B.A.S.E jumping, love going downhill with my bike
and when I go to see or meet the Gods of the trail or Skydiving doing
incredible things(them,not me) I see REDBULL EVERYWHERE in the events they
participate.

Pixels on the screen are probably not that good, but they affect millions at
the same time.

Lots of people watch porn, even when it is just "pixels on the screen".

A significant part of the advertising industry do not use pixels at all, they
use text, they are called "copywriters" and what they do is tell stories.

------
ncavet
Complete nonsense. Do you really believe that comms majors are being tought
cultural inception in undergrad? The Corona ad, like all ads, is a response ne
to a brief that is designed to address a business objective. In this case get
people to drink Corona not just in the Summer. Hence find your own beach even
if you live in Minnesota in the Winter and would normally reach for a winter
beer. We don't sit around at agencies with our clients discussing the best way
to mind fuck the public. Ads are tested on awareness, purchase intent, brand
association and message association. Creatives reach for the stars. Clients
and strategists pull them back to earth. Depending on the people involved.
Some ads are great. Some suck. Case closed. - Ad Agency Guy (BTW none of us
watch Mad Men)

~~~
estefan
How they're made doesn't explain why they work or not. But having said that if
that ad was run in the winter it could be interpreted in a very different way
to if it was a summer campaign.

------
r0s
Lots of theory here but surely there's some solid science that can address
these ideas?

~~~
_Adam
It's quite simple to suggest an experiment to prove the article's point (which
I find very convincing).

Look at an ad for a product you own (e.g. iPhone) that you perceive as
conveying some form of emotion. Now, go use that product.

Do you feel the emotion portrayed in the ad?

To make this more scientific, expand the above test to a few hundred people.
Query their emotional state with a survey (or possibly by facial expressions,
if that's considered an accurate means of evaluating emotional response). Do
this for a number of products, ensuring that boring products (e.g. household
cleaning products) are included to rule out emotion generated from the
intrinsic properties of the product. Then check for the existence/non-
existence of a correlation between the emotion felt and the emotion portrayed.

~~~
roryokane
That experiment would not accurately test the emotional inception theory. The
theory states that given ads associating a product with a positive emotion,
people will eventually feel that emotion when they _see_ the product in the
store, and be compelled to buy it. Your experiment tests whether people feel
that emotion when they _use_ the advertised product after having bought it.
You might assume that these answers would match, but that is a dangerous and
unnecessary assumption.

I have an idea for a more accurate experiment. Survey a number of people about
what brands of some product they buy, if any. The product should be something
that does not currently have many ads for it (like bedsheets), so that
cultural imprinting is not a factor. Then send them a weekly email newsletter
on some random topic. Each newsletter would also contains ads for a certain
brand of that product.

The people would be split into two groups. For half of them, the ad for the
product tries to associate the brand with a positive image. For the other
half, the ad tries to associate the brand with a neutral image, while
otherwise keeping the text the same. This splitting into groups ensures that
“honest signaling” is not a confounding factor.

To ensure that the participant opens the newsletter and sees the ads,
participants would be asked to search each newsletter for a piece of
information and reply to the email with that information.

After three months of the newsletters, participants would be surveyed again
about what brands of the product they buy, if any. If emotional imprinting
theory is accurate, the participants who were shown the positive images should
have increased their purchasing of that brand of product more than the
neutral-image participants increased their purchasing.

------
dschiptsov
All oversimplified models are naive nonsense, especially those which were
developed to contradict another oversimplified models.

It is the same flaw as to say 'clouds cannot be of this or that particular
shape, they are always of this or that'.

There are too many 'variables' in what we could call the [naive] psychology of
a mind or so called Froidian psychology. Any undergraduate cognitivist would
tell.

It is not the naive this-OR-that 'logic' according which mental processes
work. It is this-AND-that logic.

BTW the author probably should study Wikipedia article about Narcissistic
Personality Disorder, which is, of course, yet another oversimplified model.)

------
davemel37
This article Is based on an incorrect assumption of the utility and function
of branding ads. they don't change perception...they don't make a new
impression...they support a pre existing perception and reinforce it.

Brand perceptions and this cultural imprinting he refers to are driven by word
of mouth, media coverage, and third party validation... Once we have a
perception- ads reminds us of it.

Yes, ego and peer pressure are strong emotional drivers of purchase behavior
but so are dozens of other emotions we satisfy with various purchases.

------
RangerScience
I've heard of this idea before under the term "Lifestyle Advertising". You
don't sell the product, you sell a "culture" that "exists", with your product
being a means to signal "membership" in that "culture".

Things to Google:

\- LessWrong "Applause Lights" \- Burning Man Ten Principles (specifically,
Decommodification, Radical Self-Expression, and Participation)

PS - I really like the point about "you need to know that everyone else knows
what this means..." \- that's a good point!

------
DanBC
> It suggests that human preferences can be changed with nothing more than a
> few arbitrary images.

"You're never alone with a Strand" seems like a reasonable counter.

> Q: Have you ever seen an ad for bed sheets? Can you even name a brand of bed
> sheet? If ads work by emotional inception, wouldn't you expect to have seen
> at least a few ads trying to incept you with the idea that Brand X bed
> sheets are going to brighten your day?

Yes, I do see ads for bed sheets and for bed sheet makers. The author is just
looking in the wrong places.

------
hownottowrite
The Ehrenberg Bass Institute has quantitative marketing/advertising/brand
results going back to the 50s. If you're interested in the math, I recommend
checking out How Brands Grow by EBI director, Byron Sharp.

[1] [http://www.marketingscience.info](http://www.marketingscience.info)

[2] [http://www.amazon.com/How-Brands-Grow-What-
Marketers/dp/0195...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Brands-Grow-What-
Marketers/dp/0195573560)

------
r0h1n
>> Q: Have you ever seen an ad for bed sheets? Can you even name a brand of
bed sheet? If ads work by emotional inception, wouldn't you expect to have
seen at least a few ads trying to incept you with the idea that Brand X bed
sheets are going to brighten your day? [2]

By the same theory we should rarely ever see ads for mattresses too, since
their "consumption is purely obscure". And yet, I'm bombarded by ads for
mattresses everywhere.

------
smsm42
I've seen a lot of ads, for example, for household cleaning products
(dishwashers, detergents, sponges, soaps, etc.) which are not social at all -
they actually even more a-social than bedsheets, your house guests may happen
to notice your bedsheets but would rarely know which soap you use to wash your
dishes or windows. So while it sounds very persuasive for some products, one
may easily poke holes in the concept applied universally.

~~~
scribu
As the author mentioned at the beginning of the article, ads for household
cleaning products work by making promises (if you use X toothpaste, your
breath will smell fresher for 24 hours), instead of creating cultural signals
(Beyonce drinks Pepsi).

~~~
jamesdelaneyie
Well there is an element of cultural signaling going on. Washing up liquid
like 'Fairy' in the UK usually feature an attractive mother in a middle class
white household dealing with the state of their children's (usually boys)
clothes after they've come home from soccer practise or school or what have
you. The ad isn't saying Beyonce endorses the product, but it is saying that
yes! you too can be like this supermom and effortlessly and jovially clean
your kid's clothes for school tomorrow, so you look like a neglectful parent
thanks to Fairy. Trust Fairy. Live Fairy. Fairy is love. Fairy is life.

------
tbrock
I don't buy it. This advertisement, especially the unreleased version narated
by Steve Jobs, gives me goosebumps every time I watch it:
[http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Rzu6zeLSWq8](http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Rzu6zeLSWq8)

I had such a strong emotional response to it that I remember watching it for
the first time vividly from when I was little.

------
joars
I would love to read this article in a shorter, more concice format. From the
paragraphs I read the author spends most of his time trying to describe the
common (mis)conceptions held by a layman in advertising by giving numerous
citations and examples, which is weird and repetitive when his argument is
that we already know and hold the assumptions.

------
pjbrunet
"You could swap in a Budweiser or Heineken and no information would be lost."

Corona is a lighter beer, which is what you want on a hot beach where you're
sweating and thirsty.

Yahoo Answers: Corona - 4.6% Heineken - 5.4% Budweiser - 5.0%

------
jonahx
The abundance of laundry detergent, mop, swiffer, and other home cleaning ads
seems like a counterexample to the points about bed sheets and gas stations.
Toilet paper ads are another counterexample.

------
jsonne
Imho a good ad, and more broadly a good brand, both has a cultural imprint
piece and a "emotional inception" piece.

Think of Chick Fil A. They've taken a strong stand on same sex marriage.
They've made a cultural imprint on you in that you either support or don't
support that lifestyle. So far so good right?

However, you also feel something about that. You're either happy or upset
about their brand. So not only are you associating that brand with your
lifestyle, you're also having a feeling about that brand.

------
jgamman
thinking fast and slow is the book for you. nobel prize winner gives the
skinny... and yeah, there's actual experiments that show merely familiarity
breeds positive responses. NB there's a bit of commentary going on at the
moment about the reproducibility of the experiments in this field

