Back to Event List

The Future of Persuasion

This is a PAST event. See "Meeting Notes" section for audio, video, documents and other information.

Original event date/time: Friday August 24th, 2007, 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm

I was originally going to call this topic "The Future of Marketing" but people said "No, the topic goes beyond [traditional] marketing" -- to include "the news" (PR, Fox News, etc), political "marketing", scientific research -- both what is researched and what is presented to the public as "the truth" -- and ultimately, what is "truth" and what is our perception "reality" itself?

Abstract:

In the old Soviet Union, people used to say the propaganda techniques were so bad, people could tell the government was trying to manipulate their thoughts, and so it actually encouraged people to think for themselves -- exactly the opposite of what the government intended.

But here in the US, rather than simple-minded government propaganda, we have Madison Avenue and this amazing natural selection effect where the bad advertising techniques disappear and the most effective techniques get more and more effective.

One time I had this TV channel, TVLand, which ran old TV shows, and sometimes they would run "retromercials" -- commercials from the 1960's and 1970's. And the difference between those commercials and the ones today is profound. The old commercials were straightforward product pitches. "Eat Burger King -- it tastes better!".

But nowadays, the commercials come on and they've got clever humor, and clever special effects, and the people are so happy with their big grins!!! and the music comes on, and you're just like, "ahhhhhhhhhhh" and the marketing message goes right past your conscious mind and right into your subconscious, and makes you "feel good" about the product/company. The people that made that ad obsessed over every single frame and every single sound, but you don't get any sense of that, you're just kickin' back on your couch, flowing with the music, "ahhhhhhhhh..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGxNh00NftY

And it's not even just obvious ads.

Let me show you something.

For our "future medicine" discussion, I've been reading lots of medical articles. I've collected a bunch of them on the website, at

http://www.boulderfuture.org/articles/medicine.html

The thing is, if you look closely, you'll see almost every single article there is a press release (or based on a press release) from a university or some other research organization.

In other words, our "News" is actually marketing.

Now, I don't have any reason to believe any of those articles are lying or saying anything deliberately misleading. I don't mean to imply anything nefarious on the part of the researchers or anything. And I'm sure if I made a major scientific discovery I'd be tooting my horn about it, too...

I just find it emotionally disturbing that everything that is being fed to me as "news" is actually marketing.

Check this out... it's from 2004, but everything they say pretty much holds true today (probably even more so).

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/persuaders/

Reflections on Trusting Trust
by Ken Thompson

I mentioned before that technology exists to superimpose ads on real video, as if the ads existed in "reality", and I was looking on youtube for a video example to demonstrate to you all. I couldn't find any, and I realized I had to search on the name of a specific company, to get anything, and after a few dozen Google searches I came up with the name of an Israeli company, ORAD, that makes this technology.

Now, ordinarily I wouldn't post ads on the boulderfuture list, but since this month's topic is "The Future of Persuasion", well, it only makes sense. (But remember, these are ads intended for TV stations, not for you!)

Here's the ORAD ad in 5 parts:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUM4cTE-6qQ - part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndcj4WX9PIY - part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPdrZg81NXk - part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtQ1GtCuT80 - part 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sq3h1MFuf6s - part 5

Each part is about 10 minutes, so it takes about 50 mins to watch the whole thing. In addition to demonstrating adding ads to "reality", the videos demonstrate various other ways of intermixing computer-generated and live, real-time video, such as virtual sets, tracking players and horses (for a horseracing demo), and so on.

In other words, anything that requires tracking specific objects or specific surfaces in a video image, this technology can handle, and can insert computer graphics into the image in real time -- I should mention I have NO IDEA how this technology works, I only know that it does work -- somehow!

If you notice, on the subject line, the ORAD demo is from 2001. And in fact the technology displayed here has already become ubiquitous on TV -- you see the 1st down line on NFL football games, and I've seen the electronically inserted ads on soccer games on one of the Mexican channels. (Never mind that soccer should be called "football" and football should be called "handball"). And sometimes it looks like Fox News is using virtual sets -- I don't actually know, but it wouldn't surprise me.

So the thought experiment I'd like you all to think about is: if this is what was state of the art in 2001, and is now ubiquitous, what will be the state of the art in 2015 or 2020 (and ubiquitous shortly thereafter)?

Here's the youtube clip "Evolution of Video Games" that should give you some idea:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AOivDHo-GY

Computing power should be 20 times what is today in 10 years, and 400 times what it is today in 20 years.

By the way, previously on this list I posted calculations showing that we will have photorealistic video games in the 2013-2015 timeframe. For anyone interested I put the math up on the web at:

http://www.boulderfuture.org/page/photorealistic_math.html

Who really won during the Super Bowl?
Brain experts, for the second time in two years, have studied the neurons firing inside people's gray matter while they watched Super Bowl commercials. Through brain imaging, FKF has found that people typically ignore between a third and half of all commercials. And while the Super Bowl is known for its standout and pricey commercials (advertisers reportedly dropped $2.6 million on 30-second spots this year), the 2007 Super Bowl was no exception. "The majority (of ads) elicited very little response."

The article shows brain scans of a person watching a Doritos ad and and Emerald Nuts ad. The Doritos ad evokes a MUCH larger response in the brain than the Emerald Nuts ad.

The Emerald Nuts ad was typical of most ads -- according to the article, 1/3rd to 1/2 of all ads evoked no response at all. So in all likelihood the Emerald Nuts guys just wasted $2.6 million.

The article says the brain scanners are being used for serious research in addition to the "relative triviality of Super Bowl ad responses". Au contraire -- marketing research is not a triviality. It is the reason we should expect ever more persuasive marketing in the future, marketing where the persuasion is below the level of conscious awareness.

You can see the ads mentioned in the article on youtube:

Best ads
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wt5FiZQrgM - Coca-Cola "Videogame"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNxgxF-7SfA - Doritos "Live the Flavor"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aO3TO5L0bM - Bud Light "Hitchhiker"

Worst ads
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZhLDwU5Row - Emerald Nuts "Boogeyman"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUKORH2uCAc - Honda CR-V "Crave"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNT1Y2sLLKU - Sprint "Connectile Dysfunction"

Anyway, go back and look at the Coca-cola ad, which was the best ad according to the article. Notice what the ad *doesn't* do. Namely, it doesn't appeal to your rational mind. It doesn't ever say "Drink coke -- it tastes good." It never says "Drink coke -- it's good for you." -- of course, they can't say that, it wouldn't be true. Actually, none of the ads, not even the (relatively) "bad" ones, appeal to your rational mind -- that style of ad went out of business in the 1970's. Anyway, if you look closely, you'll notice that what the ad does is make a subconscious link between drinking coke and being a "good person" -- altruistic (and of course, the way to "show people love" is to give them Coca-cola) -- as well as being a very edgy and exciting person -- and high status! because you're going to be remembered for all the great things you do, and you're going to make everything wonderful!

Coca-cola is legendary for their ability to tie a person's sense of identity to their product, creating braind loyalty far beyond what is justified by the actual drink. (R.C.Cola wins over both Coke and Pepsi in double-blind taste tests.) Coca-cola is the #1 brand in the world according to BusinessWeek, which does a "Top 100" ranking every couple of years.

I'm rather amazed by Coca-cola, because what they've done is quite literally transformed carbonated sugar water into billions of dollars.

If you look at Coke's advertising for the last several decades, they consistently say: drink coke, and you will be an exciting person!

Anyway, the basic idea behind choosing the "Future of Persuasion" as a topic is that I've noticed that what succeeds and fails in business often seems to have more to do with marketing than anything else. Then I noticed that marketing seems to have infected politics -- who wins elections seems determined not by any issues of real importance to people, but by which candidate has the most marketing money and the best marketing techniques. When I brought this up, people mentioned that truth itself seems to be up for grabs (there no longer seems to be any such thing as "news", only "spin"), and that this would be a good discussion topic.

Add to that that technology is advancing to the point where photorealistic video can be computer-generated, and technology is invading our brains to find out what marketing techniques work, and, well -- what's going to happen? where is all this going?

There's kind of two sides to the question: the "technique" side and the "technology" side. The "technique" side of the question is, what happens as marketing knowledge and techniques improve, and that knowledge spreads around and becomes more ubiquitous? The "technology" side of the question is: what happens as technology makes appearance and reality harder and harder to distinguish?

This is a past event.

Meeting Notes: