Psychology and Internet Advertising: Are You a Hidden Persuader ?

Updated June 23, 2008

Back in 1957, Vance Packard's "The Hidden Persuaders" was the first book to publicly take notice of emergent ties between advertising and psychology. Packard's book discusses how Madison Avenue turned to academic psychology (and specifically "depth psychology") in order to better persuade shoppers to buy. In other words, for the first time, the American public was alerted to the fact that advertisers were not only targeting rational, conscious levels of shopper cognition, but also subconscious desires, instinctual reflexes, and more 'primitive' states of 'consumer awareness'.

"Why do men think of a mistress when they see a convertible in a shop window?" "Why does your wife buy 35% more in the Supermarket than she intends to?" "Why would men refuse to give up shaving - even if they could?" Packard's book, now nearly half-a-century old, gives us the answers to these questions and blows the whistle on those "psychologists-turned-merchandisers" who are making us think things, do things, and buy things against our will…

Today, we pretty much accept the fact that advertising attempts to persuade consumers on all kinds of different levels, many of which lie far beyond the plateau of pure reason, and many of which are, arguably, ethically suspect. By now, we also acknowledge that marketing involves psychological manipulation directed not only at conscious thought and emotion, but also at subconscious and unconscious grids of instinct and reflex perception. Even as we peruse prosaic, seemingly transparent ad copy, we realize that it's covertly interwoven with all kinds subtle messages aimed at activating target emotions, urges, and associative responses - and ultimately geared toward engineering consumer consent.

Indeed, the devil's in the details, and marketing involves subtly communicating complex messages across a wide band of psycho-affective frequencies. To this end, marketing research techniques have, for a long time now, involved waving images and chanting copy in front of focus groups - and then graphing the brain waves, heart rates, galvanic skin responses, and muscular activities of 'average consumer' test subjects. More recently, we've moved on to sophisticated eye-tracking technology, positron emission topography of the brain, and functional magnetic resonance imaging to find out what's really going on inside the heads of consumers when they encounter ads, images, or marketing copy.

Of course, if you're operating a moderate sized Internet business, it's a bit difficult to drop, Phillip Morris-like, tens of thousands of dollars on state-of-the-art marketing research to find out which company logo or mascot causes the frontal lobes of your target customers to light up like a Christmas tree. It's equally untenable to test which of your homepage layouts is the most powerful by encasing eye-tracking headgear on a sample of clinical volunteers to discover which version stimulates maximum pupil dilation.

Some companies actually do this. Most can't or wouldn't bother. The point is, you should still approach your web design, marketing content, sales overtures, and advertising copy with the same level of acute scrutiny and strategic intent, with the same attention to psycho-emotional detail, and with the clear goal of optimizing conversions or branding impact on your website. And then, to the best of your means, test and experiment with all your marketing and branding strategies until they have been refined, perfected.

Instead of utilizing the services of Ivy League psychology professors (who may tell you to integrate more sexploitation and Freudian death-urge motifs into your website images), you simply need to study and clearly define the precise needs of your target demographic - and then charge your marketing content with a meaningful, real-world energy that's leaden with real-life product benefits. If you're really good, you can actually invent new needs that never really existed until your product created them (which explains the advent of the hula-hoop and the Sports Utility Vehicle).

Here, the psychology involved is a little less insidious than the "depth approach" documented in the "Hidden Persuaders". It basically comes down to vividly associating product benefits with either positive or negative emotions and cause-and-effect consequences - anchored in actual lived experience (with the positive being connected to what your product can do in terms of meeting needs/desires/hopes/dreams; the negative in terms of how your product can help consumers avoid undesired/feared/unsavory consequences).

In other words, marketing content should describe an authentic scenario for your target customers, provide a tangible context in which your product can meet their various acute needs, clarify the magnificent scope of the problems your customers may being facing, and then define how your product or service can solve problems, meet needs, and enhance life, work, etc. Paint a picture, and in doing so, connect features with benefits in meaningful, consequence-oriented ways.

You don't need "depth psychology" or positron emission topography to make this kind of marketing to pay-off. You just need to know who your customers are and grasp what makes them tick - and understand the topography of their needs, values, and cultural reference points. Once you have that map, you can educate them about the concrete benefits your product provides - in an authentic, cause-and-effect context they can understand, intuit, and feel.