Written - Vance Packard - The hidden persuaders (notes)

• page 31 - the use of mass psychoanalysis to guide campaigns of persuasion has become the basis of a multimillion-dollar industry. Professional persuaders have seized upon it in their groping for more effective ways to sell us their wares - whether products, ideas, attitudes, candidates, goals or states of mind. 
• 32 - Meanwhile, many of the nation's leading public-relations experts have been indoctrinating themselves int he lore of psychiatry and the social sciences in order to increase their skill at 'engineering' our consent to their propositions. 
• 32 - What the probers are looking for, of course, are the whys of our behaviour, so that they can more effectively manipulate our habits and choices in their favour. This has led them to probe why we are afraid of banks; why we love those big fat cars; why we really buy homes; why men smoke cigars; why the kind of car we drive reveals the the brand of gasoline we will buy; why housewives typically fall into a hypnoidal trance when they get into a supermarket; why men are drawn into auto showrooms by convertibles but end up buying sedans; why junior loves cereal that pops, snaps, and crackles.
• 33 At one of the largest advertising agencies in America psychologists on the staff are probing sample humans in an attempt to find how to identify and beam messages to, people of high anxiety, body consciousness, hostility, passiveness, and so on. A Chicago advertising agency has been studying the housewife's menstrual cycle and its psychological concomitants in order to find the appeals that will be more effective in selling her certain food products. (BARE IN MIND THE DATE - 1957 thats how long this has been going on for, this extent of research)
• 35 A Milwaukee advertising executive commented to colleagues in print on the fact that women will pay two dollars and half for skin cream but no more than twenty-five cents for a cake of soap. Why? Soap, he explained, only promises to make them clean. The cream promises to make them beautiful.
• 35 The cosmetic manufacturers are not selling lanolin, they are selling hope... We no longer buy oranges, we buy vitality. We do not buy just an auto, we buy prestige.
• 37 In very few instances do people really know what they want, even when they say they do - Advertising age
• 46 In searching for a deeper approach to their marketing problems American merchandisers began doing some serious wondering. They wondered why on earth customers act the way they do. Why do they buy or refuse to buy given products? In trying to get guidance from the psychological consultants they turned to, they found themselves trying to understand and explore the deep unconscious and subconscious factors that motivate people. 
• 55 Perhaps the most genial and ingratiating of all the major figures operating independent depth-probing firms is James Vicary, of James M. Vicary Company in New York. His specialty is testing the connotation of words used in ads, titles, and trademarks for deeper meanings. A social psychologist by training, he has worked for and with many different merchandisers.... He states: 'The amount of information a client needs is that which will give him a favourable edge over his competition and make him feel more secure in making his decisions.'
• 56 One Weiss and Geller project of note was a psychiatric study of women's menstrual cycle and the emotional states which go with each stage of the cycle. The aim of the study, as I've indicated, was to earn how advertising appeals could be effectively pitched to a woman at various stage of their cycle. At phase one (high) the woman is likely to feel creative, sexually excitable, narcissistic, giving, loving, and outgoing. At a lower phase she is likely to need and want attention and affection given to her and have everything done for her. She'll be less outgoing, imaginative. Mr.Weiss explains: "It is obvious that your message must reach women on both of these levels if it is to achieve maximum effectiveness."
• 61 Hyponosis is also being used in attempts to probe our subconscious to find why we buy or do not buy certain products
• products having different hidden meanings e.g. food : Page 107 Social Research has found that many foods besides milk are loaded with hidden meanings. Its psychologists have discovered, for example, that food is wifely used on a subconscious level as a reward or punishment by the housewife. Goes on to talk about how steak and chocolate are warming up for an important annoucement whereas liver, spinach show she is displeased with certain members.
• 240 It is no solution to suggest we should all defend ourselves against the depth manipulators by becoming carefully rational in all our acts. Such a course not only is visionary but unattractive. It would be a dreary world if we all had to be rational, right-thinking, non-neurotic people all the time, even though we may hope we are making general gains in that direction. At times it is pleasanter or easier to be nonlogical. But I prefer being nonlogical by my own free will and impulse rather than to find myself manipulated into such acts. The most serious offence many of the depth manipulators commit, it seems to me, is that they try to invade the privacy of our minds.