Thought Control
by Bob Grubb

We are faced today with an insidious force that is both seductive and harmful, and set up to entrap its audience. The force is known to the layman as advertising, and to the initiate as mind control. It is based in confusion.

"Advertising is 85% confusion and 15% commission." - Fred Allen

Thought control. It's a king's dream and a pauper's nightmare. Is it possible to control the thoughts of others? Yes. Can people's actions be restricted or incited by their acceptance of suggestion? Yes. In fact, even severely controlled populations can actually believe they enjoy great freedoms.

Thought control is the sole objective of advertising.

Advertisers achieve product recognition and preference by presenting concepts to their receivers that prompt immediate or long term alterations of thought. Simply put, advertising exposes people to ideas about products and tells people what to do when confronted with the product.

Does it work? Most of us will quickly state that "advertising does not affect me", "I just ignore it", or some such. Okay. Let's accept that you and I are not even susceptible to the influences of advertising. How about everyone else?

Billions of dollars are spent to bombard our planet with advertising each year. As a result, it is difficult to find one's self in an advertisement-free situation or environment. There is actually a scheme to put giant billboards into orbit that would light up the night sky.

Consider the following facts from 1996. Proctor & Gamble spent more than two and one half billion dollars to advertise their products. General Motors and Phillip Morris each spent over two billion dollars. Time Warner spent almost one and a half billion dollars. Seagram's spending a more modest 383 million. Revlon, targeting a less encompassing market, forked over 263 million. These figures are obtained from Advertising Age. On average this is twice what they spent in 1987.

Why do companies spend these huge sums of money to advertise? It seems ludicrous, given that everyone you encounter states that it has no effect on them. This spending is investment money. Investors know in advance about how much outcome per dollar to expect as a return on investment. The top advertisers are successful companies. They would not be successful if they made unwise investments. This money is not spent by some crazed executive who gets canned after the company finds out he screwed up. We're talking hundreds of millions of dollars. This money is budgeted only after careful analysis of the previous year's return on investment.

Despite what you and I may wish to think, advertisers know how to control thoughts. The US government gave advertising agencies 311 million to control the thoughts of its citizens during 1987. Facts don't lie. We can establish that advertising achieves its objectives by measuring return on investment, but how does it do so?

Advertisers want their targets to recognize and accept the object they are promoting. The recognition is easy - a jingle, a catchy logo, whatever will make the object unique. Acceptance is what the companies are paying for. It is this aspect that often goes beyond the intended purpose of advertising into the realm of thought control.

Basic advertising presents facts with the hope that people will purchase the subject of the advertisement after hearing these facts. This is represented by a new sandwich shop that advertises that they exist, have something good about them (price, location, etc.), and ask for your business.

Let's say the above sandwich shop is one outlet for a world-wide chain of sandwich shops. It has been in existence for twenty-five years. Everyone knows who they are, where they are, what they serve, and how much it costs. It would seem there would be no need to advertise. However, there is always competition - and so our chain uses advertising to persuade people to choose their shops over the competition. To do this, incentives like discount pricing or special offers are advertised. These forms of advertising are useful, and may generate more business for the company. They are commonly seen in local papers and TV ads, where advertising budgets are more conservative and objectives are narrow.

Thought control is more expensive. Research and planning are required. Let's imagine that after years of competitive advertising between two sandwich shop chains, prices are about as low as profitability allows. "Collectible" movie memorabilia can be offered by one chain, but the other can respond in kind. Now the objective becomes persuading the sandwich consuming market segment to get their sandwiches from chain A - for no real reason.

An advertising agency does some research and finds that most sandwich eaters make their purchase to satisfy hunger (duh). They propose a two step marketing plan. In the first phase, the target segment will learn that really hungry people eat chain A sandwiches. There will be humorous TV commercials showing hungry children complaining to a haggard and hungry Mom that they are really hungry. Mom will say she's so hungry she can't even cook. The solver will explain to Mom that really hungry people go to chain A, because its so close, its so cheap, its so good, and so on.

In phase two, after the target segment associates the satisfaction of hunger with chain A, the target segment will be conditioned to be hungry on command.

Mom and Dad and the Kids have just left church, and THEY'RE REALLY HUNGRY! Everyone's dressed up so, what the hey, let's go to chain A and eat! This ad, run in every market two times nightly for three months, will produce feelings of hunger in some significant percentage of home bound church-goers. If the ad is done very well (more repetition) the target segment will associate the products of chain A to their overall worship ritual. After a lot more repetition, chain A can become the ritual itself!

You think not? Well, if you were spending 300 million dollars a year to advertise what would you expect? The sandwich shop chain used in the example could be McDonalds, who spent 650 million dollars to sell sandwiches in 1987. A traditional visit to the playground with your child can now be fulfilled at McDonalds.

Thought control is achieved by proposing a thought or action to the subject, and then consistently (and persistently) rewarding compliance with pleasure - punishing resistance with pain.