Hypnosis and Marketing

Advertisers are constantly trying to get a buyers attention.  Today we can find ads everywhere.  Our society is constantly marketing itself, and it therefore becomes more competitive to sell ones products or services.  To remedy for this Marketing experts have theorized and tested the ability to subliminally condition a potential customer or buyer.  The theory has been around for decades, and simply put it is believed that one can cause someone to subconsciously want to do something through subliminal messages.  We are used to seeing what are known as supraliminal messages, which are those that our minds can absorb and reason.  Yet subliminal messages do not allow our minds to reason the message, they simply seek to implant it into our brains.  Several studies have been done on this.  The tests have consisted of both visual, and auditory stimuli.  With visual stimuli it is believed that by inserting words, or images into a commercial at a speed that is too fast for the rational mind to absorb, the subconscious mind of a subject can be made to react to the stimuli.  In auditory stimuli, it is believed that by inserting message that has been recorded backwards into an ad, a message can be conveyed to the listener.  It has been found that visual stimuli do in fact prove to cause the individual to react in a given manner, yet auditory stimuli have not done so.  Nonetheless the trouble with these subliminal messages is that their effects only last very little, they are never truly implanted into the brain.  Yet what if one where to take the experiment a step forward, and what if one were to go as far as to use hypnosis?

Hypnosis is a state of mind that enables you to be more susceptible to suggestion.  Though there are many charlatans out there who claim to know hypnosis, there are also those who have genuinely studied the science.  You may be skeptical, in fact I myself was.  Until I found out that some of my family members had actually sought out hypnotherapy (the process of using hypnosis for psychological therapy).  Two family members had used it to quit smoking; both had been smoking for over 20 years and had tried everything to quit; yet nothing had worked.  Then after visiting the hypnotherapist they suddenly stopped. 

So what would happen if hypnosis could be used in ads, and what sort of legal implications would this create?  The fact is that hypnosis cannot force you to do something, you have to be willing to be hypnotized, or in other words, my family members wanted to stop smoking, you cannot go to somebody who wants to smoke and through hypnosis force them to quit.  Therefore you will not be able to force a buyer to buy something that they do not need or want.  Yet you may be able to attract the buyer who just needs a little push to make their final decision.  Though I have to admit that the thought scares me a little, I am also curious as to seeing how it would play out.  As well, the world of marketing already does push us to do things without our complete awareness: the use of color schemes in fast food restaurants that are meant to increase a customer’s desire to eat; the use of music that can either have a calming or exciting effect; the use of chemicals such as MSG to enhance the flavor of a product to produce a mildly addictive effect.  I think this topic, if actually implemented, will create some serious controversy, and I myself am undecided as to whether it is really that different from what the marketing world is already doing today. 


Thank you for following,
Gian Marco