Consuming Interest

You Have Been Motivated . .

ADRIAN By LESLIE Bb EHIND the announcement the other day that aranch of the American Institute of Motiva- tional Research, Inc., is to be opened here lies something that will affect every consumer in the country—to judge by a new American book, I have just been reading, The Hidden Persuaders, by Vance Packard, which describes what is in store for us when the practitioners of motiva- tional research really get going.

a was particularly interested to read about the experiment in which motivational research experts fitted hidden cameras in a supermarket to study women shoppers' buying habits. They expected to find some increase of tension when decisions about purchase were being made something that could be checked from the eye- blink rate which, in the average person, increases in moments of tension and drops noticeably when he is relaxed.

But the supermarket customers, confronted by dazzling shelves packed with attractive foods, Briefly, they employ psychological probing to find out the real reasons we buy the goods we do. Today, most of the leading New York advertis- ing agencies employ social scientists for these researches; the big McCann-Erickson agency employs five psychologists. 'Ad. men,' says Mr. Packard, 'have become depth men.'

America today is a country of frightened manufacturers. So great is the volume of con- sumer goods flooding the market that traditional salesmanship, even when it resorts to high- pressure methods and statistical market research, IS ineffective in persuading the customers to gobble up the goods fast enough. As one cosmetic executive puts it : 'We are not trying to sell lip- sticks. We are trying to buy customers.'

large-scale efforts are being made, often with impressive success, to channel our unthinking habits, our purchasing decisions, and our thought processes by the use of insights gleaned from Psychiatry and the social sciences. Typically, these efforts take place beneath our level of awareness : SO that the appeals which move us are often in a sense "hidden." . . . The findings of the depth Probers provide startling explanations for many Of our daily habits and perversities.'

One of the first gambits of the depth men was to create a distinctive personality for their pro- ducts, whether they were detergents, cigarettes or cake-mixes, so that at the mere mention of the name an image would arise before the 'inner eye.'

An example of this is the famous Hathaway shirt campaign. This was a fairly obscure brand until the ads, began showing the shirts on a man With a moustache and a black eye-patch. Very soon it was possible to give the picture of the man with the eye-patch without any caption Mentioning a brand name—not, of course, a new idea (it has often been done here), but, an interest- ing example of the speed with which one aPparently irrelevant gimmick can catch on. fell into a kind of trance; and the eye-blink rate fell to a subnormal count. Sales-resistance actually diminished. The proprietor of the market estimated that many of his customers could have saved 25 per cent, of their food bills if they had been able to keep control of their faculties.

Where things like drink and sweet-tooth items are involved, the psychologist soon discovered there is a guilt feeling in self-indulgence. Dr. Ernest Dichter, President of the Institute 9f Motivational Research, explains how the adver- tiser can overcome this, by giving 'moral permis- sion to have fun without guilt.' So the sweet ads. began to say: 'To make a tough job easier—you deserve M—'s Candy.'

The potency of sex as a sales promoter,' Mr. Packard admits, %as not an original discovery of the depth merchandisers.' But these modern experts have gone far beyond the tactics of using a pretty-girl picture as an eye-stopper. 'We don't sell oranges, we sell virility.' Enterprising motor salesmen put a large convertible in the front of the showroom window, because the motivation researchers discovered that in men's minds the convertible symbolises the mistress : the sober saloon, the wife. The customer buys the saloon, but it was the dream-wish that got him over the showroom threshold.

Cars also loom high as prestige symbols. The bigger, the longer the American car, the more successful, upward-striving is its owner. 'Never before a Lincoln . . . so long, and so longed for,' is one current slogan. 'One of the most costly blunders in the history of merchandising,' Mr. Packard asserts, 'was the Chrysler Corporation's assumption that people buy automobiles on a rational basis.' In the early 1950s Chrysler decided that there was a demand for a sturdy, inexpensive car that was easy to park, and they produced such a. vehicle. By 1954 their share of the car market had dropped from 26 per cent. to 13 per cent. Only when they returned to long, low cars were they able to recoup their losses.

Not only car size, but car sounds and smells are considered valuable prestige symbols by the depth men. The sound made by the doors is particularly important. 'We've got the finest door slam this year we've ever had,' Chevrolet boast about their 1957 models, 'a big car sound. . .

This is not to suggest that the British public would necessarily fall for the same techniques : on the contrary, there is plenty of evidence to show that reactions here can be very different to the same type of advertisement (or product).

But I do not see how we can avoid the impact of the motivation ad. men. Leading US firms are now spending an estimated twelve million dollars a year on motivation research. Among them are companies like Goodyear, General Motors and Lever Bros. who have associates here. It obviously gets results; and it is certainly going to arrive over here before long.

All this boasting because a train arrives in Lon- don from Scotland more than half an hour early : who wants a train to arrive early? In my experience, fortunately rare, trains arriving be- fore time make for trouble—particularly if there are children aboard to be met. I should be sur- prised if that premature arrival did not cause some chaos, and perhaps actual discomfort, to the travellers concerned.

I am glad to see the spirited correspondence that has arisen in the Manchester Guardian and other papers about the treatment of passengers arriving at our southern ports. At a time when customs and immigration formalities have been reduced to a minimum everywhere else in Europe, west of the curtain, we still appear to regard visitors at Dover or Folkestone as if they were refugees, among whom, perhaps, are some dangerous spies. Even for British subjects, the herding from boat to train is unpleasant. Is it utterly impossible to find some way of getting people off cross-Channel boats which does not make them feel like ewes being chivvied into a sheep dip? Why cannot there be several gang- ways? And why not employ one of those flexible conveyor belts for transferring luggage from ship to shore and vice, versa, like the ones they use at London Airport?

Hoping for an Indian summer I have been keeping Barbara Worsley-Gough's recipes for a country cottage—dishes, that is to say, which are suitable for cooking in advance so that they can be taken down with you for weekends—against the first sign of an anticyclone. A reminder there were once such things as summer weekends suit- able for country cottages will be received by most of you with incredulity, perhaps with fury. Still, here is the first of them : • QUICHE DORg This is a variant of the traditional Lorraine quiche. It is easy to pack and is equally good cold or heated in the oven. I make the pastry with five ounces of plain flour, two of butter and two of lard, a teaspoonful of salt and the juice of half a lemon, with enough water to make a firm paste. I put it, loosely wrapped, in the refrigerator for an hour before rolling it out very thin indeed and covering a greased, floured baking tin with it. Meanwhile I have cooked a minced shallot and peeled chopped tomato in a little butter until they are pulp, and not sloppy. Making the oven hot (400 deg., Gas No. 6), I break four eggs into a bowl and beat them up well with plenty of salt and black pepper, then add four thin rashers of streaky bacon cut up small, and a good spoonful of the pulp of onion and tomato and stir well. This mixture is poured into the pastry case and the quiche is cooked in the hottest part of the oven for twenty-five minutes. (It is essential to roll the pastry very thin or it will be undercooked beneath the egg mixture.)