Nobody counts the number of ads you run; they just remember the impression you make.
– Bill Bernbach, American advertising creative director
There was once a magician I watched on TV who said that he will mesmerise everyone to produces exactly the same thing he was thinking about. He wrote a number and only the camera would be able to see it. He then randomly picked six people to write a number down on a card and then he read them out one by one, and they all write the same number!
Amazing. But it was not really him controlling their minds, as he confessed later. All along the way from the entrance of the studio to where they sat, there were signs, subtlely and sometimes more suggestively, signalling that number.
The mind can be easily controlled the more often you repeat an action, a suggestion, a signal. The more often you reinforce it, the more concretised that suggestion is ingrained inside the mind until no one can shake that thought out of the person’s head. It becomes a reality.
That is the simple formula behind the success of advertising and public relations. A reinforcement of a certain thought again and again and again, and then getting people of various levels talking about that same thought in various ways, until it becomes the ONLY reality for those who are subjected to it.
For example. Why do women always feel they are never enough when it comes to their bodies?
Because the subtle positioning of skinny, young models aged 13 years to 20 years that suggest that this is the ideal body and face and that this is what you need to look like and wear to be considered beautiful and desirable to the world, is the power of suggestion.
How slathering some cream or using some perfume or eating something may get you there is the solution they sell you after indoctrinating you with their power of suggestion. And because when you are 45, you will never look like a 13 year old, and you shouldn’t anyhow, women are trapped in an endless cycle of shame and guilt that they are not “perfect”
This example is a negative way of selling, that plays on people’s inherent insecurities and fear, and a need to belong to something. If you can create a feeling of void in someone, you can then sell them the supposed solution to that, which of course will never solve the problem or fill that void, because voids are psychological.
We need to fill that void with us, and then only can we be complete and whole, and be truly comfortable in our skin and be confident and brave to do whatever it is that really matters. To you and to the world.
I don’t like this psychological warfare that demeans the soul, instead of uplifting it. My idea of great advertising and public relations is to always be a complement to what you want to achieve, a helping hand.
So when competitions or misinformed parties try to destroy a public image, tear down the company’s reputation, put doubts and fear about a project that is about to begin — the best way to fight this is to create a whole lot of positivity to counter that.
You need to fight negative energy with positive energy, because this is not a balanced world.
You don’t shrug it off and say “ah, I know the truth, so it doesn’t matter.”
If you do, you are allowing society to form a negative image of yourself and soon the negativity becomes the new reality and you will not be able to remove that indoctrination from people’s minds.
You don’t shrug it off and hope it will blow away. Bad press has a way of snowballing out of control and becoming a monster that is too big for you to fight. It is always smarter to nip that monster on the bud, when you can still manage the situation.
You don’t keep silent and pray that people will not believe the bad press that is making its rounds. People are gullible and are trained their whole lives to believe social media and newspapers, 95 per cent of them don’t do their own homework to think beyond news that hits them in the face. Even if they try to keep a neutral outlook, remember the magician in my first paragraph? The subconscious is powerfully brainwashed.
You can overturn any bad press by overwhelming the world you want to impress by continuously bombarding them with fabulous storytelling on all the positive elements of yourself so all they can think about is how great you are.
This puts people at the crossroads of deciding what to believe — the good or the bad ?
That decision is made based on how often they hear either.
Therefore, to swing it in your favour is in your hands.
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of New Sarawak Tribune. Feedback can reach the writer at beatrice@ibrasiagroup.com
