What do you think will happen if two people say different things to you at the same time? One in the left ear and the other in the right? And a very curious thing will happen: no matter how hard you try, you will be able to be aware of only one text. The other one will be unavailable.
Your hearing works perfectly, and you can hear everything perfectly, but you will hear only one of the two proposed options. The second you also hear, but do not realize it.
Cherry, working with two sources of signals that a person listens to at the same time (using special headphones for this, which feed different tape recordings into two ears), discovered the “party effect” (cocktail party effect), — the ability to listen and remember only one of two conversations.
The subject had to listen carefully to one of the recordings, and, upon completion, he could easily retell what he heard. But from another recording, he did not catch almost anything.
The same effect was also found in the field of visual signals: when different movie scenes were presented to the retinas of the right and left eyes, the subject could perceive only one of them.
But. There are two important things. Even three. First: your subconscious mind hears both (!) texts.
You can compare this to a telephone security system that «listens» to all conversations and automatically starts recording when «terrorist» words like «bomb», «act of terrorism», «detonate» and so on appear on the air. This system is a myth, since all conversations are recorded without exception, and the tapes are tapped if there is a reason for that. I also highly doubt that terrorists use such words as «bomb», «act of terrorism» or «detonate» on the air. But that’s not the point. It is important that a person has such a protective system called «subconscious», which controls all the sounds of the ether. This is the first.
Secondly, when these important words appear on the air, consciousness involuntarily switches to this channel, which until that time was not realized. For example, a representative from the FBI faction sits and listens to telephone conversations of potential terrorists. There are a lot of lines, but physically you can only listen to one. Here he sits and listens to how the worst terrorist orders pizza, and suddenly — bang! — hears the word «bomb», which sounds on the other line. Attention automatically switches to this conversation, and the pizza order «falls out» of consciousness.
Third, we can arbitrarily switch from one channel to another. For example, the FBI listens in on a conversation about a «bomb» and realizes that the would-be terrorist is talking about a beautiful woman. Only and everything. Now he can «return» his attention to the pizza if he wants to. Or keep listening to the conversation about women.
If you ask an FBI agent what was discussed in the second conversation before the word «bomb», then he will not be able to remember anything. And if you ask the agent what was discussed in the first conversation after the word «bomb», he will not be able to remember anything. No matter how psychologists say, there are no “tape recorders” that record everything in a row in our head. And if you haven’t listened to the conversation, you won’t be able to remember it. Even under the condition that your subconscious “heard” it. For his «behavior» resembles the aforementioned system of protection against terrorists. As soon as the keyword sounds, the recording starts. But if such a word is not heard, the conversation is ignored. The agent will be able to recall the conversation about pizza before the word «bomb» and the conversation about «bomb» after the word «bomb». The second part of the first conversation and the first part of the second conversation do not exist in his memory.
Why am I talking about this in such detail? Because, through the efforts of neurolinguistic programming, an obsession appeared in advertising to «program» the client’s subconscious with the help of special keywords. It’s called the «inserted message technique». Another text is artificially inserted into the advertising text, which is written in a different size, color, bold or italic. When the client reads this text, the «inserted» words subconsciously (!) add up to a separate text, and the client actually reads the hidden message. Most of the time, it’s an imperative. For example,buy from us. Here is such a theory. Does it work? Let’s figure it out.
Embedded Message Technique
The ancestor of the technique of inserted messages was the outstanding psychoanalyst Carl Jung (a student of Freud, the author of the famous theory of the collective unconscious, which was also reflected in advertising). Jung offered the client a certain set of words, to which the client had to respond with free associations. For example, the word «mother». And the client says what associations he has. But the meaning was not at all in what associations the client offers to the word «mother», «father» or «childhood». Jung noted which words caused unexpected difficulties with associations. If the client cannot find an association for the word «cat» for a long time, Jung suggests that the cat is somehow connected with the client’s painful past experience. For example, when the client was small, the cat frightened or scratched him severely. And if the association comes easily, then there is no problem. In this way, Carl Jung was bringing out traumatic experiences from a distant past, and without the knowledge of the client. And while other psychoanalysts were «looking for» the problem, Jung found it in a few minutes, which allowed him to work with precision later.
In 1936, Milton Erickson, the world-famous psychotherapist and hypnotist, wrote an article in which he spoke about the result of an experiment with the Jung test. The subject was a young woman with a fear of pregnancy. In his study, Erickson presented her with the stimulus word «belly», and received a story in response, and some words from this text were, as it were, in bold type. For example, the tone has changed. Or an involuntary gesture was made. In general, it was obvious that some words were more emotionally charged than others.
Erickson separated these words from the rest of the text, and he came up with a coherent story about an unwanted pregnancy (and subsequent abortion): sick, anxious, baby, afraid, operation, illness, forgotten. Thus, the woman unconsciously told Erickson the story of her past experience, which was later repressed and forgotten.
But Erickson went even further. He suggested that this process could be reversed. That is, to emphasize some especially important words with a gesture or intonation. And then the therapist will be able to send hidden unconscious messages to the client. Here is such a theory.
A marked message is transmitted to the client in the form of any message that is emotionally neutral and, as it were, in no way connected with some topic that is traumatic or painful for the client. However, there are nested words in this message that are marked in one way or another. For example, a simplified verbal message to a client suffering from a headache: «our city head decided that this bright the paint will look very good if you paint the fence, especially when standing clear weather». In this case, we have an inserted message head bright clear, which can be underlined either with gestures, or intonation, or even in a different font, if it is, let’s say, written.
Thus, the client receives not one message, but two. The first is consciousness-oriented – it is realized and understood by the client. The second message is addressed exclusively to the subconscious, and remains unnoticed by the attention (consciousness) of the client.
In psychotherapy, this provides an invaluable opportunity to communicate directly with the subconscious on a very deep level, without any trance, and at a time when the client and the therapist talk sweetly about flowers or the advantages of one car over another. Therefore, insert message therapy can take place absolutely anywhere, and not just in the psychologist’s office. And this amazing opportunity did not pass by the views of advertisers. If it works anywhere, it will work in advertising. And to tell the consciousness that “Titkin’s cast-iron batteries are very reliable,” and to tell the subconscious that “Titkin’s cast-iron batteries are very reliable,” you see, are far from the same thing. I would like to immediately in the subconscious. And, preferably, without the knowledge of the client.
Therefore, today, when you open any advertising guide, newspaper or magazine, you will find advertising texts with obvious signs of an interstitial message. It is implemented by the method of color, typeface or any other distinguishable by eye difference in certain words of the advertising message. For example? For example, here.
Gather all the words (bold, italic and capital letters) and you get second text. Quite meaningful. Addressed to the client’s subconscious. Psychotherapists confirm: this technique works. Erickson, when the secretary complained of a headache, asked her to urgently type the letter. He dictated, she typed it. When the secretary finished typing the letter, her head no longer hurt. Special words addressed to the subconscious were inserted into the text of the letter. “It brightens”, “it will soon pass”, “dissipates”, “feel good”. And the head goes. The real thing.
Does this technique work in advertising? No. And if you haven’t guessed yet, whyplease read this article again. Keywords: Jung’s patients (who were tested), a woman with a fear of pregnancy, Erickson’s secretary with a headache. Why does it work in the cases listed but not in ads? Any ideas?
Bomb for the subconscious
Remember the phone call tracking system? If words such as «bomb», «bin Laden» or «jihad» are spoken, the system automatically starts recording. The system has a certain set of words to which it reacts. Something similar happens in Young’s test. Each person has a set of «painful» words to which he subconsciously reacts. The only problem is that each person has a unique set of words. For a woman who is afraid of pregnancy, these words are «sick», «operation», «disease», «baby» and «stomach». Assuming that even one of these words is used in an advertisement, the woman’s attention is likely to be entirely focused on this advertisement. As in the case of the FBI agent who heard the word «bomb».
But turn this situation to the opposite, and see what we get. The FBI agent hears the word «belly» and the woman hears the word «jihad.» And then what? And nothing. The FBI agent will not hear this conversation, and the woman will not pay attention to this advertisement. Because these words are for them emotionally neutral.
The difference between a psychotherapist’s client and an advertising audience is that in the first case, the client is always one, and in the second case, they are always lot. And everyone has their own list in the subconscious. One cat, in another stomach, at the third poker. And this list will be equal to the volume of the largest explanatory dictionary in the world.
How many times will the recording device work, designed to record a conversation with the word «jihad»? Let’s say once in a million conversations. And how many times the subconscious will “work” on the word we produce (see promotional example above) or chairs. Also about one time per million readers of this advertisement. Does it make sense? No point. It is necessary to write good advertising, and not to “insert” messages supposedly addressed to the subconscious. In psychotherapy — it works for five plus. In advertising, no. Therefore, do not engage in nonsense, but use the highlights strictly for one thing: emphasize the most important argument, the most important idea. Only. How to do this, we will now find out.
Accents in text and accent proportions
To begin, I will give you one Tide advertising text. It is in English, but we, in this case, do not care about the content of the text, but only its form. So:
This text is taken from a Tide flyer from the 50s. Now let’s take another look at our Russian announcement of the beginning of the XNUMXst century.
I do not seek to set you up in a mystical way, but count the number of words in each text. There will be exactly 25 of them. And now look at the proportions of the accents. Tide has 25/1, and ours has 25/12, that is, almost every second word is highlighted in the text, and besides, three types of accent are used: this is the text in capital letters, italic and bold.
If Tyler (Fight Club) started pasting the 25th frame into Cinderella, based on this proportion (25/12), then it would not be so much a cartoon as a porn movie.
I’m not talking about the fact that frame 25 exists, but that the number of amplifications in the text should not be excessive, otherwise they begin to «crawl into the eyes» and annoy. Yes, and it becomes more difficult to read such a text. It acquires a semantic fragmentation, like a hairstyle after the work of a bad hairdresser: instead of beautiful smoothness, we get “steps”.
The normal proportions of accents for homogeneous text are 25/3, well, a maximum of 25/5 (although this is already a bit too much). In the Russian announcement I cited above, the normal course of events is to highlight the last two words (low prices), the limit is to highlight the last sentence. Ideal: acentate a single word reliable. There are no emotions and no value in the words “we produce”, “furniture for your office”, and items of production (chairs, armchairs, cabinet furniture), so it’s not worth highlighting them.