I often talk about advertising that sells, and what we can learn from it to make our own advertising better.
There’s always someone who responds with “Why are you always defending bad advertising?”
This is the equivalent of Churchill saying we need to learn Rommel’s secrets in order to beat him.
And getting the response, “Why are you always bigging-up the Nazis?”
This is the lazy mind.
The mind (not just yours or mine: everybody’s) always defaults to the easy solution: the lazy solution.
This is because the mind is basically a pattern-making machine.
How the mind works is called “Gestalt”.
There is way too much information all around us all the time.
The only way to deal with it all is to group it into large, distinct collections of similar stuff.
So for instance, you don’t walk along the street analyzing the difference in the hundreds of cars you see (make, colour, occupants, number plate, age, condition).
If you did, you’d never get to the end of the street.
You just have the broad grouping “cars”.
And these broad-groupings (cars, houses, politics, food, shops, people, time) allow you to handle what would otherwise be a literally infinite amount of information.
So the mind is a pattern-making machine.
That’s its job, and that’s how it helps us survive.
That’s what’s good about it.
What’s bad about it, is when we need it to delve a little deeper into the patterns and actually notice the differences on a subtler level.
The mind doesn’t want to do that, that’s not its job.
No one wants to re-invent the wheel every time.
That’s way too much like hard work.
So let’s just default to one of the broad groups: Good or Bad.
So left to itself, the mind can result in bigotry.
By grouping things, and never questioning the grouping.
(That red vehicle is a car. Cars are bad. Therefore that red vehicle is bad.
Without ever bothering to find out that the red vehicle is actually a battery driven car, used by a paramedic to get to emergencies.)
Delving into subtler differences isn’t the mind’s job.
The mind is too lazy for that, it just likes big, easy groups
Orwell parodied this in Animal Farm.
“Four legs good. Two legs bad.”
That’s how propaganda works: oversimplify.
But propaganda, like anything else, isn’t necessarily bad.
It can be a force for good and, to an extent, it’s what we do.
Understand how the mind works so that we can use it.
Because that’s what we’re dealing with.
Changing and motivating people’s minds.
But before we can do anything with other people’s minds, we have to be able to control our own.
That means we have to investigate and question our own minds.
How does it work, and who’s in charge.
It won’t feel comfortable, because since we’ve been born we’ve learned to depend on our minds.
Probably, right now, your mind is telling you this is rubbish.
So you can switch off and stay with what you already know.
There’s no possibility of growth unless you have an open mind.
That mans investigating whatever’s new before you make decision about it.
The difference is between Skepticism and Cynicism.
Skepticism is where you say, “I won’t believe it until you prove it.”
Cynicism is where you say, “I won’t believe it, even if you prove it.”
All knowledge comes from Scepticism.
Ignorance and fear come from Cynicism.
So, when I talk about what we can learn from bad advertising, please be skeptical not cynical.
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Dear Dave
I find it always pays to consult professional reviewers of note. It saves notes!
With that in mind I was thinking of watching the new Baz Luhrmann movie ‘Australia’ but it has had mixed reviews. Some say he can be a little frivolous in his outlook/treatment but as you state that’s how propaganda works: oversimplify.
But as you go on to say, propaganda, like anything else, isn’t necessarily bad. It can be a force for good too. So putting a positive spin on it I’d say Baz’s treatment worked for ‘Strictly Ballroom’, and ‘Moulin Rouge!’ and it will for ‘Australia’… if you put your ‘Gone With The Wind’ hat on before you see it!
Hi John. I think that’s right.
All I’m saying is the mind is like a dashboard on a car.
it gathers and simplifies information: what speed we’re doing, how much petrol we’ve got.
We still have to decide for ourselves whether to slow down, or fill up.
I think we are like Dave the astronaut, and our minds are HAL the computer.
I think it’s basic Buddhism, the mind makes a great servant and a lousy master.
Medically speaking,
a vaccine is nothing but the virus itself.
Still, the immune system has better chances to fight an infection
if a vaccine is administered to help produce the right antibodies.
Digging your soul, Dave.
John Medinas’ Brain Rules, Dan Arielys Predictably Irrational and Dan Gilberts’ Stumbling Upon Happiness are three great books for Christmas for people into this exploration of the advertising related brain.
I find, as someone once said, that the brain is a difference detector. Because at the same time as it groups and categorizes impulses and impressions in order to spend as little energy as possible, it does this to conserve so it can react if something unsuspected happens – or will be able to detect it at all.
Breaking this pattern of anticipation means that the brain has to stop for a nanosecond and rebuild the “puzzle”. According to amongst others Roy H. William, this is the first step towards giving something your valuable attention.
I gather we tend to resist change both based on having to spend new amounts of energy to re-understand the world. But maybe even more important because admitting that we are wrong will mean giving up a bit of the sensation of being in control. And control is an important part of being human. The end-state in our motivation to act on “a grander scale” according to Dan Gilbert.
I find there are two kinds of meetings, those where people try to find a solution inside the knowledge that they already control and accept. And the meetings where we try to use what we already know in order to discover something completely new.
The latter are usually the more inspiring meetings.
ps. Dave, thanks for an incredibly valuable blog. :o) I’ve recommended it to hundreds.
Thanks for the tip Helge.
I will definitely check those 3 books out.
It was a wish of mine to take everything I’ve learned in planning and put it into a propaganda role. One that changed things for an arrogant and of course subjective better.
Just imagine if wasteful living became a target of social exclusion? Jesus you could knock out some decent propaganda to change people’s ways. I know it works because I remember the first time I saw that drinking and driving had become unnaceptable, and made people into social pariahs. It was the young ones who started to be vocal first. It really does work.
Propaganda done well can have a really wonderful role..
I salivate thinking about both the room for creativity and the potential gains.
When I was in Beijing I noticed that I quite enjoyed reading the daily paper. I liked it because even though negative news about China rarely made it into the pages. I found it mildly uplifting to hear on one dedicated page about the random stories of honest poor people handing money in, or the kindly farmer saving someones cat or whatever fantastically dull acts of goodness were used as examples.
I liked it because I used to be a news junkie until I realised that the news cycle HAS to produce something and that is invariably negative. I talked about this with a subeditor friend of mine. He’s a real news pro, checks facts, understands the background, well informed and hardworking, but when I catch up with him after work sometimes for a late night early morning coffee I can see his nerves are completely shredded. It takes him hours and hours to wind down and I’ve tried to tell him the news isn’t a good business if one doesn’t want to become cynical.
Anyway it’s another topic too big for a comment box but I really like a paper to tell me good news. I really enjoyed China Daily. It’s the only daily paper I’ve read for years. It got me thinking about good propaganda, constructive propaganda, and who gets to decide what is for the public good and all I can say is that if there is a ministry of propaganda and God knows we need one for what’s coming around the corner. Then I want in. It could be massively useful. My liberal friends would go nuts at me but then they go nuts when I say that people should need a licence to vote. We need to take a test for a car, why isn’t democracy held more important?
You’re the only person in the business I’ve heard talk about the subject. Most refreshing.
That’s strange Charles.
You’re the first person who’s agreed with me about a licence to vote, like a driving test.
Charles, you’ve got that positive energy that I’ve always admired and that is such a rare thing in advertising these days. At some point I even thought about organising a digital book for advertising optimists to write/draw their ideas about the usefulness of approaching work in a positive frame of mind. I really believe a positive attitude is the only way we can unleash creativity. Also, it attracts people more than anything else. If you don’t SOUND optimistic, you can present no matter what great benefits of buying X product, people will turn away. It has to be a global process, a globally positive process, from the very first thought you invest in a project to the message you deliver and to the atmosphere that you create around it. I’ve always thought of John Hegarty as the perfect example of optimism. He has that positive energy that gives you no choice but to love him. That’s what I call efficiency: give freedom, …but leave no choice.
It seems that I’m not the only one who sees things way. Maybe it’s not too late for that book.
*this way
Me PC crashed again yesterday.
Got me thinking: seems the modern world rewards people for incompetence.
Even when a barrister loses a case, the hapless client still has to pay the fees.
Likewise, a patient’s family has to pay the surgeon even if surgery failed to save the life.
Computer people get rich peddling machines that are full of glitches.
CEOs who have run their companies to the ground will still receive hefty bonuses.
Some ad agencies have already changed their billing method.
As we face an ever-darkening economy, shouldn’t other industries also change their way of making money?
How come some people are allowed to prosper despite their failure to deliver?
Surely having a licence to vote defeats the purpose of democracy?
Anyway we do have a licence to vote, you get it when you turn 18.
Not sure if a licence to vote will do it Dave.
Looking at the wider picture with the economy it would seem like it’s gonna take a lot to root out the cynics.
The U.S auto bailout was always an exercise in ‘perfuming the pig’ but you have to ask whether those who voted against it — specifically southern Republican senators from states hosting Japanese or Korean or German car plants — were driven more by free market principles or by a cynical scorched earth on the retreat strategy to make the economy unworkable for Obama. Was it really “two or three words from UAW representatives” that stopped a deal — or something nastier? No wonder markets are spooked — and I suspect historians might be worried too if the economy is being driven by tribal behavior.
mind is not lazy, but practical. as our body (or nature in general). that’s why it simplifies. why waste energy on something that doesn’t jeopardize our existence?
using mind for ‘higher purpose’ is a cultural construct.
and this common conception happens because we people in our typical vanity think that inteligence was evolution’s goal. but it wasn’t.
I stopped reading after the fourth paragraph. The two scenarios mentioned are in no way equivalents.
What have Churchill/the Nazis have to do with advertising?
Such extreme comparisons used to ram home an argument merely highlight that the person making that comparison lacks conviction in making his/her original point.
When I pointed out, some time ago, that it can be tough being a junior creative team getting your first break, the response I got was; ‘Well, you’re not in Iraq, losing limbs are you?!’
No. The only people losing limbs in Iraq are soldiers. What an extreme and irrelevant comparison to make.
Mervyn King isn’t losing limbs in Iraq. I take it he’s under no pressure whatsoever then?
James, I think the problem is exactly that you stopped reading after the fourth paragraph. Because the fifth came with a very “domestic” clarification: “This is the lazy mind.” So as you can see, Dave simply used some examples we’re all familiar with; personally, I didn’t feel that heavy historical accent you are complaining about. It was a brief introduction to how the lazy human mind narrows our perspective. I understand your position and I agree that it is unhealthy to force far-fetched comparisons, but this time it just isn’t the case, as Dave was not comparing the importance of the two situations, just the psychological mechanism behind them.
Hi there
Im josephine and i am almost 50 yrs old and have been fighting my whole life to live as i feel i dont want to do anything all the time but i must as if i dont i will die so i push myself but i just wish that i could WANT to do things. I really want this can u help i will do what ever it takes and if it helps others like me it would be a relief to know that i did something to help someone like me as i know how much i hate feeling this way. I am not very educated but I am life wise my determination to surrvive is what does keep me motivated if u help it would really change me thanks for listening jo